Posted on 09/01/2016 7:47:03 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Brazilian sky watchers had only just discovered the asteroid, called 2016 QA2, the day before it zoomed by within 50,000 miles (80,000 km) of Earth.
That's less than a quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon.
Astronomers at the Sonear observatory in Brazil discovered the rock on Saturday 27th August, and estimate its size to be between 80 and 180 feet wide (25 and 55 metres).
The upper end of the range would make it far larger than the object which exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013, smashing windows and injuring more than 1,000 people.
he team at Sonear believes the asteroid has been travelling in an elliptical orbit around the sun, completing a lap of the star approximately once every 350 days.
But its orbit is more elliptical than Earth’s, sending it slightly further out from the sun – around 1.2 times the distance from the Earth to the sun.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
it’s just a matter of time...
Unfortunately we waste immeasurable resources in this country on paying people to breed, feed and vote Democrat.
If we were able to devote the resources we SHOULD toward reaching the heavens, this would be a non-issue.
Because we have made a SUICIDE PACT that says we need as many non-producers as possible stuffed into our country, yes, it is only a matter of time.
Hardly surprising. Most of the telescope coverage is concentrated in the northern hemisphere, so there are big gaps in coverage anyway, and relatively few of them are actively searching for asteroids.
On top of that, this one is tiny as far as asteroids go, and even if it had entered the atmosphere, it would most likely have landed in an ocean if it even survived the trip down. Had it hit land, or even a population center, it would have made a mess, but would not have posed an existential threat. Until recently, things like this have come down in the ocean without us even noticing.
Asteroids have low albedo levels, and don’t produce tails like comets do, so they’re incredibly hard to spot unless they’re very close. With this particular one, you’re trying to pick out something that would barely cover half a football field at most, that’s black against a black background, at interplanetary distances.
The most that a little object like this can do is highlight the need for better coverage and a more concerted search effort, because even though the big ones only rarely swing past, and even more rarely stop for a visit, the consequences of one impacting are severe at a minimum.
Where was Bill Nye to save the planet?
IMO all under the auspices of "Good Christian Charity". and no, I don't want to debate religion.
Not to “debate” but to clarify:
Good Christian charity is voluntary, which taxing us to support a dole is not.
Hucksters have taken advantage of widespread Christian desire to “have a Christian country” to push “liberal” schemes. This is theologically impossible to do.
My hope hangs on one of those hitting smack dab on DC during the State of the Union address.
Now scram.
If it hit, it would only affect women and minorities, so I don’t worry too much about it. It’s a white privilege thing.
Snowflake.
Flake.
Snowflake.
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