Asteroid 2004 FH

Spaceweather.com ^ | 3/18/2004 | NASA

[Fledermaus]

City?

Try country or continent!

[Fledermaus]

Okay...maybe not a continent at that size.

And probably not an entire country, but a region after the effects. Say it hit Atlanta. Could effect cities as far away as Boston enough to kill.

[Euro-American Scum]

Newly-discovered asteroid 2004 FH is going to fly-by our planet TODAY, March 18th , 2200 GMT) 5:08 pm, est. only 43,000 km , which is only 26,500 miles from Earth.

Clinton blames the NRA.

[Capt.April]

:) Exactly what I was thinking..

Barringer crater in Arizona was from an asteroid about the size of a boxcar. This is twice the size! 2000mph winds, vaporize an area about 2-5 miles wide but it's all the crap that would get thrown into the atmosphere that would be the big problem.

[RonHolzwarth]

re: "At that rate I would expect one to hit us every 115 years or so."

They do.

[Nick Danger]

NASA found Asteroid 2004 FH on Monday night, and now they report it at @ 1:15 am,est Thursday

Which tells us they weren't sure until sometime today that it would miss.

This incident shows us what the state of the science really is on "asteroid detection." If a thing like this can remain undetected until it's 48 hours away, we're a long way from being able to do anything about it. If our number comes up, we're hosed.

[Southack]

Hmmm...you'd think that a 100 foot diameter asteroid would be down to around 60 feet cubed by the time it impacted.

If made entirely of nickel (541 pounds per cubic foot) and you had 60 feet * 60 feet * 60 feet, that would be what, 117 million pounds or so traveling at roughly 15,000 miles per hour?

That's some energy!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Damn close!

[Geritol]

"And probably not an entire country"

Belgium could be pretty much gone...

[Geritol]

"26,500 miles is getting close to the area of the geo-synchronous satellites. I wonder if there might be a rather spectacular collision with one of them."

That would be cool, in a very expensive way.

Actually the geosynchronous satellites, even though they are spread out over a ring over 50,000 miles in diameter, are in a fairly thin band and present a much smaller aggregate cross section than the earth itself. I would expect the planet to be hit more often than any of them.

[Fledermaus]

It's gotta hurt!

[Southack]

"This incident shows us what the state of the science really is on "asteroid detection." If a thing like this can remain undetected until it's 48 hours away, we're a long way from being able to do anything about it. If our number comes up, we're hosed."

At 15,000 miles per hour with no swerves or radar-fooling chaff, our interceptors in Alaska and California could hit it.

But if only armed conventionally would do nothing to it whatsoever.

Is 48 hours enough time to arm such an ABM interceptor (or ten) with an atomic warhead(s)? And if so, would that reduce the damage of the impact enough to merit interception?

[Capt.April]

There's no way they could predict an orbit within a 48 hour period. Without digging out Newton (and knowing what it's made of), the best the observers could come up with is a trajectory this side or that side of the moon. Beyond that it's a 50/50 chance of hitting somewhere south of the equator at 5pm EST today.

[Nick Danger]

atomic warhead(s)? And if so, would that reduce the damage of the impact enough to merit interception?

During the IBM anti-trust trial of dinosaur times, there was much talk of breaking the company up. A friend of mine said, "Oh, great... now there will be two of 'em." I think that's what we would have here.

[DentsRun]

The Barringer crater in Arizona has quite a record of an even closer approach...

It seems to me I recall that the meteor that caused that crater was 90 feet in diameter. This one was slightly larger. Though I don't know why they are calling it an asteroid. Asteroids start at several kilometers in diameter, do they not?

[The KG9 Kid]

Both objects might as well be the size of a grain of sand considering the distances involved.

[Lokibob]

and sex and dancing. Close counts in a lot of things.

[SevenDaysInMay]

All the better reason to fill one's pantry now. War and earth strikes! Film at ...

Qom, Iran would make a good bulls eye.

[DentsRun]

Well, I just checked. Looks like Meteor Crater was caused by a nickel-iron meteor 150 feet in diameter traveling 40,000 mph. That would make it a lot bigger and faster than the one that will be missing us tomorrow.

[Orlando]

If it hit ? Florida is gone ! We need to pray and ask God for protection. Orlando Florida is my home.

I got a bad feeling about this, and the timing of the news
vet out