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NASA predicts asteroid to make one of closest approaches to Earth ever recorded
- 60fps 4y agoWell, the article clearly states that the asteroid is of no risk on impacting Earth and even if the asteroid entered our atmosphere it would most likely disintegrate into bits and pieces, considering the size estimated to be 11.5 to 28 feet (3.5 to 8.5 meters) across; I would say it's harmless..
- KingLancelot 4y ago[dead]
- belter 4y ago"2023BU: Earth is about to get one of its closest ever asteroid encounters (bbc.co.uk)" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34530744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34530744
- EForEndeavour 4y agoThe article includes an inline embedded version of Eyes on Asteroids (https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids/#/asteroids https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids/#/asteroids), which is an amazingly impressive interactive live visualization of asteroids in the solar system. Dragging the time slider at the bottom lets you wind time backward and forward and watch the power-law relationship between orbital speed and radius (v ~ 1/sqrt(r)) in glorious fluid animation of countless asteroids swirling in the prevailing orbital direction of the solar system almost as a fluid. A masterful combination of data, graphics, software engineering, and UX.
- dave333 4y agoIt's worth taking a tour by clicking on particular objects that will zoom in close and show each object as seen by space probes that have visited. E.g. 21Lutetia that was photographed by Rosetta in 2010 is a 90km diameter oblong rotating once every 8 hours with three separate sets of impact craters in tight groups showing the impacts in each group were likely fragments of single objects. The craters are about 10-20km across.
- boringg 4y agoEros in June 2028 looks pretty close to earth.
- flandish 4y ago> The asteroid was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, discoverer of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, from his MARGO observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea, on Saturday, Jan. 21. Discovered 5 days before its closest approach. It’s amazing how much “stuff” is out there to learn, and how something can sneak in so “close”.
- turminal 4y agoSometimes they are only discovered after the closest approach. It depends a lot on where they're coming from relative to the sun.
- throwaway290 4y agoDamn. I almost wish I didn't know this.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoImagine standing in a field on a moonless night while someone shines a flashlight at you from one direction. You are told you are surrounded by a number of people whom you can't see and that they will now proceed to throw rocks at you ranging in size from pebbles to bricks. That's roughly the level of anxiety you should have about our current situation.
- jeffbee 4y agoWouldn't they be throwing the rocks at the flashlight guy?
- generalizations 4y agoFlashlight guy is the sun blinding you so you can't see anything.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoNo, they're stand-ins for the trajectory on closest approach to Earth. They're not trying to get the rocks to orbit flashlight guy.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoThis is HN, I can be cynical, right? Allow me to air one of my pet peeves: articles that make the threat of an asteroid collision with Earth something we should be afraid of. (Oh, and films of course.) I never understood why anyone should give it any more than even a passing thought. As a layman my understanding is that the last great extinction event from an asteroid was like (Wikipedia tells me) 66 million years ago. With that frequency/odds my fears seem much better afforded toward the dangers of climate change or any number of other issues that likely will have repercussions in my or my grandchildren's lifetimes.
- P_I_Staker 4y agoYeah super volcanos and solar flares on the other hand... <I don't know how likely those are either, but they seem superscary isn't yellowstone overdue?>
- LinuxBender 4y agoFor what it's worth, Yellowstone's upper lava chamber is 5% molten and the lower magma chamber is about 2% molten. To get eruptions that percentage has to be much higher as it is in the Hawaiian volcanoes. Scientists have differing opinions on how many years it will take to reach that level but all of their numbers are well over 10k years. I had to look into this prior to moving near it.
- P_I_Staker 4y agoStill, I fear for my offspring... a man has no path to immortality, save for his precious seed from his loins, and women their ovaries.
- swader999 4y agoWhat if an asteroid hits it?
- LinuxBender 4y agoGood timing on the question. We are about to pass through a chunkier part of the Taurid asteroid belt. If the rock is big enough to turn everything molten then I suppose it might be time to hitch a ride in a nuclear submarine.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoShameless plug: if you're interested in daily space information, including about nearby passing asteroids, give my Alexa skill "Spaceman" a try. It provides info about those asteroids, as well as any scheduled rocket launches, for any date or date range. And it throws in the moon phase as well. https://sites.google.com/view/spacemanforalexa/ https://sites.google.com/view/spacemanforalexa/
- CWuestefeld 4y agoI should probably add that my app isn't reporting this event. For some reason, my upstream data source[1] isn't reporting it to me. I guess it's such a new discovery that they haven't got it into their database yet. [1] NeoWs at https://api.nasa.gov/index.html https://api.nasa.gov/index.html
- graderjs 4y agoI wish they publicised error bars on these approach distances. What's the equation to calculate if such object given its mass, velocity, etc would get pulled into Earth orbit or collision or just fly past?
- lamacase 4y agoThe equation is: if it isn't already in orbit, and it doesn't hit the atmosphere, then it flies past. For an incoming object to start orbiting earth, it has to decelerate through active propulsion or aerobraking or something like that.
- graderjs 4y agoSounds like a nice heuristic but I don’t think that covers every case—and it’s not an equation. Sorry, wrong answer!!
- lamacase 4y agoIt does cover every case though. The solution for the orbit of a mass in a 2-body problem is always an ellipse! (Or a parabola/hyperbola for an escape trajectory). You can find the derivation here [1], it's not too complicated. There is no way for an asteroid and the earth to interact gravitationally to change the asteroid's orbit from what it was coming in. Non-gravitational interactions (like hitting the earth/atmosphere) can do it. Also, over many interactions and a long time you can have orbital capture in many-body situations, but there is no general equation for this (look up 3 body problem). This is how you get objects accumulating at Lagrange points for example. TLDR: The equation you're asking for does not exist. Sorry, wrong question!! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit
- fnordpiglet 4y agoDon’t look up!
- alexfromapex 4y ago0.00007 AU is how close the approach is estimated to be which is ~6500 miles. So I think we're safe haha.
- stopping 4y agoIt's also tiny, less than 10m across. Barely enough to reach the ground before disintegrating due to atmospheric heating.
- ianburrell 4y agoFor comparison, the Chelyabinsk meteor was about 20m in diameter. The Tunguska event was 50-60m.
- phkahler 4y agoNotice that this was spotted by an amateur only 2 weeks before closest approach. Why was it not found by the larger installations? One problem I like to repeat at times like this, is that these hunts for near earth asteroids look for bright spots that move against the background stars. That's a nice way to find things nearby. But any object on a collision course with earth will not be moving against the background in the days and weeks leading up to the collision when they are also the brightest and most observable. I believe this is why the ones that have exploded in the atmosphere in recent years went completely undetected. It's not just that they're small, but that they don't have the relative motion against the sky to make them stand out.
- theideaofcoffee 4y ago> Dan : [the President asks about the size of the asteroid] it’s the size of Texas, Mr President. > President : Dan, we didn't see this thing coming? > Dan : Well, our object collison budget's a million dollars, that allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg'n your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky.
- ge96 4y agohow far away would you need them to be to detect/be able to respond you could put LIGO-type "stationary" satellites around Earth to detect heavy things moving in boxed grids then estimate trajectory over the affected cubes
- sand500 4y agoIs there no parallax as the Earth moves around the Sun? Are these asteroids in some crazy hyperbolic orbit coming in straight from outside the solar system?
- mc32 4y agoNo, it looks like this asteroid had a similar trajectory as Earth around the sun, but after the encounter its path will be altered significantly. "Before encountering Earth, the asteroid’s orbit around the Sun was roughly circular, approximating Earth’s orbit, taking 359 days to complete its orbit about the Sun. After its encounter, the asteroid’s orbit will be more elongated, moving it out to about halfway between Earth’s and Mars’ orbits at its farthest point from the Sun. The asteroid will then complete one orbit every 425 days."
- Nifty3929 4y agoI think it's unfortunate that our government (in the US) is spending trillions left and right, but won't spend a few Billion to address genuine existential threats such as early detection of asteroids.
- kyleyeats 4y agoSomeone should tell them that Ukraine would be impacted too.
- UI_at_80x24 4y agoWhen I was about 10 years old 1983 (+/- 2 years) I was 'camping' in my backyard with a friend. While we were running around in the dark we saw an asteroid bounce off the atmosphere and either enter below my visual horizon or pass by the earth. It was about the size golfball/chicken egg held at arms length. I was facing East-South-East (approximately). It was a bright red, and I could see impact craters on the surface of it. There were no 'flames/fireballs' from orbital entry friction. The entire incident lasted less then 10 seconds (but this is very much a guess, and impacted by the time-frames involved).
- rpledge 4y agoThere's no way you saw any impact craters on an asteroid naked eye. You have a false memory
- lamacase 4y agoA golf ball is around 4cm, and an arm's length is around 70cm. To be the same apparent size, it would have to maintain that same ratio. The atmosphere is like 50-100km thick (highest weather balloon flight was >50km) so you would have to be seeing it at a further distance than that. So your asteroid would have to be at least several kilometers across. That approaching dino-killer size. You're definitely misremembering some part of this.
- psychphysic 4y agoWow so some random Russian amateur found this and was just like hey that looks like it's coming for us? It's like that Elisa Wood movie. At least the message got through
- LatteLazy 4y ago>There is no risk of the asteroid impacting Earth. But even if it did, this small asteroid – estimated to be 11.5 to 28 feet (3.5 to 8.5 meters) across – would turn into a fireball and largely disintegrate harmlessly in the atmosphere, with some of the bigger debris potentially falling as small meteorites.
- roryisok 4y agoPretty sure closer approaches have been recorded. They just don't escape afterward.