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: 2) by Snotnose on Monday June 26 2017, @05:16PM (1 child)
She'll just make a huge GOOP patch for the planet to get our chi back in order. Or something.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @05:47PM
A 230 meter jade egg squeezed with the force 300 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. This sounds slightly exaggerated. I'd still watch the .webm or .gif though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @05:17PM (8 children)
When is the hazard due to this asteroid? Are they uncertain about how close it will pass this time, or just about a later time (in 10 years or whatever)? The way it takes info about a specific asteroid and combines with a claim about asteroids/comets in general, really makes this story look like fake news to me...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 26 2017, @06:07PM
With each annual close approach the uncertainty builds. A small unanticipated nudge this year could translate to a collision in 2021.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 26 2017, @06:15PM (5 children)
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ [nasa.gov] Then sort by date column. Select plus/minus 30 days.
The story was in the queue so long the date has past. 2017-Jun-24 06:38 ± 00:01
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @06:40PM (3 children)
I saw that but not how I can assess future hazard due to this object. Basically I need to take info from here [nasa.gov] and plug it into my own solar system sim (I do happen to have one, not that it is so great)?
But what about the 99.9999% of people who do not have a sim ready to go they can plug into?
Is it to go here [nasa.gov] and just look at the "Minimum Distance" column?
2017-Jun-24 06:38: 0.0202787615525259 AU
2018-Jun-24 09:06: 0.018693090429261 AU
2019-Jun-24 16:59: 0.0196088547716538 AU
2020-Jun-24 06:44: 0.0251187387296859 AU
2021-Jun-25 05:09: 0.0399230187407039 AU
(Score: 2) by tfried on Monday June 26 2017, @07:58PM (2 children)
Wow, that's really, really close to exactly yearly. How come? Is there a visualization of the trajectory, somewhere?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @08:52PM (1 child)
I don't know anything beyond what's in TFS, but apparently it's a co-orbital [wikipedia.org] object, likely in a horseshoe orbit similar to 3753 Cruithne, the first discovered and best-known Earth co-orbital. These orbits are in resonance (astrospeak for a phase-locked loop) with Earth, so the instantaneous ratio floats over/under per orbit, but maintain a long-term ratio of exactly 1:1.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:57AM
I only pasted the "close" ones and left out another from 2020:
2020-May-22 22:28: 0.119566985581909
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @07:53PM
Broken News?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday June 26 2017, @10:46PM
It's from The Sun, so it's a toss up whether it's nonsense or real.
I'm pretty sure that's the paper where everything either gives you cancer or cures it.
Anyway, writing a clickbait article about a space rock coming to wipe us all out is probably true, but there's no word on the timeframe, it will either happen tomorrow or 6 billion years in the future. Or some time in the middle.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday June 26 2017, @05:17PM (4 children)
The included articles seem rather sparse and sensationalist. This is the first I've heard of this asteroid, so I seriously doubt it's much of a concern. 7.9 lunar distances is pretty huge; we have asteroids come that close all the time. The ones that are worrisome are less than 2 or 3, or worse, less than 1. I'm pretty sure that, by now, the astronomers have gotten their predictions down pretty well for the next pass (it's subsequent passes of the same asteroid where there's less certainty because coming close to Earth/Moon's gravity changes the trajectory and there's more uncertainty).
If you want something to worry about, check out this page of Near-Earth Objects [nasa.gov], and look for the one coming on October 12: it's only 0.15 lunar distances, and possibly as low as 0.03! Luckily, it's only 12-27 meters, but still that's really close.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday June 26 2017, @05:57PM (2 children)
If it ends up being the closest, .03 LU) x 250,000 then the closest approach = 7500 miles.
Since LD is measured from the planet center you have to subtract the Radius of Earth 3958mi to get about 3542 miles above surface of earth..
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Monday June 26 2017, @07:50PM (1 child)
For everyone's safety, can you use metric when calculating trajectories of objects near a planet?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Sulla on Monday June 26 2017, @08:03PM
Pretty sure I would rather die than read the headline "metric saves the planet".
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Monday June 26 2017, @08:13PM
Comes close on October 12nd at 06:07, what timezone is this? Wondering if there will be part of the world that will be Friday, October 13th. Spooky.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 26 2017, @05:32PM
While, in the UK, miss May is pondering whether she will have to close this wonderful quarter with yet another disaster, numerous NASA and NOAA scientists received discrete phone calls over the week-end from people asking about the odds of someone acquiring the capability to redirect asteroids towards the East Coast. Those reports did not specify whether there were more requests for or against, nor whether recent budget cuts had any impact on the accuracy of the answers...
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday June 26 2017, @05:35PM (8 children)
If we can't do anything to stop it, and aren't ready to get off the planet inside the next 12 months, who cares? Let it wipe us out. What does worrying about it accomplish?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @05:53PM (2 children)
Because outside sensationalism,
is incredibly unlikely. Nothing is as stupid as a chicken and something enormously bigger only got "cool looking dinos" but their chicken and gator and modern reptile descendent/cousins did just fine.
So there's plenty of time and effort to fight over immigrating to New Zealand or Wisconsin or some place anyway.
300 nukes really isn't that much. We set off 100+ during the pre-atmospheric test ban treaty and nothing much happened. Admittedly 300 at once will be more exciting but in all honesty unless it hits you on the way down, it'll mostly just be remembered by the 90%+ of humanity that survives as a really crappy couple years. It'll be remembered like the influenza epidemic at the end of WWI that probably killed more people as a percentage. Most of you are asking "huh?" right now, that being my point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @06:01PM
"influenza epidemic at the end of WWI that probably killed more people as a percentage"
They were also giving people now-illegal dosages of aspirin, when they got sicker they would keep dosing them more and more, which causes the same symptoms as the pandemic...
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 27 2017, @01:46PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#cite_note-15 [wikipedia.org]
Yeah -- I doubt it would be a world ending event although it would suck for whatever local region it hit (from link above): "The heat from the explosion could have caused third-degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero."
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 26 2017, @06:09PM (2 children)
One mega-bomb dropped somewhere random won't wipe out mankind, but the (likely) tsunami would make for a hell of a rebuilding project.
The fun part would be trying to evacuate places like the U.S. East coast if it were to strike in the North Atlantic, or Japan if it were in danger of Tsunami - because with a rock this big, we'd have months of warning before an ocean splashdown.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 26 2017, @09:55PM (1 child)
Keep in mind that the Castle Bravo test at Bikini Atoll was close to 1000x the hiroshima bomb and didn't make such a large tsunami as to make serious trouble for ocean-side cities. 300x is smaller than that.
There's factors to consider like the depth of the water, resulting in different levels of displacement, but you shouldn't expect mass destruction.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 27 2017, @03:15AM
All depends on where/how it hits, any resulting undersea quakes and/or landslides, direct hit with a splash and crater, or glancing blow and airburst.
Bikini Atoll pretty much tells a tale of why that wasn't much of a Tsunami generator - in shallow water, surrounded by reef...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Monday June 26 2017, @06:38PM (1 child)
What does worrying about it accomplish?
They want to find out how many atheists there really are.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 26 2017, @10:01PM
Plenty. Death is inevitable. Dull mechanical forces(such as the kinetic energy of a hunk of rock) of the universe dominate our existence.
(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?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @06:19PM
A meteor strike will destroy the Lie-Node containing SoylentNews and nothing else.
Oh No!
How will the Earth survive without the world's Central Repository of Fake News for Niggers?!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Monday June 26 2017, @06:25PM (7 children)
Are we actually sharing articles from The Sun now? Really? Editors, get your heads out of your asses.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday June 26 2017, @11:17PM (4 children)
In a row: Microsoft recommending against its own update, Gwenyth's Goop, and the Sun. Forgot the Yellowstone MEGA-ULTRA-SUPER volcano. I am detecting a pattern. Well, on the upside, at least there is nothing from Brietbarf.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 27 2017, @02:55AM
Tcha, that's because you can't handle that truth.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @04:08PM
Heh.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/06/27/0251246 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday June 27 2017, @04:32PM (1 child)
The story from Breitbart is there now. Good story. Sometimes Breitbart has good stories. Steve Bannon, great guy. But Breitbart is very politically correct. I journaled about how they fired an editor for telling the truth. My first journal entry. Shameful! Support @k_mcq!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 27 2017, @08:04PM
Oh, Tempura! Oh, Rita Morales! Does this mean the earth is about to be struck by an asteroid the size of Steve Bannon ejected by a super-volcano from the yoni of Pepper Potts, um, what was the other one? Brietbart is dead. No, seriously, Andrew Brietbart died. From exercise. Steve Bannon has sworn to never make that mistake.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 27 2017, @02:53AM
It's not the editors' fault. It's the submitters who suck.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 27 2017, @01:51PM
From the comments section of the Sun article:
"If you don't read The Sun, you are uninformed. If you do read The Sun, you are misinformed."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @02:54PM
Got to finish my model railroad!