Posted on 08/23/2004 7:21:30 AM PDT by blam
Asteroid shaves past Earth's atmosphere
13:59 23 August 04
NewScientist.com news service
The closest observed asteroid yet to skim past the Earth without hitting the atmosphere, was reported by astronomers on Sunday.
The previously unknown object, spanning five to 10 metres across, has been named 2004 FU162. It streaked across the sky just 6500 kilometres - roughly the radius of the Earth - above the ground on 31 March, although details have only now emerged.
The MIT Lincoln Laboratory's asteroid-hunting LINEAR telescope in Socorro, New Mexico,US, observed the new object four times over a 44-minute period, several hours before its closest approach in March.
Lincoln astronomers, who have discovered over 40,000 asteroids and comets since 1980, quickly recognised the object came exceptionally close, and posted their findings for confirmation on a web page run by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
However, by the time it was posted the object had moved into the daytime sky, so follow-up observations were impossible and the listing was quickly removed. A search for prior observations yielded no results.
Dissipated harmlessly
Despite having only four positions for the object, Steven Chesley of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was able to calculate its orbit because it was moving rapidly across the sky.
He also calculated that the encounter with the Earth shifted the asteroid's orbit closer towards the Sun. Previously orbiting the Sun once a year in an orbit that ranged as far inside the Earth's orbit as outside, 2004 FU162 now has a nine-month orbit centred closer to Venus than the Earth. The Minor Planet Center published Chesley’s results on Sunday in its electronic circular.
"This was an extraordinarily close encounter and so the orbital change was quite extraordinary. 2004 FU162 was deflected by about 20 degrees because of the Earth's gravity. I've never seen anything like that before," Chesley told New Scientist.
The previous record for the closest asteroid approach to Earth was set on 18 March by an object called 2004 FH which missed the Earth by about 40,000 kilometres.
That was a much larger object, around 30 metres in diameter - big enough to produce a one-megaton explosion in the atmosphere. Although it was likely to have exploded so high that the energy would have dissipated harmlessly. The smaller 2004 FU162 would have burned up as a fireball ending with a smaller explosion, had it ventured into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Jeff Hecht
This is Bush's fault!!!
Finding these things at the last moment is not supposed to be the point! Oh well. I guess when they tell us about the BIG one hitting before we can do anything about it, I will have time to take a shower!
The object is described as an asteroid. It was only 5 to 10 meters across.
For my education....
Are all meteors asteroids?
At what size does an object achieve the status of asteroid?
The timing of this event is 'questionable'.
Bush and his evil cronies at the Carlyle Group have been manipulating asteroid paths (using subspace magnetic harmonics secretly developed by Halliburton and hidden in the Hubble 'telescope') since 1983. They know that an asteroid strike in a blue state at this point in the election run-up would not only kill hundreds of thousands of registered democratic voters and automatically win him the election, it will also give Dick Cheney an excuse to take over the U.N. from an undisclosed location in his shadow government laboratory deep underground. The only reason this asteroid didn't kill half of California is because of Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin and Barbra Streisand's covert mission to divert its path by the sheer enormous interstellar anti-gravity of their own behemothic egos.
I agree. We need to get back to discussing the issues.
Quite frankly, knowing in advance would enable us to do anything about it right now. Remedies at this point are all conceptual.
A meteor is just an asteroid that has entered the earths atmosphere, a meteorite is a meteor that has landed.
You bet Uranus!
would = wouldn't.
I was a meteor before I was an asteroid.
At what size does an object achieve the status of asteroid?
Why is this news? I guess because we fund experts to warn us of them now? Maybe if we stopped funding the experts, life could resume with a little less fear of events which have been taking place on this earth since it's messy hot formation?
Why is this news? I guess because we fund experts to warn us of them now? Maybe if we stopped funding the experts, life could resume with a little less fear of events which have been taking place on this earth since it's messy hot formation?
The news here is not that an object came close, but that observational capabilities are getting so good that little things that have always flown nearby (and sometimes entered the atmosphere and impacted) are now being detected.
The day will come that we will get advance warning of spectacular fireball meteors, and scientists will study their entry, and will go to the site to try ti "catch" the remaining meterorite, if any. Just like eclipses, people will travel to see such events.
LOL!
Well written!
Alas, without the "/sar" and given the size of the population of lurking DU'ers and other DIMRATS,
some idiots are likely to actually believe you!
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