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You have to consider instead the probability of detecting such objects that don't come very close to Earth. And that probability is actually pretty low (current
by InclinedPlane 8y ago
You have to consider instead the probability of detecting such objects that don't come very close to Earth. And that probability is actually pretty low (currently), so the proximity tells us very little beyond some general estimate of how common such objects are.
- jnicholasp 8y agoAnd in a similar vein, we have only very recently become able to detect (some) objects such as this one, and shortly after we gained the ability to spot things like this, we spotted this one. It at least allows the possibility that events like this are not incredibly rare, and we just haven't been able to perceive them until now.
- simonh 8y agoPlus, it's not as if 0.14 AU (it was actually further than that according to Wikipedia)) is all that close, it was still well over 20 million km away or over 50 lunar orbital radii. It just sounds small when you write it as 0.14 because it's a small fraction of an AU, but an AU is freaking huge. If we sent a probe to Jupiter and it only got within 0.14 AU I can't see that being considered much of a success.