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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: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 21 2020, @03:29AM
>Division gets smaller...
Exactly. So if something is N times smaller, it's obviously talking a reciprocal multiplier. There's no more ambiguity in the statement than there is in "N times larger", in fact there's arguably even less - I don't think I've _ever_ heard "N times smaller" used when someone actually means a multiplier of 1/(N+1). I suspect because the math starts getting too complex for conversational English, so sanity wins out.
1/10th the size would certainly maximize clarity, just as 10 times the size is much better than 10 times larger... but we're speaking English, not Mathematics, and English is a deeply ambiguous language.