Posted on 03/31/2017 9:59:45 AM PDT by brucedickinson
An asteroid as big as a bus came closer to Earth than the moon last night.
The object, dubbed 2017 FJ101, zoomed passed within 202,000 miles (325,087 km) of our planet.
But the near-Earth asteroid posed no threat to our planet or the moon, scientists said. The asteroid, which is 26ft (eight metres) wide, was first spotted by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope located on the summit of the Haleakalā volcano on Maui, Hawaii on March 25.
On average, the moon orbits around 238,855 miles (384,400km) away from our planet.
But the bus-sized object came around 36,8555 miles closer to the Earth than the moon last night.
For years scientists ha
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
This is educational because, contrary to television/movies, there is no organization spending millions of shekels scanning space to see if a giant rock is going to slam into us and kill us all. But then again, even if someone knew, I doubt they would tell us anyway.
Maybe it will find another planet to crash into...
Oh Look! The backside of Uranus.
Meanwhile, terral03 and bpearthwatch insist it will kill us, cause earthquakes, etc...
“Objects in telescopes are closer than they appear.”
Yes, and we've been told that it smells like farts.
“Bruce Willis, White Courtesy Phone.”
Actually most of the space agencies have sections looking. But they run into 3 major problems: space is big, asteroids don’t have running lights, looking for rocks that might hit earth isn’t sexy and doesn’t draw much funding.
It’s too bad it didn’t hit the moon.
It would have been a prime site to explore with
a lunar rover.
“Damage? Total, sir. It’s what we call a global killer. The end of mankind. Doesn’t matter where it hits. Nothing would survive, not even bacteria.”
Was it the size of a city bus or a charter?
Asteroid the size of a bus? Ehh. The International Space Station is a lot closer, and bigger. There is a lot of space between the Moon and the Earth. Now if that asteroid came within 300 miles of Earth, maybe we can be concerned. And if it came closer, it might skim the atmosphere and harmlessly explode and burn up. If it was a direct hit, most of it would burn up and probably hit in an ocean, since water covers most of the Earth. We’ll all still be here. If we’re lucky, it’ll land on Al Gore since he says we have more to fear from “global warming”.
If it will blow up at less than 50 MPH, maybe we need to call Keanu...
“they run into 3 major problems: space is big, asteroids don’t have running lights, looking for rocks that might hit earth isn’t sexy and doesn’t draw much funding.”
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4. If an extinction-level hunk of rock is going to collide with earth there’s not a damn thing they could do about it anyway.
The US is undecided on whether to invest and prepare costly space technology to intercept those that will not affect its own country.
Interesting, the USA is planning on grabbing boulders in space, if they will hit our country. I know of a few countries that we can drop them on, fat Korean boy should be worried.
A bus?
Doesn't sound that dangerous.
Wouldn't it just burn up on the way in?
“Was it the size of a city bus or a charter?”
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And is it an express bus or one that makes stops?
True, but this was not an extinction-size rock. It is 26 feet wide. The one that hit Russia in 2013 was 56 feet wide, and I think most of the 1000 people injured was due to sonic boom blowing out window glass. No one died then.
Sort of yes and sort of no. It largely depends on when we find it, kind of like cancer early detection gives opportunities. If we could find it more than a year out we could probably do something about it. And of course it’s not just extinction level to worry about. A bus sized asteroid isn’t extinction level, but it sure would suck in a major metropolitan area. But of course the smaller, more likely asteroids, are harder to find. It really is something most countries should be spending a lot of coordinated money on, but it’s too boring so they don’t.
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