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Small asteroid to hit Earth's atmosphere today
- pcaharrier 2y ago[flagged]
- seb1204 2y agoI get that the size is small and therefore harmless to earthlings, however I feel like I lied to my better half when defending ESA and NASA that they would not withhold information about large objects that will hit earth and cause doom and destruction. Our plan that we documented in the Armageddon movie also is suddenly unrealistic to me.
- dylan604 2y agoWait, Armageddon is suddenly unrealistic to you? What about it was realistic until suddenly, and what happened that changed your mind
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- koliber 2y agoIt was discovered 8 hours ago! I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, I'm super excited that we can go from discovery to wide dissemination within a few hours. On the other hand, what's the chance of something like this happening with a much bigger asteroid.
- rogerrogerr 2y agoWe’d at least see them earlier, because much bigger asteroids are much bigger.
- ben_w 2y ago> On the other hand, what's the chance of something like this happening with a much bigger asteroid. Lower. As size increases there are fewer bigger asteroids to begin with, and they are also easier to spot.
- davidcuddeback 2y ago> On the other hand, what's the chance of something like this happening with a much bigger asteroid. Bigger asteroids are easier to see.
- ithkuil 2y agothat's right. another metric that affects the ... impact ... of such an event is also the speed of the asteroid. Unlike size, I suspect higher speeds would make it harder to spot (and once spotted there would be less time to take action)
- BurningFrog 2y agoAsteroids are just as visible at any speed. Though warning times will be shorter the higher the relative speed is.
- bumby 2y agoI think the OPs point was: If we are only surveying a portion of the sky at a time and a faster asteroid spends less time traversing that portion, the likelihood of detection is lower.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoFaster asteroids leave longer streaks.
- krisoft 2y agoI'm not sure if you are joking. Assuming you are not. What kind of "streak" you are thinking about? Are you thinking about comets with their tails? Or motion blur? Because if motion blur I would expect an asteroid on a collision course to have none. (at least in the short timeframe before the collision) Because "Constant bearing, decreasing range" is how a collision looks like from a first person perspective.
- 2y ago
- morning-coffee 2y ago> On the other hand, what's the chance of something like this happening with a much bigger asteroid. The same as it's always been, which is to say you can live your life without worrying about it. If our technology advances such that we can observe/find more and more of these, that doesn't affect the chances that a particularly sized asteroid hits the earth or not.
- sandworm101 2y ago>> such that we can observe/find more and more of these, that doesn't affect the chances that a particularly sized asteroid hits the earth or not. Maybe under classical rules, but we know know that the act of observation collapses the range of possible outcomes, potentially locking us into a collision by an asteroid that previously existed only as a probability cloud.
- dmd 2y agoThat's not how any of this works.
- ivanjermakov 2y agoAs far as we know, quantum effects do not apply to big space rocks
- whimsicalism 2y ago?? quantum effects apply to everything, but for large objects the expectation is classical
- krisoft 2y agoCurious use of the double questions marks when the following sentence reveals that seemingly you did understand the point the commenter was making.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- m4rtink 2y agoBigger object should reflect more light, making detection more likely. In very simplified terms, say its roughly spherical, the amount of light grows with the second exponent, so twice bigger object reflect 4 times as much light - but it is also potentially 8 times as heavy (eq. volume grows with third exponent) & thus more dangerous. Trade-offs. :)
- krisoft 2y ago> Bigger object should reflect more light, making detection more likely. That assumes that the detection is photon constrained and not "nobody is looking in most directions" constrained. It doesn't matter even if the asteroid is carrying a lit magnesium torch if nobody is looking for it systematically. I'm not saying that it is the case. In fact I'm asking: are we photon constrained or are we constrained by the rate we are scanning the sky?
- svachalek 2y agoBoth, but in practice the coverage of dangerous sized objects is pretty good already and when the Vera Rubin Observatory goes online it will get an order of magnitude better.
- leke 2y agoYep, it could be that one day you go to work and your town gets destroyed before you manage to get home and hug your family goodbye.
- exitb 2y agoAccording to NASA [1], asteroid needs to be larger than 25 meters to cause localized damage. It’d need to be larger than 1-2km to cause globally observable consequences. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-facts/ https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-fa...
- pdonis 2y ago> what's the chance of something like this happening with a much bigger asteroid. Negligible. As I noted upthread, objects large enough to be do significant damage if they hit Earth and are on trajectories that could bring them close to Earth are routinely spotted years in advance.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tommoor 2y ago> This is only the ninth time that humankind has discovered an asteroid before it impacts Earth TIL. It seems like it's basically luck if someone is looking through a telescope in the right place at the right time?
- ziddoap 2y agoLuck has a lot to do with it, sure, but we're (thankfully) a bit more advanced than just hoping someone is looking through a telescope at the right place/time. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies does a lot of neat work related to this. For example, Sentry [1], the NEOWISE mission [2], etc. [1] https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/ https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/ [2] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/neowise https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/neowise
- yourapostasy 2y agoThank you for your useful comment. It sent me down a brief rabbit hole of looking for a grid of amateur telescope owners cooperating for NEO object detection. I found eSTAR for the big boy telescopes [1] [2], but nothing for enthusiasts. I ran across NEO Surveyor that launches in September 2027, will run for 5 years, and is aiming for 90% coverage [3], so I suppose a grid of amateurs contributing telescope time into a software-driven grid and detection system won't be helpful? [1] https://indico.cern.ch/event/423169/contributions/1890157/attachments/893398/1258068/eric_saunders.pdf https://indico.cern.ch/event/423169/contributions/1890157/at... [2] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002SPIE.4845...13S/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002SPIE.4845...13S/abstra... [3] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/near-earth-object-surveyor https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/near-earth-object-surveyor
- schiffern 2y agoYou might be interested in the work of Robert Holmes. https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/33153-q-a-how-robert-holmes-surveys-the-sky-from-his-illinois-observatory https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/33153-q... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Holmes_(astronomer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Holmes_(astronomer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWLDvuK_4qU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWLDvuK_4qU
- simmonmt 2y agoThank you for heads up will get my code submitted before world ends.
- swayvil 2y agoYou can hear meteors. They hiss as they go by a hundred miles overhead. Which is weird of course. There are theories. Electromagnetic effects and such.
- schiffern 2y ago*a hundred kilometers More info: https://earthsky.org/space/whoosh-can-you-hear-meteors-streak-past/ https://earthsky.org/space/whoosh-can-you-hear-meteors-strea... https://www.space.com/35908-meteor-sounds-mystery-solved.html https://www.space.com/35908-meteor-sounds-mystery-solved.htm... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqXZbrDZrVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqXZbrDZrVU
- swayvil 2y ago"mystery solved". Ho ho. These people gobble a nice story like mommy's pancakes.
- hcarvalhoalves 2y agoLast time I witnessed a meteor shower (I guess it was early 2000s or late 90s in Brazil), I swear I could hear it, but it was so faint that wasn't sure if I was imagining the sound. BTW, I was watching the meteors from the attic, where my dad had a music studio, so lots of transducers around. The radio waves theory from the article would make sense.
- darkest_ruby 2y agoAs f Philippines is a tiny town and everyone can go out and just watch. Specify exact location!!
- MentallyRetired 2y agoThe article contains a map with where they think it will scrape the atmosphere
- goodcanadian 2y agoThe fireball will likely be visible from 100s of kms away.
- nelblu 2y agoThere's quite a bit of cloud cover and rain, I hope they can see it. https://www.windy.com/17.613/121.733?clouds,14.807,123.827,6 https://www.windy.com/17.613/121.733?clouds,14.807,123.827,6
- yawboakye 2y agowe have come so far. i vaguely remember a similar-ish discovery/announcement was made in the early 2000s. well, i was too young and too stupid to check the news myself (there was no internet, just tv and newspapers anyways) but i quite remember that respectable town leaders searched for answers in their bibles and qur'ans. strange times they were.
- adrianmonk 2y agoWhy does the graphic have two streaks and a triangle? I can't figure out where to get more information. In case it's not clear what I mean, one streak is greenish and the other is yellow/red. The triangle is black and one edge of it is colored red and seems to connect the centers of the streaks. I'll take an educated guess: (1) they are two different elevations (2) they are essentially heatmaps of strike probability elongated because of the earth's rotation (3) the triangle is a right triangle situated in a plane perpendicular to the earth's surface so that the red line indicates the angle. It's funny that they'd have a strike location on the surface given that they said it won't hit the surface. But maybe it's a standard way to do the graphic, in which case it represents where it would strike if it were big enough even though it's not.
- layer8 2y agoIt’s clearer in the image here: https://x.com/esa/status/1831307613205615044 https://x.com/esa/status/1831307613205615044
- tecleandor 2y agoI think it's the uncertainty areas. One it's 100km height and the other for 0m. It can be seen better on these links [0] [1]. I think it's done this way to show the trajectory. 0: https://x.com/esa/status/1831307613205615044 1: https://x.com/esa/status/1831337534950924348
- JW_00000 2y ago> [T]he coloured regions represent impact probabilities (to 1, 3, and 5 sigma). The red-orange-yellow area shows where the asteroid would reach Earth's surface if there were no atmosphere in the way. > > But there is an atmosphere! So we also mark in green where the asteroid will be when it is at an altitude of 100 km. This is roughly where it will begin to break up and therefore where observers could start seeing a fireball. > > The red line would be the asteroid's trajectory between those two points, if it were still one solid object, which it won't be. from https://x.com/esaoperations/status/1831349538583445693 https://x.com/esaoperations/status/1831349538583445693
- 0xbadcafebee 2y agoThis is a little depressing, but I just realized if we ever have interplanetary war, we'll just push big space rocks into their orbit.
- FredPret 2y agoThis is a plot point in the Bobiverse books. The delta-v required for a heavy asteroid may make it more practical to send a fleet of nukes though.
- cut3 2y agoFuture earth wars will have bombardments from space, no need to wait until we are on other planets.
- simmonmt 2y agoMay I suggest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
- tway_GdBRwW 2y agoHeinlien, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress The moon colony uses this to win its freedom. However, The Expanse is also a great book
- vhodges 2y agoRelated: Footfall and Lucifers Hammer (Both by Niven and Pournelle)
- sgt 2y agoHopefully better than the TV show. Man, that was a terrible ending.
- troyvit 2y ago
- aziaziazi 2y ago> The object is harmless [impact streak cover some human infrastructures] I get the odds of landing in someone roof are tiny in this rural area -probably smaller than meeting a grizzly in NYC- however I won't call a grizzly "harmless". Perhaps the panic induced by not calling it harmless would cause more harm. https://maps.app.goo.gl/1LE4EnzBz13gH3zt5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/1LE4EnzBz13gH3zt5
- dgacmu 2y agoI believe - IANAA - that it will entirely burn up in the atmosphere: https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-facts/ https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-fa... https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/47754/minimum-size-of-an-asteroid-to-actually-impact-earth https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/47754/minimum-si... > Space rocks smaller than about 25 meters (about 82 feet) will most likely burn up as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere and cause little or no damage. (This one is 1m, so it's a pretty good margin.)
- vhcr 2y agoThe latest tweet confirms it will fall in the ocean. https://x.com/esa/status/1831337534950924348 https://x.com/esa/status/1831337534950924348
- supermatt 2y agoRelevant infographic on asteroid threat (from the article): https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/06/Asteroid_danger_explained https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/06/Asteroid_d...
- JW_00000 2y agoIt'll break up and partially burn up, partially turn into smaller meteorites, before hitting the surface of the Earth.
- IanKerr 2y agoIt's always very impressive to me seeing our ability to detect such obscure objects in advance getting better and better. We'll soon have such good detection capabilities that we may start to take these kinds of predictions for granted the same way we take accurate weather forecasts for granted. Can't wait to see the local meteorologist talking about actual meteors.
- wantsanagent 2y agoAstrophysics peeps, why is it that the danger seems to be only tied to the mass of the object. Given p=mv is (relative) speed essentially the same for all of them or otherwise inconsequential?
- NotEvil 2y agoNot a astrophysicist but I would guess it's due to atmospheric drag. Higher velocity objects will burn more quickly
- anal_reactor 2y agoNot into astrophysics, but I guess "faster asteroids experience higher forces when going through the atmosphere, therefore burning faster". Another explanation could be "most of asteroid's speed comes from Earth's gravity, not from it's initial state". These are just random guesses though, so I could be completely wrong.
- ddahlen 2y agoThe range of mass is typically much larger than the range of velocities. There is an upper bound to the speed for the vast majority of things which are dangerous (escape velocity of the solar system). However there are orders of magnitude differences in mass. Velocity is important though.
- seabass-labrax 2y agoAdding a little context for those not familiar with orbital mechanics: the speed of a circular orbit is directly related to its distance from the barycenter (i.e. the Sun). The asteroid belt is between the orbits of Mars (orbiting at 24km/s) and Jupiter (13km/s). Whilst an asteroid that strays far enough to hit Earth (orbiting at 30km/s) is by definition not in an exactly circular orbit, nor one always between Mars and Jupiter, the difference in speeds isn't that great. That accounts for ddahlen's point about the limited range of velocities. A very rough calculation of mine involving a hypothetical asteroid in a elliptical orbit extending as far as Jupiter and right down to Earth, assuming no difference in orbital inclination to Earth and no significant gravitational perturbations, would result in a relative speed of 5km/s. The actual impact speed would be greater due to Earth's own gravity, adding an extra 11km/s. Not all asteroids are from the asteroid belt, but I am under the impression that visitors from the outer solar system (which could be as fast as the upper bound that ddahlen mentions) are much more infrequent than stray asteroid belt objects, so the median impact speed would still be relatively slow.
- ddahlen 2y agoI work on the NASA NEO Surveyor project (and have helped out a lot on the WISE/NEOWISE mission, which found a lot of asteroids). I create and run simulations of asteroid detections, which ends up being mostly orbit calculations. In the next few years the rate of detections of these sort of objects are going to go way up, NEO Surveyor and the Vera Rubin LSST telescopes are going to take our current knowledge of the solar system from about 1.4 million asteroids to approximately 10x that. It is somewhat difficult to estimate how many we will see, since the size distribution follows a power law, and small changes in our estimates of the slope can be huge changes the number which exist. There are most likely hundreds of thousands to millions of a few meter sized asteroids flying around the inner solar system. I did a large chunk of the numerical analysis in this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.12918 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.12918 I recommend figure 12 to get a sense of how far we can see at any given moment. The definition which is commonly used as "hazardous" is about a 140m asteroid, which would cause a significantly bad day regionally, but not end civilization. That being said, 50m is still a very very bad day. These meter-ish size ones usually just make a pretty fireball. Some various links to data about this impact: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20RW1 https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20R... https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K24/K24R68.html https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K24/K24R68.html
- nkrisc 2y agoFor anyone else curious who wants some tangible sense of the dangers, the Tunguska impactor is estimated to have been 50-60m in diameter [1]. The impactor that created the Barringer Crater in Arizona is estimated to have been about the same size [2]. Regarding a 100m asteroid impact: > The pressure blast would destroy buildings up to 9 miles (15 km) from ground zero, and windows would shatter more than 60 miles away (100 km). To make matters worse, as the partially burned rock hit the ground, it would trigger seismic tremors that would spread through the planet's crust, carrying the destruction further away from the epicenter. The debris ejected into the air by the force of the impact would rain back on the ground miles away from the impact site, and the finer dust and dirt would remain hanging in the air, spreading with the wind across large distances.[3] I can imagine a 140m asteroid causing a very, very bad day indeed for a region. Not an expert, just curious and I can type stuff into a search engine. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater [3] https://www.space.com/asteroid-apocalypse-how-big-can-humanity-survive https://www.space.com/asteroid-apocalypse-how-big-can-humani...
- tabtab 2y agoSmall dinosaurs are very worried.
- steeeeeve 2y agoThis should be happening right now.
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoVisible from india. Not very prominent but clearly visible.
- phendrenad2 2y agoDid you see it?
- FartyMcFarter 2y agoThis is allegedly a video of the fireball: https://x.com/raymongdullana/status/1831378111453392958 https://x.com/raymongdullana/status/1831378111453392958
- felideon 2y agoThat's quite a larger fireball than I was imagining. If I were in that general area and not given a heads up, I would have certainly freaked out.
- MeteorMarc 2y agoUnfortunately, only one of the clips has a long enough duration to hear the start of the sonic booms, soundwaves from the detonations reaching the microphone.
- iJohnDoe 2y agoAsteroid 2024 RW1, which was discovered just hours before its atmospheric entry, made a dramatic appearance over the Philippines on September 4, 2024. The asteroid, roughly the size of a small car (about 1 meter in diameter), was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey and was initially designated CAQTDL2 before being named 2024 RW1. The asteroid entered the atmosphere at a speed of approximately 11 miles per second (around 40,000 miles per hour) and burned up, creating a spectacular green flash visible to observers on the ground. Despite the cloud cover from Typhoon Yagi, the event was still visible and was captured on video by local residents. This event marks only the ninth recorded instance of an asteroid being detected before it impacted Earth.
- ddahlen 2y agoWe got enough data to get a rough estimate of its orbit before it hit: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=2024%20RW1&view=VOP https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=2024%... Note though, this will likely have a huge range of uncertainty on it, as 8 hours of observation is not a lot.
- somat 2y agoGood video of the event, however, none of them hang around long enough to hear the bang. would this meteor be close/large enough to hear one?