Largest Asteroid in Years Misses Earth - "We never saw it coming"

Jun 21,2002 - 12:15 AM ET | Deborah Zabarenko

[MeekOneGOP]

It's eyes were turned to Galaxy M81 I think......

[MeekOneGOP]

Thousands of miles wide? Man! That's like the intruder is the Cue
ball and Earth being the eight ball!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Imagine too, the size of the wave if it hit in the ocean.

[Dog Gone]

Asteroids are the drunk drivers of the solar system.

[KarlInOhio]

It's the big boys, thousands of miles in diameter that can snuff out human life on earth.

As of now, we have nothing to stop or deflect these monsters in space.

Aaaiiieeee! They sky is falling.

Let me count the number of asteroids with diameters in the thousands of miles. Hmmm, that would be zero.

Ceres is the largest asteroid, and its diamter is about 600 miles. A NASA site I found had only 7 with diameters above 100 miles, but I don't know if that list was complete.

[The Mayor]

Big surf

[robertpaulsen]

Wow, it this asteroid hit Colorado it would have flattened 136,000 acres. No, wait, that already happened with a match.

[DE50AE]

As of now, we have nothing to stop or deflect these monsters in space.

Good point - I think I'm going to run out and buy a hard hat at lunch time today...

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Those are the ones they know about.

[boris]

"I wonder how close an asteroid can come before it's pulled in by the Earth's gravity."

It's always pulled in by Earth's gravity, and vice versa.

The real question: What did Bush know and when did he know it?

--Boris

[Mad Dawgg]

We are very lucky that the Vogons have such a bad aim...

At least they didn't read any poetry

[Real Cynic No More]

"Imagine, we didn't even know it had happened until three days after the close encounter!"

Looks like another blue ribbon panel needs to be created. Was Bush hiding this information? What did he know, when did he know it, and why didn't he warn us?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

What did Bush know and when did he know it?

Was Bush hiding this information? What did he know, when did he know it, and why didn't he warn us?

Bumps!

[SevenDaysInMay]

"It's the big boys, thousands of miles in diameter that can snuff out human life on earth." Our earth is only about 7,500 miles in diameter.

No, an object only several miles across would create a global catastrophe killing the majority of life forms lasting at least decades, if not centuries. Keep in mind that the deepest ocean abyss is about 6 miles deep; the earth's crust is generally only 25 to 40 miles thick. A high atmosphere "explosion" of a small "rock" would overpressure everything under its entry point as in Siberia. An impact would spray molten ejecta into low orbit altitudes creating a roaring broiler effect over hundreds of thousands of square miles making our current forest fires look like camp fires.
The 65 m.y.o. crater at Yucatan was created by an object only an estimated 6 miles across with geologic evidence indicating a splash's scouring effect to northern Arkansas.
There is strong evidence of several civilization changing events over the last 5,300 years. Either massive volcanoes or small impacts can produce "nuclear winters" chilling global climate for a generation or more.
Just what did trigger ice ages? 3/4 of earth's surface is water.
7 years of food stores is one religion's teachings. From what I remember of the Y2K mania, most humans worldwide have less than 5 days "supply" of food & beverage at emergency rations. Continental scope famine with a million square mile destruction could likely result from a half mile diameter meteorite.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Was Bush hiding this information? What did he know, when did he know it, and why didn't he warn us?

Bump!

[Bernard Marx]

A lot of the responses on this thread demonstrate what I call the Harry Truman syndrome: "Hell, that volcano'll never erupt and I ain't movin'." Bye Harry.

There's now no doubt that several great extinctions of life on earth in the past were caused by asteroid hits. Granted, they don't happen often but when they do -- like eruptions of Vesuvius or other sleeping giants -- they can be devastating.

In the end we're all dead anyway but, for the living I don't think it's paranoid to invest some of our intellect and treasure into figuring out 1) how to demolish/deflect cosmic intruders once detected, then 2) how to detect them.

[capt. norm]

Tom Daschle claims that the information about the asteroid was actually known to President Bush a few weeks before but he withheld it for political purposes.

If you're asking yourself what possible politcal purpose could there be in that, consider this: If voters knew the world was going to end in two weeks, they might just go ahead and vote for a liberal on the "it doesn't make any difference now" theory.

[Dan(9698)]

"reseach in how to detect these killer asteroids. "

I am a pilot and have found that if you see other airplanes that appear to be moving, you will not collide.

If you see another airplane and it does not appear to be moving, you are on a collision course.

What I have concluded from that is, you will not detect the one that is going to hit. That is why this one got so close before they saw it. It had to appear to be moving and so would miss.

[clifdweller]

Great post! It's only a matter of time, and that is fact, not paranoia. We most definitely should commit resources to this inherent danger. We should start by dumping useless orbital, rich boy, bungalos (ISS) which cost us billions and get a colony on the moon and Mars.

[VOR78]

Good point. Another thing to consider: even the bigger ones (up to a few miles wide) are very dim and difficult to detect at much of a distance. So it may have to get so close before we can detect it that its too late to do anything about it, not that we can right now anyway.