Posted on 02/02/2017 8:30:40 AM PST by BenLurkin
2017 BS32 is expected to hurtle past at around 8.30pm Thursday.
The space rock – estimated to be around 82ft in size ...
It was only spotted on Monday by astronomers and is the fourth Near-Earth Asteroid to pass this year...
But fear not, these close encounters are more common than you might think and researchers at Nasa are keeping tabs on any strays at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
(Excerpt) Read more at thesun.co.uk ...
Probable a chunk of Planet X that’s just in a bit of a hurry.
This one is going to “hurtle past”
Every blizzard starts with a few snowflakes...just sayin'
This one is going to “hurtle past”
“Whizzing” past
The asteroid comes in on little cat feet.
Vern Sandburg (Carl's younger and slightly more demented brother)
That could escalate quickly...
I have no problem with doing some sort of reasonable funding for a program to identify and also divert these away if we find one that is going to hit us. Some of these things can take out a whole country.
Not a problem...
From the article: “Asteroid 2017 BS32 will fly past at around 161,280 km from our planet, according to stargazers.”
This one: Close approach distance (× lunar distance): 0.42
Let's worry about an asteroid that is the size of NY!!
Just a prelude, a warm up to the spring rock showers ... we’ll get through, if we are lucky again - as we pass through the torus of a many mile wide destroyed comet - the remains of which brought us the Younger Dryas and also 1000 years earlier ended the Ice Age.
We’re getting these big rocks fly past every few weeks. Odds are one will go boom! soon.
How long would they have to bitch and moan and tell us they told us so if they found a planet killer?
An unforeseen rock that size could easily be interpreted as a nuke first-strike, that’s why, and google ‘US crater lakes’ to get an idea of the damage they do.
"Ceterum censeo Islam esse delendam."
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
The Chelyabinsk meteor was about 60 feet, and (fortunately) it was still high in the atmosphere when it exploded.
Here’s a article about 150 feet of asteroid:
What If Friday’s Flyby Asteroid Hit Earth?
By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | February 12, 2013 07:33am ET
“On Friday (Feb. 15), an asteroid half the length of a football field will buzz close by Earth. It won’t hit the planet, but if it did, the collision would create an impact large enough to level 80 million trees — or the entire city of Washington, D.C., and its suburbs.”
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Frequency_and_risk
“Asteroids with a diameter of 7 meters enter the atmosphere about every 5 years with as much kinetic energy as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (approximately 16 kilotons of TNT), but the air burst is reduced to just 5 kilotons.[7] These ordinarily explode in the upper atmosphere and most or all of the solids are vaporized.[9] However, asteroids with a diameter of 20 m (66 ft), and which strike Earth approximately twice every century, produce more powerful airbursts. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor was estimated to be about 20 m in diameter with an airburst of around 500 kilotons, an explosion 30 times the one over Hiroshima. Much larger objects may impact the solid earth and create a crater.”
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