Posted on 07/14/2008 5:17:36 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A good-sized asteroid sailing past our planet right now turns out to be two giant rocks doing a celestial jig.
The setup, catalogued as 2008 BT18, was thought to be nearly a half-mile wide after its discovery by MIT's LINEAR search program in January. Nothing else was known about it.
Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That's nearly six times as far from us as the moon...
Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6 and 7 "clearly show two objects," said Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The objects are estimated to be 1,970 feet (600 meters) and 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter. The larger one rotates upon its axis in 3 hours or less...
Asteroid 2008 BT18 remains classified by NASA as "potentially hazardous" because its future orbits have not been fully determined.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Hey - in 32 seconds, a couple of asteroids could destroy the Earth!
“Pitcher” and “Catcher”?
Recent thread pushing the proposition that such discussion of asteroids is just a front for totalitarianism by way of Kyoto, the New York Times, Marx, and FDR. Shame on you ;)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2041341/posts
Hey, everything is just a front for totalitarianism by way of Kyoto, the New York Times, Marx, and FDR. ;’)
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