Wonder what the uncertainty is on size....1/4 mile diameter, +/- 1/4 mile? Be nice to know possible projected impact regions soon.....Terhan??
So....what is Bush doin' 'bout this and when did he find out about it, hmmmm!?
Most folks are currently giving the diameter to be a quarter-mile +/- a factor of 3 i.e. it could be 3/4 of a mile in diameter (a country killer there). The photometric calibrations have been completely hosed, leading to data that is pretty uncertain for the size calculation. Once they sort this out with a ton of high-quality measurements, I get the impression that the feeling is that this rock could actually be a bit larger than currently estimated. We'll know soon enough, but the current margin of error on the size is huge and the people examining the calibration of the current data seem to think that they may have underestimated the size. A lot of the data currently being collected is pretty amateur because the asteroid is so deep in the southern hemisphere.
A >1km diameter asteroid would be substantially more catastrophic than the current size estimate suggests.