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The asteroid – named 441987 (2010 NY65) – is marked as a concern because it's 230 metres in diameter and travelling just 7.9 lunar distances (that's about three million km) from us.
[...] If it were to strike, its weight could impact with a force 300 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb, scientists have predicted.
2010 NY65 was discovered on July 10, 2010 by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft and is expected to make yearly close approaches to Earth until 2022.
It might sound far-fetched, but experts have warned that an asteroid crash that would wipe out humanity could be imminent.
Dr Alan Fitzsimmons, speaking ahead of asteroid week this month, said there is currently nothing we can do to stop a large space rock heading our way – and the impact would be catastrophic.
Well, an asteroid impact is certainly one way to solve all our problems.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @06:02PM (7 children)
Yes, that's entirely correct. If it were to strike. But it's not going to strike. So why the hell do I care?
300 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. Sounds impressive. Fat Man was 21,000 equivalent tons of TNT but that was Nagasaki, so we go with Little Boy at 15,000. So that gives us 4,500,000 equivalent tons of TNT.
If we're going to be really scared, let's look for something Russian. This would be a little smaller than an R-7A Semyorka [wikipedia.org] warhead. Or is it scarier to humans when you say that something is three hundred times something else? Would it be less scary to say an impact from this asteroid would release a fraction of the energy the Tsar Bomba did at 50,000,000 equivalent tons of TNT?
If you want a really big number, why not convert to joules? 4,500,000 equivalent tons of TNT is 19,000,000,000,000,000 joules (keeping with 2 sig figs).
But it's not going to hit, humans would rather kill each other over a disagreement about mythology, and until one does finally hit, humans care a lot more about that mythology dispute than a problem nobody's even encountered in documented history, so who cares?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 26 2017, @06:14PM
Keep saying that: "it's not going to hit."
The last asteroid close approach was a fun one, where they knew one was coming (and near-missing), but another blindsided Russia 16 hours before the one that was being tracked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor [wikipedia.org]
That one was 1/10th the size of the one they're tracking now. How many "invisible friends" does this one have?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Leebert on Monday June 26 2017, @06:27PM (1 child)
Not to mention the fact that it's still not THAT huge; certainly not an extinction-level event even if it hit in the worst location. Tsar Bomba was over three THOUSAND times as powerful as Little Boy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 27 2017, @03:17AM
Tsar Bobma was an air-burst... not saying a single rock makes an ELE, but you can do a lot more damage with a direct rock strike in the ocean (especially if you trigger some earthquakes in the process) than an airburst "of the same energy."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Monday June 26 2017, @06:48PM
To be honest, I fully expect humans to kill each other even after an asteroid hit, primarily over what resources are left, any power vacuums that suddenly formed, down to whose fault it was that the gods were angry enough to bring the asteroid in the first place.
So don't worry, I fully expect us to kill each other no matter what happens, short of an actual extinction event, at which point we will be too busy dying en-mass to get many kills in.
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:57AM
https://powerrangereon.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/the-energy-of-natural-disasters/ [wordpress.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @08:45AM
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday June 27 2017, @04:19PM
They said I got to drop the biggest bomb on Afghanistan. Huge! They said nobody ever dropped it before. Except our nuclear weapons. Why can't we use our nuclear weapons on these asteroids?