Nasa warning over trio of massive asteroids skimming Earth this weekend

metro.co.uk ^ | 11/07/2018 | Jeff Parsons

[BenLurkin]

[a fool in paradise]

Trump’s fault?

[mewzilla]

Q: If the egg heads aren't sure how big these things are, how do they know how close they'll get? 🤔

[Kozak]

Mock all you want. Someday we get hit. We just don’t know when.
No point in panicking, but it’s not a joke either.

[Flick Lives]

The asteroid isn’t in danger of hitting Earth, but if it did ...

There is no zombie apocalypse, but if there was...!!!

[Carl Vehse]

"Skimming"?!?!

861,700 miles is over three times the distance the moon is from the Earth. Next the media will claim the moon is "grazing" the Earth's surface.

Typical media headline hype.

[hillarys cankles]

Mock all you want. Someday we get hit. We just don’t know when.
No point in panicking, but it’s not a joke either.

______________________________________________________

Your right.
One of these days the scientists will be right. We just gotta hope it’s not in our lifetime.

[IronJack]

Yes, it’s a joke. For sure, some day we’ll get hit. And soon, in astronomical terms. But “soon” may mean 25,000 years or more. The odds of us getting hit on any given day are infinitessimally small.

[C210N]

The monstrous (in girth) hemorroid-like asteroid that almost destroyed everything just about exactly 2 years ago.

[FreedomPoster]

Precisely. Ask the dinosaurs if you don’t believe it.

[rjsimmon]

its size could be anything from 12ft to 91ft meters wide.

What's a ft meter? Is it one of these:

[ßuddaßudd]

man-made climate change will lure them closer and closer each year ..

[Verginius Rufus]

What are "ft meters"?

The moon's distance from the earth varies from 225,000 to 252,000 miles, with a mean distance of 238,855 miles. I'm not sure how much that is in ft meters.

[a fool in paradise]

#ParisAccord

[ThunderSleeps]

You saw that too? LOL I guess editing and proof reading is a dying art. If Word doesn’t underline it in red, they let it go... SMH

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Q: If the egg heads aren't sure how big these things are, how do they know how close they'll get?

Regardless of size, they are able to see where it has been...a year ago then 6 months then a month, etc. Simple math given its speed, trajectory and the influence of Earth's (and other planets') gravity.

Determining size is much more difficult.

[SMGFan]

how should we prepare in response to the warning?

[PIF]

Ask the dinosaurs if you don’t believe it.

---

They’re dead. However, dinosaurs lived for millions of years afterward .. it was likely the gases escaping from the Indian Deccan Traps with the lower temperatures both from the Traps and from the Chicxulub strike which killed them over time.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Q: If the egg heads aren't sure how big these things are, how do they know how close they'll get?

To measure their orbit, which tells you how close they'll come, all you need to see is a point of light over a period of several nights. To measure their size you need to either see a visible disk or know how light or dark the object is. If it's light colored it could be reflecting up to about 40% of the light that hits it. If it's dark it could be reflecting less than 10% of the light that hits it and could be huge and still look small and dim.

[BenLurkin]