Comments on: 50-meter asteroid will come within 17,000 miles of Earth on 2/15/2013

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:54:00 +0000

Maybe. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering

By: Marcin Mackiewicz

Marcin Mackiewicz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:33:00 +0000

Tunguska event was Nikola Tesla experiment on weapon of mass destruction. This si my opinion proven by many documents :] Believe in what you want.

By: zachstronaut

zachstronaut — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:52:00 +0000

Feb 15 is Galileo Galilei’s birthday.

By: jackbird

jackbird — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 01:17:00 +0000

Especially not if it’s an airburst. You don’t get the chance.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 01:07:00 +0000

I don’t even wake up for a 5 anymore.

By: planettom

planettom — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:35:00 +0000

it’s not going to hit, but that it’s coming closer than geosynchronous satellites is what makes it interesting.

Apophis will do the same in 2029 (Apophis is a lot bigger though, 270 meters to this asteroid’s 50 meters or so).

I note that at least one observatory on east coast U.S.A. is having observing from 8pm-10pm ET on Feb. 15th of 2012 DA14 (Rolnick Observatory in Connecticut’s Facebook page).

By: Gerald Mander

Gerald Mander — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:02:00 +0000

Your “no biggie” Tunguska event flattened trees for 830 square miles and would have registered 5.0 on the Richter scale. From Wikipedia: “An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.”

By: dagfooyo

dagfooyo — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:19:00 +0000

I wonder if an appropriately-sized asteroid collision, say into a mostly empty place such as the Sahara or Siberia, could be engineered such as to do minimal harm to humans or wildlife but still kick up enough dust to temporarily counteract some of the effects of global warming by cooling the planet down for a few years. In essence it could be a mini nuclear winter without all that nasty radiation. Give the ice caps a chance to grow back, etc.

By: shutz

shutz — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:09:00 +0000

Just one day late for a Valentine’s Day kiss…

…of DEATH!

By: SamSam

SamSam — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:57:00 +0000

The link for the quote should probably be http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/28jan_2012da/, not nymag. The post at nymag has even less content than this post.

By: Finnagain

Finnagain — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:37:00 +0000

All I know is the Cigarette Smoking Man was involved somehow.

By: Michael Lieberman

Michael Lieberman — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:34:00 +0000

Wasn’t Tunguska most likely a comet?

By: PhosPhorious

PhosPhorious — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:29:00 +0000

It’s perfectly safe to let our guard down. . . even for a second!

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:06:00 +0000

Tunguska Event was a biggie.

By: Finnagain

Finnagain — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:52:00 +0000

Tell that to the Tunguskans.

By: GlyphGryph

GlyphGryph — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:51:00 +0000

At 50m, doesn’t it depend on the material it’s made of? (Don’t know if that was mentioned in the article)

The asteroid calculator indicates that under fairly normal conditions, a metal-asteroid of this size could easily create a mile-wide crater. A pretty localized disaster but still pretty bad.

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:51:00 +0000

The meteor crater in Arizona was caused by an iron meteorite around 50 meters in diameter, and was equivalent to a 10 megaton nuke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Meteorcrater.jpg

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:44:00 +0000

We get very close ones pretty often, but this one is far larger than most, and very much closer. It’s not just within the orbit of the moon, it’s less than 1/10th the distance.

Here’s a list of recent near misses:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

Here’s a great site for keeping up with asteroids, aurora, solar flares, etc:

http://spaceweather.com/

And here’s a nice way to check your local observing conditions:

http://cleardarksky.com/csk/index.html#chart_list

(you set your location, then can patch the code in to a web page or bookmark your local link – for instance, here’s Cincinnati: http://cleardarksky.com/c/CincinnatiOHkey.html )

By: BigBloxB

BigBloxB — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:26:00 +0000

That’s what I thought, too. I think that one was even larger.

By: Felix Turner

Felix Turner — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:26:00 +0000

A 50m asteroid would vaporize in the atmosphere (e.g. Tunguska Event) so no biggie.

By: semiotix

semiotix — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:15:00 +0000

Ha! Nice try, God/nature/universe/asteroid.

On behalf of humanity and its assorted subaltern biomes, I’d just like to say that this confirms once again that we’re invincible, and that nothing can possibly go wrong now.

By: duncancreamer

duncancreamer — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:09:00 +0000

Didn’t something like this just happen – came within the orbit of the moon or somesuch?