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Astronomers spot closest Earth-buzzing asteroid ever recorded :
Astronomers have identified an asteroid that's just made the closest pass to Earth ever recorded – and it was only spotted after it had passed. The object skimmed Earth's atmosphere over the weekend, close enough to have its orbit changed by the planet's gravity.
On August 16, an asteroid designated 2020 QG whizzed past our planet at a distance of only 2,950 km (1,830 mi) above the surface. That's well within the altitude of many satellites, and almost twice as close as the previous record-holder, an asteroid called 2011 CQ1. Of course, this record is about the closest pass to Earth, and doesn't include objects that have impacted the planet.
That said, even if it had hit, asteroid 2020 QG wouldn't have caused any damage. It measures about 3 to 6 m (10 to 20 ft) wide, meaning it would have just burned up in the atmosphere.
Perhaps the Monolith was doing a fly-by.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nuke on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:21PM (4 children)
Don't stop there. Think about it - the Earth's gravity is strong enough to hold the entire Universe spinning round it every day.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 20 2020, @04:04PM (3 children)
Umm...no.
The Earth's gravity touches everything within the universe, but it's effect is minuscule, even on most things within our own solar system. The universe does not spin around us, we spin in a universe that barely knows we exist. Relativity only applies to inertial reference frames, not spinning reference frames - spinning is an intrinsic property that can be measured directly by its internal influence (centrifugal/centripetal force for example)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @07:46PM
did you ever hear of general relativity? the Earth is at the origin of the universe, and for some reason the rest of the universe is spinning around us. it's spinning so hard, it's even dragging the earth's reference system a bit, which counteracts some of the Earth's gravitaty-induced space curvature at the Ecuator.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday August 20 2020, @11:30PM (1 child)
The Earth's gravity touches everything within the universe,
Actually, the Earth hasn't been a thing long enough for its gravitational field to reach the whole Universe. At some point, it was just space dust and couldn't be defined as a planet. Several billion years ago it reached a point where most of us would agree that it was a planet. Then its gravity would reach out to influence the Universe at the speed of light. The sphere of influence is currently estimated to have a radius of approx 4.5 billion light years.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 21 2020, @03:43AM
Quite so, but I decided I'd leave that chestnut for you to catch.
Of course, even if Earth had been here since the beginning of the universe (and in a sufficiently generous sense it has it's constituent mass-energy cannot be created or destroyed) it's gravity would only have have touched the observable universe - or more precisely, those parts of the universe which contain Earth within their own observable universe (I'm not prepared to claim those are exactly equivalent). The (potentially) overwhelming majority of the universe is retreating too quickly to ever interact with us in any way. In fact the percentage of the universe that will never interact with Earth in any way is so close to zero as to make no difference, so statistically speaking we've never existed at all ;-).