Two Asteroids to Whiz Past Earth

(AP)  NASA says two small asteroids discovered just days ago will zip harmlessly past Earth on Wednesday, a double flyby that should be visible through a telescope.

The asteroids were discovered Sunday by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. The Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, which tracks asteroids and comets, determined there was no chance of an Earth collision.

Asteroid 2010 RX30, thought to be 32 to 65 feet long, will pass within 154,000 miles of Earth shortly before 3 a.m. PDT Wednesday.

The second one, dubbed 2010 RF12, will fly by about 11 hours later at a distance of about 49,000 miles. NASA says the second one is 20 to 46 feet long.

[Void-Master]

by Lifeson2112 September 8, 2010 12:43 PM EDT

Personally I would fear the long-period comets such as Hale-Bopp. They're generally pretty big and come cooking into the inner solar system at quite a clip. And the worst part, we don't even know they're there until they get somewhere around Jupiter's orbit or about half a billion miles away. That only gives us a few months to prepare if we spot one headed our way. Not much time.

***

While comets are typically much larger than asteroids, they just as typically don't have as much mass. Comets are ice, asteroids are rock (usually iron and nickel). What would you rather be hit with; a snowball the size of a basketball or a chunk of iron the size of a baseball?

[rwsmith29456]

Picture is misleading. These 'roids aren't aren't coming close enough to earth to become fireballs.

[DidHeSayThat]

Twinkle, twinkle little star... Is it a little odd that I would be a-okay if they hit the Middle East and ended this fiasco of crazies? I wish I may, I wish I might...

[tsigili]

Well, better to whiz by, than to stop short.

[daffy64]

Love the way the article is about how they're going to miss Earth. Except for the accompanying picture.

Ouch.

[ksmit2]

"Famous Last Words".."To whiz past Earth..

[frontspar]

Discovered days ago? Don't we have a program for tracking incoming astroids? May be Nostrodamus was right.

[UrbanSculptures]

I have a couple of pieces of the iron-nickel meteorite that crashed into Arizona 50,000 years ago, and that was said to have been around 80-100 feet across traveling about 9 miles per second. The resulting impact blew a crater over 700 feet deep and a mile across, most of the meteorite vaporized on impact, about 30 tons or so of it was blasted out to a 6 mile radius by the explosion, these are the fragments you see and can buy on meteorite sites.
The human mind can't grasp the magnitude and force of a solid iron-nickel object hitting solid ground at
32,000 MPH and what the explosion, resultant shockwave and firestorm would look like.

Any kind of star wars thing to redirect these objects is pure Star Trek fiction.

Mass and speed of such an object is enormous, and the impact generates heat, that energy has to go somewhere, and it goes into heat, lots of it.

Throwing enough ash, dust and debris into the atmosphere, it would be worse than Mt St Helens and has the potential toalter weather for some time afterwards.

Chicxulub II as someone said here is not a matter of if, but when! Chicxulub blasted a huge crater in the Yucan area, in the South Gulf of Mexico, those sink holes there full of water the Maya used form a circular shape that outlines the crater rim, about half on the land and half in the ocean. When that thing hit it must have vaporized everything for a 50 mile radius!
But those 2 craters are not the only ones, earth has been hit by many over the eons, I think I read there's about 147 such craters identified, there's one in Mason City Iowa discovered while drilling the city well.
I know of one in Argentina discovered in the 1500's as I have a fragment of that.

50,000 years ago a blast in Arizona probably did little, back then there weren't even any indians, but now such a blast would be a serious problem.

Randall
urbansculptures.com

[Void-Master]

by Lifeson2112 September 7, 2010 7:40 PM EDT

Yeah, lets go ahead and cut NASA's budget again to devote more to social programs. I guess once a city is vaporized by one of these things we'll take space research a little more seriously.

***

That's not what we need space research for. The two in this story aren't big enough to pose a threat to civilization though either one could end a city as you suggest. The greater threat comes from much larger ones.

There are plenty of NEOs out there that *are* big enough to put is back in the Stone Age (or worse). And those are just the ones close enough that we even might notice them coming. The problem is, even if we spot one ten years before it hits, we won't be able to do anything about it. Contrary to popular belief and Hollywood myth, a rock that big would be too massive to stop.

We as a species need to focus space exploration on establishing a viable, self-sufficient colony off world. And we need to start this now because even if we get off our butts and get busy with it, it's going to take us a century to pull that off -- especially if governments are leading the effort.

That is the only assurance we have against such an eventuality. And it *is* an eventuality. Do the math. Chicxulub II is not a matter of "if" but of "when."

[Lifeson2112]

Personally I would fear the long-period comets such as Hale-Bopp. They're generally pretty big and come cooking into the inner solar system at quite a clip. And the worst part, we don't even know they're there until they get somewhere around Jupiter's orbit or about half a billion miles away. That only gives us a few months to prepare if we spot one headed our way. Not much time.

[Lifeson2112]

Yeah, lets go ahead and cut NASA's budget again to devote more to social programs. I guess once a city is vaporized by one of these things we'll take space research a little more seriously.

[DidHeSayThat]

Now, now... just go back to work since millions on welfare are depending upon YOU!