Asteroid plays chicken with Earth

[b0und]

Asteroid plays chicken with Earth | smh.com.au

Asteroid plays chicken with Earth

IT COULD have put an end to our worries about the economy and those sharks at Sydney beaches.

At 12.40 yesterday morning, as the city slept, a previously unknown asteroid swept about 60,000 kilometres over the south-western Pacific.

In astronomical terms it was a close call. Estimated to be between 30 metres and 50 metres wide, it passed almost seven times closer than the moon.

"No object of that size, or larger, has been observed to come closer to the Earth," said Rob McNaught, of the Siding Spring Observatory, near Coonabarabran.

In 1908 an object possibly up to 50 metres across flattened some 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

Mr McNaught said yesterday's asteroid was probably smaller but it could do a lot of damage to a city. If it had crashed into the ocean "I imagine it would produce a tsunami", he said.

Funded by NASA to search for asteroids bigger than one kilometre across, Mr McNaught spotted the object on Friday night. Within 24 hours astronomers had calculated it would narrowly miss the planet.

Mr McNaught said as the asteroid approached Earth yesterday morning it had glowed 5000 times brighter than on Friday night. "It was so bright I could actually observe it through the cloud. That is very rare," he said.

He believed that if 2009 DD45 had been on a collision course with a populated part of the planet, there would have been time to act. "A lot of people falsely claim there is nothing you could do, but there is. If there is an asteroid coming, and you have 24 hours, you can evacuate."

About 1000 asteroids are known to have come close enough to be classified as potentially hazardous.

While a collision with a one-kilometre-wide asteroid could cause global devastation, Mr McNaught said one that was just 300 metres wide could throw the world into "a short-term winter".

Objects bigger than one kilometre wide were likely to hit the world only every few million years but ones large enough to threaten a city crashed "probably once a century".

I may be sick and deranged, but wouldn't it be kind of cool if one of those big fuckers actually hit us?










b0und (psycho crackpot)

 

[digimon7068]

no. . .it wouldn't be cool. . .

yes. . .you are sick and deranged

 

[chris302001]

mebbe if it hit China.....I dont really like asians.......





















(lolol just kidding! I love chinese foooooooood!)

 

[Razorguns]

Everybody I pray for aliens to attack us. And I will be Lex Luthor and become their friends. Ha!

r

 

[75th]

I did my senior thesis on asteroid impacts.

Fuggers scare the bejesus outta me. Mainly because when one hits we wont see it coming. And the fact that the one that just passed by us, only a few meters long, could have killed tens of thousands of people had it exploded over a populated area.

 

[UA_Iron]

1. It wouldnt be so bad.
2. Heaven's gate would have been right (jk)
3. Fuck you asteroid.
4. 75th =

 

[swole]

Everybody I pray for aliens to attack us. And I will be Lex Luthor and become their friends. Ha!

r

and we would finally have a common enemy where we'd unite for a few months, years, whatever. go earth people!

and once the threat was gone we'd be back to killing each other like stupid animals.

 

[samoth]

Asteroid plays chicken with Earth | smh.com.au

I may be sick and deranged, but wouldn't it be kind of cool if one of those big fuckers actually hit us?

The pics of the destruction of the forest from the 1908 impact are fucking awesome.

 

[75th]

The pics of the destruction of the forest from the 1908 impact are fucking awesome.

830 square miles of this:

http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/craters/craters_01.jpg

They say the explosion was around 1000x Hiroshima.

Too bad Hitler wasnt vacationing in the area at the time.

 

[75th]

"At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara trading post (65 kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion), facing North. [...] I suddenly saw that directly to the North, over Onkoul's Tunguska road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest (as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up - expedition note). The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire Northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped."

- Some poor bastard that was there.