AP: NASA: 100-foot asteroid to make record, but harmless, pass by Earth

[Atlant]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/03/18/national0524EST0481.DTL&type=science

NASA: 100-foot asteroid to make
record, but harmless, pass by Earth

ANDREW BRIDGES, AP Science Writer

As far as flying space rocks go, it's as close an encounter as
mankind has ever had.

A 100-foot diameter asteroid will pass within 26,500 miles of Earth
on Thursday evening, the closest-ever brush on record by a space
rock, NASA astronomers said.

The asteroid's close flyby, first spied late Monday, poses no risk,
NASA astronomers stressed.

"It's a guaranteed miss," astronomer Paul Chodas, of the near-Earth
object office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Wednesday.

The asteroid, 2004 FH, was expected to make its closest approach at
5:08 p.m. EST, streaking over the southern Atlantic Ocean. It should
be visible through binoculars to stargazers across the southern
hemisphere, as well as throughout Asia and Europe, said astronomer
Steve Chesley, also of JPL.

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[Minstrel Boy]

1. 26,500 miles - holy moley!

That's some close shave.

But bullshit it's the "closest encounter...mankind has ever had." It's just the closest we've seen coming.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Indeed: NASA's own estimate for the Tunguska meteorite

is at least as large as this.

[Atlant]

9. Ahh, but Tunguska didn't "Pass" the Earth!

You'll have to return to "spin training" for further adventures
in headline writing. :)

Atlant

[NewYorkerfromMass]

24. Indeed. Only a couple of earth diameters

:scared:

[stevedeshazer]

2. Bushco, take note

Your God is firing a warning shot across your bow.

[DemNoir]

4. Thats really to bad

I think it's time to flatten this mess and start all over.

[trotsky]

5. Oh no, not that.

Say we get hit with the big one. Who, right now, has steel-encased mammoth bunkers buried inside huge mountains in which he (and his entire cabinet of right-wing wackos) could hide & ride out the storm?

Imagine - humanity having to repopulate with only right-wing DNA.

*shudder*

[On the Road]

6. The Earth is Only 8,000 Miles in Diameter

The asteroid is passing within three times the diameter of the earth. Picture that for a minute -- that's an unbelievably close miss in astronomical terms!

[Heyo]

7. yeah it is...

about 1/9th the distance to the moon or so...

Heyo

[sandlapper]

8. Look at the third paragraph ...

of the NASA press release.
"On average, objects about the size of 2004 FH pass within this distance roughly once every two years, but most of these small objects pass by undetected. This particular close approach is unusual only in the sense that scientists know about it. The fact that an object as small as asteroid 2004 FH has been discovered now is mostly a matter of perseverance by the LINEAR team, who are funded by NASA to search for larger kilometer-sized NEAs, but also routinely detect much smaller objects."

The hype and fear-mongering are in the first paragraph then contradicted by the paragraph quoted above. This is, after all, budget season and NASA is on the hunt for money!

[On the Road]

12. That's an Even Better Way of Looking at It

The earth, the asteroid, then 9 times farther away . . . the moon.

[Nihil]

34. And in the void beyond the Oort cloud, a voice could be heard:

"Bugger it, missed!"

[Atlant]

11. And on it's side, it now says "Surrender Chavez!"

(Seeing how it's going to be visible from the South 'Murican area,
it seems like a perfect adverising vehicle.)

Atlant

[daleo]

10. All this asteroid hype does seem a bit overblown

The human race has been around in one form or another for 100K to 1 M years (7K if you prefer) and it hasn't been wiped out yet. The idea that we need vast armadas of satellites to be on the lookout for space rocks seems rather alarmist. Plus, it could be a cover for development and deployment of fancy space weaponry, which is more likely to be used against innocent humans than asteroids. I would rather take my chances with the rocks.

[phantom power]

13. it's not chance

It's guaranteed to happen. And it only needs to happen once. I think it would be damned sad if we all got waxed by an asteroid or comet, when we could have defended against it.

[factroid]

21. the simple solution

In the event of an asteroid headed towards earth, I vote we strap G.W., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Bolton, Feith and assorted other 'chickenhawks' to 'star wars' missiles, armed with nuclear war-heads (in order of pre-eminence of world endangering policy input). This is necessary for accurate targeting, since these missiles can't hit the broad side of a football size barn door on their own (all tests have been rigged on clear, sunny days)... then we solve two problems at once! :think:

[newyawker99]

26. Hi factroid!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[factroid]

30. Hello

Thought I might converse with some like-minded for a while, after battling it out on another more partisan boards... even though I see much room for enlightenment so far - since Kucinich does not seem to be uppermost in some progressives' minds.

Greetings, all! :hi:

[Darkseid69]

17. How long were the dinosaurs on the earth..

before they were wiped?

[daleo]

18. I think it was 100 million years or more

But I don't have my geology textbook handy. My understanding is that most paleontologists believe the 'wiped out overnight by a giant asteroid' theory is simplistic.

Some other problems with 'zap the asteroid':
- orbital mechanics are not that easy to predict. You might wind up nudging one into the earth that would have missed, instead of the other way around.
- you might break it up, and have dozens of large particles hit the earth instead of one. That might make things worse.

[htuttle]

19. I disagree...

I think deflecting asteroid hits was the whole point of evolving thumbs.

Can't think of what else they are good for, ecologically speaking.

[Nihil]

28. It's obvious ...

... thumbs were evolved to hit the space bar on a keyboard ... why else?
:-)

[factroid]

31. human race

Actually, if you research some more esoteric traditions, the human race might be said to have existed for some 15-20 million years. Of course extant evidence is scarce concerning this; though there are some records of anomalous finds that were quickly relegated to dusty shelves somewhere or ignored.

And, there is the tradition of the ancient races ('root' races) which experienced all kinds of catastrophies - self induced as well as natural causes (the Vedanta records what appears to have been a nuclear war with flying ships - which has had some validation with finds of high-temperature surface rocks that had 'melted' surfaces).

Sound pretty radical, but there may be more to our history than we 'remember' currently... and you can bet the main-stream archeologists are not too open minded about it. See Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, and others.

[RedCloud]

14. We are leaving the center of the Milky Way...

So we should be relatively asteroid free for about 8,000,000 years as our solar system dips away from things on its merry ride. I would be worried about global warming changing the salinity of the North Atlantic which would shut down the ocean's "conveyor belt" and freeze the poles while scorching near the Equator. Or if that doesn't get you, then how about Yellowstone turning into a super volcano for the third time (this one would be the largest known). The last time any supervolcano went off about 70,000 years ago, the Earth was reduced (from then to now) to 24 fertile women in Africa. Yellowstone is much larger, way overdue, has been puffing its land upward since measurements began and when the land falls into the huge chamber, it's curtains. If you don't think it can kill many, check out the Great Plains, the stuff is still up to a dozen feet thick. try no sunlight for years and see if food can hold up to that.

And of course Bush does nothing to protect us from the #1 terrorist threat to humanity: Yellowstone's supervolcano.

[phantom power]

20. do what you can

The point I'd make is: do what you can. There are things we can do to protect against asteroids. Ironically, our current technology doesn't allow us to do much to protect us from our own geology.

Our path through the galaxy shouldn't have any effect on asteroids. They come along for the ride wherever we go, being part of our solar system.

Unless, maybe there would be fewer perturbations due to "near" passes with other stars. Any orbital-mechanics out there who would know that?

[daleo]

23. There is a theory that gravitational perturbations kick comets

and asteroids out of the far reaches of the solar system (Oort cloud I think) at certain points during the sun's motion through the galactic plane. As the sun revolves around the center of the galaxy, it also moves above and below the galactic plane. The theory is that every X million years (and I can't remember the value of X offhand, although it is in the 10's of millions) this motion, and the resulting perturbations in the gravitational field that the solar system is traveling through, causes objects in the outer solar system to move closer to the sun (fall, so to speak) and intersect the earth's orbit, sometimes colliding with the earth, resulting in periods of mass extinctions of lifeforms on the earth. Most of these objects would be far too big for even our best technology to affect.

[Jacobin]

15. What utter tripe

The earth has been hit by asteroids for billions of years. There's a fricking hole in the desert in Arizona from a big one.

This nonsense about the "closest ever" is so delusional, you would have to assume that these are some of Smirky's faith based scientist putting out this garbage

[Pikku]

25. Considering that smirky's universe is only 6000 yrs old...

This may BE the only one. All the other craters were made by God, as part of his subcontracting deal with Halliburton.

[On the Road]

27. It's The Closest-Ever Brush ON RECORD"

not in the earth's history.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

16. Another reason to cancel Hubble

and any other purely scientific missions. All NASA and military space assets should be diverted to the preservation of life on earth against "anti-terra". The treaty which prohibits nuclear weapons on orbit should be thrown out, and the U.S. should be allowed to put as many weapons -- ah, planetary defense devices -- on orbit as possible. Of course, the fact that if you turn a missile 180° it transforms from a defensive to an offensive weapon is no concern -- you can trust us never to do such a thing.

Let me see, is there anything I've left out? Oh, yeah, to avoid wasteful duplication of effort NASA and the military program should be merged. We could call it something snazzy, like Space Command!

Of course, Halliburton would be prime contractor.

[factroid]

32. sarcasm, I presume?

... of course, with "Star Wars" missile accuracy, we can hit those asteroids with NO PROBLEM! Hence the actual REAL solution I mentioned above (strap a "Space Commander" on each warhead so it will actually work with manual guidance). Come to think of it they are generally inept at anything that requires actual skill and thought, so that may not be any better.

Dang. Back to the drawing board! :wtf:

[Dogmudgeon]

22. The "Threat to Mankind"

That kind of asteroid is pretty rare.

The last real big 'roid that hit was called the Eltanin impactor, and it crashed off the coast of Peru about 2.3 million years ago. It was about 2 km across, and did some mighty damage, but nothing as severe as the Chicxulub impactor 65 MYA. That one was 10-15 km across, or 100 to 350 times as massive (you use the cube of the fraction).

An asteroid 100 feet -- 30 meters -- across would leave the Earth and most of Humanity untouched. Except that it would probably either impact or (most likely) explode somewhere in the lower atmosphere with the force of a 10-50 megaton bomb. If it explodes over some uninhabited stretch of Montana, it would just be a cool news story. But if it explodes over an urban area, that's maybe a million dead people. And over the ocean, "moderate" tsunamis around the oceanic basin.

The Apocalypse isn't the main risk from asteroid and comet impacts. It's the "little" ones. Several in Human history have been identified, including one over the Middle East and Europe, circa 2350 BCE, and one in China in the 1400s. Yes, people died, legends were born, and debris was found. One such meteoric rock is the Kabaa, the focus of the yearly Hajj to Mecca.

So, yeah, it's a big deal.

--bkl

[Nihil]

29. And if it was one of the ones that wasn't noticed in time ...

> Except that it would probably either impact or (most likely) explode
> somewhere in the lower atmosphere with the force of a 10-50 megaton bomb.

Even over some uninhabited stretch of Montana, it would be a serious
risk with President Prick in control of your strategic weapons ...

"It's thaym Ayrabs agin Dick! Nuke 'em till they glow! All of 'em!"

[Whoa_Nelly]

33. There are currently 583 known PHAs.

PHA= Potentially Hazardous Asteroids

NASA currently has a list of 583 known asteroids that have the potential of earth impact. There have been several reports in the last few years of near-miss asteroids.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/pha.html