Asteroid Near Miss?

[Ydoow]

I heard on the radio that an asteroid fly-by is coming to earth soon (I think in March? I didn\'t really hear).

They said NASA classified it as a near miss at an 11,000 miles pass.

They were laughing saying 'Near-Miss' with heavy sarcasm which kinda irritated me. Having played KSP, I have a bit of a grasp at how close that actually is.

Sure, maybe not 'HOLY CRAP WE MIGHT DIE' close, but still, that\'s less than half of Earth\'s Circumference (~24,000 miles).

I call that pretty damn close.

Edit: Here\'s an article on it. 60km/11,000 miles

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16756450

[trbinsc]

Considering that the moon orbits at around 240,000 miles, that is actually an extremely close pass. Not close enough to hit anything, but still really close compared to the moon.

[mincespy]

Wha...

FUUU WE MIGHT DIE

[Ydoow]

Considering that the moon orbits at around 240,000 miles, that is actually an extremely close pass. Not close enough to hit anything, but still really close compared to the moon.

For some reason, that makes it even scarier than the Circumference comparison :-X

[trbinsc]

Remember what happened in the roleplaying forums? An asteroid was going to have a near miss but at the last minute it somehow changed trajectories and hit a major city. I wonder if the forums can predict the future?

[Ydoow]

Found the article

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16756450

'Earlier estimates had put the asteroid\'s closest distance at as little as 20,000km, but studies by observatories overnight into Friday showed it would pass at a more comfortable distance.'

Mother of god...can you imagine?

[mincespy]

Wait, so it already passed?

[RC1062]

*Looks at BBC link*

11m, holy ----!

Ah... Not distance... :-[

[Ydoow]

Oops! Yes you\'re right, it says Friday doesn\'t it?

I saw June and missed the '2011' part. So yeah, it\'s gone

[Ydoow]

*Looks at BBC link*

11m, holy ----!

Ah... Not distance... :-[

Lol yeah I had the same exact reaction

[mincespy]

Oh, it\'s gone.

*Phew*

[Grove]

Lmao, the point of this thread just isn\'t there...

[mincespy]

Lmao, the point of this thread just isn\'t there...

It\'s here to scare people.

[Grove]

It\'s here to scare people.

BOOO!!!

[Kryten]

That wasn\'t a near miss: this was a near miss;

The great 1972 fireball-actually entered the earths atmosphere, then passed out the other side.

[Ydoow]

If I understood what was happening in that 1972 passing, I would have been 1 mile underground for a week.

And is that Salt Lake City area?

[RichieD76]

This was only a week ago over the UK. Was viewed across a 230 mile (nearly the entire stretch on the UK mainland, north to south) so it was either very big or at a very low angle of attack to be seen for such a long stretch before burning up entirely

[Moach]

hopefully, there\'s people right now keeping track of those things.... and even more hopefully, they\'re very good at their jobs :

there\'s only so much our atmosphere can shred through before something bulky hits the ground... as for non-bulky stuff, it\'s actually pretty common to have meteorites actually impact the surface, but most aren\'t big enough to qualify as a Bruce Willis movie plot ;D

i\'m pretty certain my cousin has a meteorite at his place....

he said he heard a crash, kinda like a rock dropped from atop a building... and when he recovered it, he found it was a jagged ball of some heavy dark metal-like substance, much akin what later googling revealed common meteorites to resemble

and there are pictures on the net of cars with meteorite holes through their hoods, some saying things like 'guess what else them insurance companies WON\'T cover?' - some tough luck, heh?

:cheers: