"Not very dangerous?" I think pretty much any rock that hits Earth could be dangerous, if it happens to hit a person or something important, so why that and not use the comparison headline that calls it "Car-size?" Much like comparing it to size of a hippo, elephant, stalk full of bananas or whatever, I always say "what car?" Do they mean a subcompact or SUV?
They then say it's roughly 15 feet wide and officially called 2024 XS2.
[It] will make its closest approach to Earth for the next 10 years tonight at 9:47 p.m. EST, or 0247 GMT on Saturday, Dec. 7.
For many of you, by the time you read this it will have been "last night."
This is considered a close approach because it's close by astronomical standards - pretty much half the distance to the moon, 122,000 miles. In terms of Earth orbits, that's about five times the distance of the Geostationary orbit so it seems highly unlikely it will hit anything.
It should be a nothing. Unless you're really unlucky.
An artist's illustration of asteroids zooming near Earth. Not this asteroid. (Image credit: ESA - P.Carril)
Eh, it's only a flesh wound...
ReplyDeleteWould be nice if we had some nuclear-powered spaceships in orbit so we could chase stuff like this down and snag it.
I remember the line from "Lucifer's Hammer" about the value of the minerals in our system when someone talks about going up to look...
Delete"Johnny, out there in space it's raining soup, and we don't even know about soup bowls."
Ah, to be able to smelt and refine in orbit.
DeleteIt's why I wish we didn't throw everything away, either away from Earth or down to burn up (hopefully.) All that already refined metal, just ready to be remade into something new and wonderful. I mean, why not use it?
And once you get all that garbage and salvage smelted up and remade, you can get working on other space garbage.
Just like sci-fi promised.
I don't mind relative size comparisons when everyday objects are used; most people cannot visualize something described in feet(meters) for size or by mass. But elephant is not a good comparison; have you seen the difference between an African bull and an Indian female elephant; again most people have no clue.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it may be the size of a car, but its mass is way higher and its v-squared is enormous.....again, most people have no clue.
So on balance just call it the size of a car and be done with it....
Watched a V-clip from Russia, came in few days ago last week, said to be near car size asteroid burning up across the horizon. Really cool. Wicked fast, must of been about as high velocity as it gets from the appearance of it.
ReplyDeleteBoyhood friend and I in the Boy Scouts, we loved to sit up all night waiting for meteor showers, one night we got lucky, something came screaming across the entire horizon going thru the whole scheme of colors from white to deep orange, lit up the ground when it was in white, it was just spectacular, pieces rapidly separating from it themselves going thru the burn spectrum. Tail streaming behind it was half the horizon, it happened near midnight, brilliant clear Sept evening. We could only surmise it was a satellite on a re-entry. Most excellent celestial event of my life, still vivid in my mind. Think we might been 10 years old at the time. You just can't describe it well enough, kind if thing you got to see it for yourself.
Interesting how lot of northern Russia meteor sightings, giving some contemplation, might be the case because lot more people live far in the north in Russia than other areas on earth. Just more eyes and tech to catch these events.
ReplyDeleteOh Lord, space is so large and I am so small said earth. The last time I was injured was forty million year ago.
ReplyDeleteGo ahead, say it. "Mostly safe." I do recall a SpaceWeather.com listing for an object with a miss distance of zero.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that everything lately was to happen on Dec. 7th, Pearl Harbour, the church opening in France, one of the first really foggy days, (10 feet visibility during the day. Where did my car go?), in the Central Valley of mexafornia.
ReplyDeleteHope Santa can find us on the 25th.