3 ms·
My physics might be wrong, but with Earth's radius at 6500km and Lunar orbit radius around 350,000km, probability of a collision course given asteroid being wit
by rich_sasha 2y ago
My physics might be wrong, but with Earth's radius at 6500km and Lunar orbit radius around 350,000km, probability of a collision course given asteroid being within a lunar orbit distance is only (6.5/350)^2 or 0.03%, or maybe even cleaner, 1 in 3000. So it's not that close a miss.
- EA-3167 2y agoIn terms of these things, its a hair's breadth, but in human terms it's incredibly distant. We don't have a great intuition about just how enormous and empty space is, how much of the universe (including our little patch) is just a seething void.
- rich_sasha 2y agoIt's not about intuition, it's about probability of impact. All these articles talking about asteroids flying within a lunar orbit distance make it sound like we got away lucky. But that's still far, far away, and the chances of impact are quite remote, in absolute terms.
- throwthrowuknow 2y agoCool but what’s its orbital period and how does this close pass effect future crossings?
- tedunangst 2y agoPresumably irrelevant since we didn't care about the previous crossing.
- throwthrowuknow 2y agoWe just discovered it, how could we know about the previous ones?