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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, @03:55AM (1 child)
I have my doubt that much of anything will be stationed far from Earth within only the next few decades, though I'd love to be proven wrong. And that goes double for something with a vanishingly low chance of economic payoff as preemptive asteroid collision detection. It could easily save thousands of trillions of in economic damages if there's an imminent major impact in the offing, but the odds of that are very low, and more importantly, basically none of that money would go into the pockets of the people who paid for the early warning system in the first place.
I suspect that instead we'll have to wait until asteroid mining is mature enough to justify an exhaustive resource-mapping effort, which will detect smaller potential impactors as a side effect.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:24AM
With the potential for nuclear war, a major impact is significantly smaller than any of us would like.