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To: aculeus

Observations:

This one is about 1000 times the mass of the one that formed the big crater in Arizona.

1/10th the Earth-Moon distance is VERY close.

The perturbing effect of a near Earth pass-by on the asteroid's orbit will have an unpredictable effect on the path of its future orbits, and when something unuusually close is given a randomizing change, the odds are vastly in favor of a change moving it farther away.


68 posted on 04/18/2005 8:13:10 AM PDT by Atlas Sneezed (Your FRiendly FReeper Patent Attorney)
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To: Beelzebubba

The thing that bothers me is the accuracy of their present measurements. If they are predicting that it will miss Earth by ~25,000 miles 24 years from now, and assuming an asteroid velocity of 22,000 mph, then their measurements must have an error less than 4.756e-6. Those are pretty accurate measurements. If the error is that big or larger, they have no basis to predict a miss this far out from the actual flyby.


126 posted on 04/18/2005 10:18:29 AM PDT by lafroste (gravity is not a force. See my profile to read my novel absolutely free (I know, beyond shameless))
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