Posted on 11/08/2018 5:00:33 AM PST by BenLurkin
The first of which, Asteroid 2018 VS1, will skim our planet by 861,700 miles at around 2.03pm on Saturday.
Experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California believe that its size could be anything from 12ft to 91ft meters wide. The asteroid isn’t in danger of hitting Earth, but if it did the consequences could be a wee bit scary. The second asteroid is comparable in size and speed to Asteroid VS1 but it will pass at a much safer distance of 3.12 million miles away.
However, the third will come much closer. Asteroid VX1 will pass Earth at around 6.21pm on Saturday and will miss us by just 237,037 miles. Which is closer to us than the moon. ‘As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects can occasionally approach close to Earth,’ warned the American space agency. ‘Note that a ‘close’ passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.’
If that wasn’t enough, the spooky skull-shaped asteroid that passed by on Halloween is coming back round for another pass on Sunday. It’s officially called 2015 TB145 and last zoomed by on October 31, 2015, coming within 302,000 miles of our planet, which is about 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The ominous object is literally the ghost of a comet which was killed by the Sun It is thought to be a ‘dead comet’ which has been radically altered by orbiting our star for millions of years and is up to 2,300ft wide.
(Excerpt) Read more at metro.co.uk ...
Damn that reporter. Obviously ft-meter is a unit of area, not distance!
An earth crossing asteroid with a period of 9 days would be in orbit -- around the earth, possibly in an earth - moon orbit (not sure about the physics of that one!)
I do not know how big an Earth orbiting rock or chunk of ice has to be to be called a "moon".
If it was in orbit around the sun, it would be dipping
pretty close to the surface I would imagine.
We’re doooomed!
Agreed.
I always wonder about that “no chance of hitting the Earth”. There is SOME chance that an object several days out or more could be redirected slightly by some other object too small or dark to see. It’s very unlikely, but it also doesn’t take much of a bump or push when an object is along way away... That’s why diverting a threatening object is not quite as often imagined — by acting early, we DON”T have to try to blow it up when it is really close...
That “spooky” one is big enough to make quite a dent, somewhere.
Is that Uranus?
THAT is, at best, hotly debated, with most saying they actually died off EARLIER or were killed by the event, but not surviving after.
Do you have source I can read?
I'm always interested in the Chicxulub Event and aftermath, and would love more to ponder!
I've actually met and spoke with Walt Alverez. Him and his Dad are/were brilliant.
Not mine. But, it does belong to a sizable number of 'Rats.
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