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A surprise asteroid came "relatively" close to the Earth today

Dittohead not!

Dittohead not!

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[h=3]A surprise asteroid came "relatively" close to the Earth today[/h]
SURPRISE ASTEROID FLYBY: With little warning, a relatively large asteroid flew through the Earth-Moon system on April 15th only 192,200 km (0.5 LD) from our planet. 2018 GE3 was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey approaching Earth on April 14th. Hours later, amateur astronomer Michael Jäger of Weißenkirchen Austria video-recorded the space rock rushing through the southern constellation Serpens:
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It was discovered on Saturday, and flew closer than the moon on Sunday. There was not much we could have done about it. At least this one didn't hit us. I wonder when one will, and what the results will be?
 
Taylor said:
My guess is that it would have caused a bright flash and maybe broken some windows.
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Depends on where it hit. It was in a class with the one that caused the Tunguska Event.

On 30 June 1908, an explosion ripped through the air above a remote forest in Siberia, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska river.

The fireball is believed to have been 50-100m wide. It depleted 2,000 sq km of the taiga forest in the area, flattening about 80 million trees.

The earth trembled. Windows smashed in the nearest town over 35 miles (60km) away. Residents there even felt heat from the blast, and some were blown off their feet.
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I think it was back in 2000 i actually saw a meteor go streaking over head when i was in PA.
i just saw this streaking trail of fire in the sky and then a huge rumble it was pretty cool.

had i known how valuable they were i would have tried to follow it and see where it landed.
 
Our asteroid detection is not as good as it needs to be. Our ability to deflect asteroids sucks.

If we don't get better at it, we'll eventually join the dinos in the dirt.
 
We have the technology to detect these asteroids but not the currently deployed technology. A constellation of satellites looking out from the earth could detect large moving onbects like this one as they passed in front of the fixed field of stars, calculate its orbit & telemeter the data back to military satellites or ground stations.
 
Maybe we could get Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to blow it up.
 
JacksinPA said:
We have the technology to detect these asteroids but not the currently deployed technology. A constellation of satellites looking out from the earth could detect large moving onbects like this one as they passed in front of the fixed field of stars, calculate its orbit & telemeter the data back to military satellites or ground stations.
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Sounds like a good idea to me.

Or, we could just wait until a really big one hits the ocean and causes a monumental tidal wave, or even a medium sized one hits a city, and then wring our hands and declare that something has to be done.
 
The dust and smoke from world fires will blacken the sky bringing temperature way down to sub-freezing and the dying plants will no longer make oxygen and so our deaths will be lengthy and morbid with mass suicides everywhere.
 
rhinefire said:
The dust and smoke from world fires will blacken the sky bringing temperature way down to sub-freezing and the dying plants will no longer make oxygen and so our deaths will be lengthy and morbid with mass suicides everywhere.
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More likely one this size will take out a city or cause a tidal wave. Why only five thousand years ago (2807 BC) a three mile wide one struck the Indian Ocean causing flooding all over the world from the water that was vaporized and sent into orbit! It left an eighteen mile wide crater.

I don't know what size asteroid heats the atmosphere, but one a kilometer across makes Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and the one that killed the dinosaurs baked everything eight hundred degrees and after ten times this diameter the Oceans are boiled away.
 
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