Asteroid 2004 FH

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

[Orlando]

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.

[Walkingfeather]

What will it matter if you worry about it or not... what can you do about it?

[Walkingfeather]

outland?

[OrioleFan]

During the IBM anti-trust trial of dinosaur times

Are you referring to the time when Control Data won the big settlement from IBM over their "paper tiger" mainframe?

[hchutch]

Time to dust off Project ICARUS?

IIRC, it was done by some folks from MIT...

[Constantine XIII]

No worries. According to Sky and Telescope, it's only 20 meters across, so it isn't exactly a dinosaur killer. :)

[Constantine XIII]

That does make it killable by an ICBM, though. A big one could be used to vaporize the whole thing if it was going to hit someplace sensitive.

[JimRed]

"Close only counts with hand grenades and horse shoes."

...and nukes.

[myprecious]

OK, if it is not going to destroy us, can we at least see it? When is it expected to pass and will it be visible from the US. (More specifically, my back porch?) Is there a link to more info?

[far sider]

Hmm. You don't suppose it's made out of Kyptonite, do you?

[bored at work]

what happens i it hits a geostationary satelite. will the trajectory change? will we all die? how 'bout just "J" effin Kerry.

[mhking]

"I got a rock."

Just damn.

If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

An excellent analysis. When I was watching the end of one of those asteroid movies a few years ago, I almost stood up to cry "BullS$#%" in the theater. My back of the envelope calculations indicated that smashing a large asteroid would just mean the energy is released in the atmosphere, rather than a surface impact where some is absorbed by the earth itself. I figured the facing side of the earth would lose all of its atmosphere within a very short time.

[MississippiMan]

John Kerry being elected would be, in my opinion, every bit as devastating as an asteroid wiping out CONUS.

You sure you don't want to reconsider that? Kerry's probably no worse than Clinton. I agree that it was awful, but I'd hardly equate the Clinton presidency with the death of a couple hundred million folks.

MM

[bored at work]

This just in, Kerry met with the asteroid and all near Earth objects will be voting for him in the upcoming election.

[mvpel]

Clinton almost inflicted socialized medicine on the US, which would have not only imperiled the lives of Americans, but all the other socialized medicine slaves in other countries who come to the US for treatment.

[Constantine XIII]

I think the article said that it is so close that it will vary depending on your position. They referenced the Minor Planet Center website if you need help finding it.

[jpsb]

The bend inducted by the earths gravity might make things interesting in a couple of years.

[Montfort]

If it hit Mecca, the Moslems would take it as a sign that the Creator is angry at them for not killing more Jews and Christians (and for losing Spain).

[Geritol]

"I'll see your 0.19 Megaton and raise you 8 Megatons. Typical asteroid velocities are ~44 km/sec, which gives 8.19 MT"

The average speed may well be 5 or 10 times faster, but according to southack's calculations the actual speed of this object is ~15,000 miles per hour which I have rounded to 6.7 kilometers per second. Actual impact velocity would also include accelleration down our gravity well. Any idea how much affect that would have? I totally ignored that. I assume it would accellerate less than a similar object "dropped" from a stationary point some tens of thousand of miles out due to increased atmospheric friction, but I have no idea how to calculate it.

"If it is mostly nickel iron like earth .. try 5.5 gr/cm3 .... comes closer to .714 MT of KE"

In that case I am definitely off by a factor of 2 or 3 or even 4. Big difference between getting hit with a 30 meter rock of mostly metal and a dirty snowball.

[af_vet_rr]

Way to close. This thing is about 35 meters in diameter and would wreak havoc on any major city it happened to hit.

They discovered it monday night, not much time to evacuate a whole major city. I expect that the politicians would want to sit on it for a day or two, to figure out what they are going to do, but if it was targeted towards a major city, I'm sure it would leak out to the media and civilians.