... its proximity reminds us just how many objects there are in space that could strike our planet with devastating consequences ...I'll say. That giant arrow-like object looks particularly menacing.
I gotta study "hurtling", see if I can make some money at it.
At 0737 GMT on 7 January it will pass just 370,000 miles away from the Earth - close in cosmic terms.
Oh, nevermind.
Assuming this is correct, and you're going to live another 100 years, the odds are one only in 50 that such a meteor will strike any point on the earth during your lifetime.
And any such strike would most likely hit water.
Tunguska, Siberia (1908) | 50 m |
Meteor Crater, Arizona (20,000 years ago) | 100 m |
2001 YB5 (now) | 300 m |
Chicxulub, Gulf of Mexico (65,000,000 years ago) | 10,000 m |
Good news: Doomsday has been postponed
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 06/01/2002)
THE end is not as nigh as we thought. Scientists have found a mistake in the standard account of the future fate of the solar system and now believe that the Earth will not be destroyed when the Sun runs out of fuel.
For decades, astronomy textbooks have insisted that the Earth will be engulfed in an inferno billions of years from now as the Sun burns up its nuclear fuel and swells to become a gigantic red star.
Surrounded by the searing gas of the Sun's outer atmosphere, the Earth was expected to be dragged down to its doom deep within the Sun.
Now a team of astrophysicists at Sussex University has uncovered a significant flaw in the standard view of how the Sun will evolve, with dramatic consequences for the fate of our planet.
On 7 Jan 2002 there were 361 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
If they would get off their country estates and put some hardware in space, --prepositioning--, then there would be something that could be done. Cataloging the nasties is just another academic exercise.
You have doubts?