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What's really shocking is the drawing from the article [1] This Astroid was Discovered when already passed by the Earth!! And was actually very close to it! W
by joering2 9y ago
What's really shocking is the drawing from the article [1]
This Astroid was Discovered when already passed by the Earth!!
And was actually very close to it! While I am pretty certain Astronomers knew it won't hit us, the amount of time it took to discover it would be way too late for us to even hold hands and kiss our children goodbye!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/files/2017/11/eso1737c.jpg http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/files/2017/11/eso...
- grkvlt 9y agoWell, if it had hit Earth, it would have happened without astronomers (or anyone else) knowing about it beforehand. As you point out, it was discovered after it had passed us, so there was no advance warning at all, however this is quite common with asteroids.
- valuearb 9y agoThe earth gets hit by similarly sized asteroids every 30,000 to 100,000 years, albeit not quite at this velocity. Average impact velocity for asteroids from our system is 17 Km/sec, so about 2/3s the speed of this visitor. Either way, it's not even close to an extinction event. And "very close to it" is a misnomer. It came within 24 million kilometers of Earth, about 60 times farther away than the moon is.