Asteroid to pass Earth within moon's orbit

[Elmore Furth]

Source: UPI

PASADENA, Calif., April 7 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers say a newly discovered asteroid will travel close to Earth Thursday, passing the planet at a distance of about 223,000 miles.

The U.S. space agency said the asteroid -- named 2010 GA6 -- is approximately 71 feet wide and will fly-by Earth within the moon's orbit. It was discovered by the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, a Tucson astronomical survey focused on the discovery and study of near Earth asteroids and comets.

"Fly-bys of near-Earth objects within the moon's orbit occur every few weeks," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He said the asteroid poses no danger to the planet.

NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," plots the objects' orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/04/07/Asteroid-to-pass-Earth-within-moons-orbit/UPI-81661270656663/

[Dogtown]

1. Very cool.

Fundies will freak.

[arcane1]

2. My teabagger impression:

I hereby demand an end to the socialist "Near-Earth Object Observations Program" and its Marxist agenda and gross waste of my hard-earned tax dollars!

Or something...

*resumes eating cheetos*

[sui generis]

3. There ain't no moon!

Er you kidding? There is thuh firmament, which is made out of light blue porcelain. There is a piece of the firmament that they found in Texas and put in the babble history museum. I've seen it. Therefore dinosaurs did not exist.

There is no way you could get a asteroid up past thuh firmament, so how could one come back down? Anyway the moon is just an illusion that god uses to test our faith, along with electricity and light switches, so no big old 71 foot rock could get in the sky without a rocket anyway.

Therefore you are wrong, end of conversation, period.

:silly:

edited to add :rofl:

[happygoluckytoyou]

6. IN A RELATED STORY teabaggers note that jesus flyby is a end-of-the-world warning to change our ways

[superconnected]

22. I read a tea bagger demanding an end to the space program monday - the was the 4 women astronuats in

space article that showed up on my local news site. He was really arguing with everyone about having to pay for that program.

[teknomanzer]

34. Yeah, its such a burden...

because he pays for it all by himself. Sure lets cut funding to NASA -- lets cut funding to everything but the military and watch as China and India move forward while we decline.

[Bucky]

41. If you were a real tea bagger, you'd be blaming this asteroid on Obama

[Ian David]

4. Posted this on Twitter...

Asteroid 2010 GA6 (Named #Colbert) will pass Earth by 223,000 miles, poses no threat. http://tinyurl.com/y9nehsr #NASA #Science #DontPanic

Let's see if the media starts calling the asteroid Colbert now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Problem is, there's already an asteroid called Colbert

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=9164+Colbert

and it's got a Wikipedia entry, which is what a lazy writer would look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9164_Colbert

(named after a different Colbert)

[Ian David]

18. Awww, man! n/t

[Tanelorn]

21. Don't worry. the next one might be Stephen T

[KansDem]

5. Wait a second! Hold on...this about got away from us...

This story is from the UPI. And who owns the UPI? That's right, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Asteroid to pass Earth within moon's orbit

Get it? This means something...I just don't know what...yet.

C'mon, folks! We need to be more vigilant!

[kimmerspixelated]

8. That's right?

If it happens all the time, how come THIS one is different? The teabaggers are up to something. Actually most teabaggers aren't up to much, because I find them to be the shortest people on earth.

[Turbineguy]

7. The Moon

was put up there by socialists to light our way at night.

[Cirque du So-What]

9. In astronomical terms, this rock will miss the earth

by a RCH. If you're not familiar with the term, Google will tell all.

[boppers]

10. Google's not much help...

http://www.google.com/search?q=RCH+astronomy

?

[Cirque du So-What]

11. Try 'RCH' without astronomy - just plain-ass 'RCH'

It will soon become evident. BTW, my use of the term 'RCH' has been one of the hardest habits to break from my years of military service.

[Occulus]

12. Oh dear

I found it.

Oh deary dear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair%27s_breadth

Should be obvious.

[Po_d Mainiac]

26. so you are or were a carpenter?

can't see it from my house..nail it

[Po_d Mainiac]

27. web warp dupe...n/t

[Ter]

13. 71 feet won't be a huge deal even if it hits us

I mean, it could destroy several blocks or even more, but only in that area. Humans survive easily.

[DCKit]

14. Yeah, but who would Pat Robertson blame if it landed on his house? n/t

[superconnected]

24. Gays.

[name not needed]

50. If it landed on Pat Robertson's house, I'd gladly take the blame.

[IDemo]

25. Not Earth destroying, certainly, but bigger than you think

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/1357

A meteor that's 100 feet in diameter has the energy equivalency of a one-megaton explosion,
roughly seven times greater than that of the weapon that leveled Hiroshima.

[fascisthunter]

29. true

[Xithras]

36. Even with the force of a hydrogen bomb, there isn't a huge amount of worry.

Humans have urbanized only about 3% of the Earths surface. Two thirds of the planet is covered by water. More than half of the remaining land is virtually uninhabited (high mountains, deserts, polar regions). Of the remaining area used by humans, well over 95% is thinly populated farmland and forest areas.

If the rock were to hit the Earth, the strong odds are that the human death toll would be zero. If it did manage to hit an area populated by humans, the odds overwhelmingly favor a strike in a remote area where the death toll would be very low. The odds of it striking a city or urbanized area are incredibly small.

[mindwalker_i]

31. Um, you're forgetting something kind of important

If you drop a 71-foot rock from 100 feet, it will do about the damage you indicate. However, if you drop a rock from way-the-fuck-high, far, far out of the atmosphere, that rock will be going, like, mach 30 when it hits the ground, so the kinetic energy of said rock is really big! Like big as in the energy of a hydrogen bomb.

You ever seen reentry of a space capsule or the shuttle? They have special stuff to keep them for free-falling all the way down, and burning off that extra energy is a not insignificant engineering problem. Take a away the heat shield, make it a big ass rock instead of a capsule or shuttle, with no aerodynamics, and it ain't going to be no two city blocks!

[Kevin Cloyd]

40. I'm guessing a 71 foot asteroid would do maximum damage by

hitting Earth in the ocean within one hundred miles of shore. The Tsunami would be the killer, high enough to travel well inland in low areas and would arrive only a few minutes after impact.

[Demeter]

15. Too Close for Comfort

[Uncle Joe]

16. Well this part is good to know because if it did pose a danger,

24hrs notice doesn't get the job done.

"Fly-bys of near-Earth objects within the moon's orbit occur every few weeks," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He said the asteroid poses no danger to the planet."

Thanks for the thread, Elmore Furth

[RedCloud]

19. Fly-bys of near-Earth objects within the moon's orbit occur every few weeks

That has me totally freaked out.

[Uncle Joe]

20. Yes, it makes that old Asteroid game seem more relevant. n/t

[Lance_Boyle]

33. Just this week, a new record high was set in Asteroids.

After 27 years...

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/04/07/010249/After-27-Years-a-New-High-Score-For-Asteroids?art_pos=30

[IDemo]

23. I witnessed this one ->

1972: Near miss
Canada
1000-ton object skimmed through Earth's atmosphere
over Wyoming then diverted back out into space.
If it had continued into the atmosphere
it could have hit Canada with a 1 megaton explosion.
http://www.abstractworlds.com/closeapproach/index.php?id=threat

A lady here in town called the local TV station reporting that it was a UFO
and that she had seen parachutes deploying from the object (there were chunks
breaking off). Astronomy magazine, which I was taking at the age of 14, headlined
the event with "Cosmic boulder skims Rockies".

[sulphurdunn]

28. This rock is about half the size of

the one that went off over Tunguska Siberia in 1908. If it hit the earth or went off in the atmosphere, it would detonate with an impact of approximately 8 megatons and flatten everything over an area of approximately 400 sq. miles. If it struck the ocean it would generate the largest tsunami in recorded history and devastate costliness globally. It it hit a major city in any nation with nuclear weapons...

[fascisthunter]

30. .

people don't realize the energy these suckers pack. I love science...

[Xithras]

37. It wouldn't generate a tsunami of that size

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake released just over 25 megatons worth of energy, and the resulting damage was limited to the shorelines directly facing the source. Back in the 1950's, the US and USSR did a lot of tests with submarine and surface nuke detonations to determine whether we could generate tsunamis to attack ports. The largest underwater test that I'm aware of was about 10 megatons. It worked, but the tsunamis lost power after a few dozen miles. There simply wasn't enough water displacement to generate something more lasting. The idea was abandoned anyway as targeting systems became more precise, and attacking the targets directly became the favored method of destroying ports.

I certainly wouldn't want to be on a shoreline a few miles away from an 8 megaton asteroid impact, but cities outside the impact zone would have little to worry about.

[sulphurdunn]

45. You're probably right, but

let's say it doesn't break up or detonate upon impact but slams into the sea bed at about 20,000 mph. Would that change anything? Let me know. Thanks.

[Xithras]

46. Not really.

The damage would still be highly localized, and the blast from a seabed impact would actually be less intense than a direct land impact. There would be a tsunami generated, but it would be relatively small and localized.

There is a point where an ocean impact can actually be more damaging than a land impact, but you need a MUCH bigger rock. Essentially, you need an impactor big enough to dig out a large crater on the seafloor, which would itself displace a lot of water. This impactor simply wouldn't be big enough to do the job.

[JI7]

32. i wish it would hit earth

[DavidDvorkin]

35. ?

[Robb]

38. Probably owns a landscaping business.

:D

[DavidDvorkin]

39. Good one.

:)

[Renew Deal]

42. lol

:rofl:

[Renew Deal]

43. Ummmm, OK

:rofl:

[MisterP]

44. here's a nifty calculator

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

[Ka hrnt]

47. Reminded me of this...

?1267164782

;)

[BeHereNow]

48. Wish I could hitch a ride on it to where ever it is going...

I've had just about enough of this damned country.

BHN

[theophilus]

49. Don't forget to take a sheep.......you know, for the Baobabs! n/t

[rucky]

51. Where's Bruce Willis when we need him?

[UTUSN]

52. Nice shot, Zeus!1 n/t