According to NASA, planet Earth is set for a terrifying close encounter with a “hazardous” monster asteroid the size of Buckingham Palace tomorrow. The size of this asteroid is still in question, but it won’t matter if it hits the Earth.
NASA originally assumed the asteroid, dubbed 2017 VR12, was about the size of Buckingham Palace, or 250 meters wide. Now they say it may be slightly smaller. But all this size-wrangling would be largely academic if it hit Earth because the object is definitely big enough to wipe out a city.
According to Metro, it said the rock was one potential destination for a future mission to land a probe on the surface of an asteroid. If the asteroid was as big as the first estimate of 470 meters, it could have a surface area of almost 55 acres. The newer estimate would give it a surface area of just over 15 acres. Buckingham Palace takes up about 19 acres, with its gardens occupying another 40 acres.
But most scientists say this one won’t actually hit Earth this time around. The space rock will zoom past us at about 14,092 miles per hour at about four times the distance between the Earth and Moon, or 897,161 miles. Luckily, it’s not going to hit us, because if it did it would release more energy than all the nuclear weapons detonated in the entirety of human history. The impact would create a crater of more than two miles wide, killing millions if it hit near a populated area.
It will reach the closest point of its journey past Earth tomorrow and you can watch live footage of the asteroid zooming by on The Virtual Telescope Project website.
Good thing we’re not dinosaurs! Asteroids are as attracted to them as tornadoes are to trailer parks!
On another note, the 8.5 ton Chinese Space Station will be hitting the Earth in the next few weeks. Unknown location at this time.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/06/chinas-tiangong-1-space-station-will-crash-to-earth-within-weeks
The Asteroid… Now yer talkin’!
Are we dead yet?
You all know in one dimension our entire solar system is going 12 miles per second. It is also traveling up at about 4.2 miles per second.
These numbers come from Stanford guys.
In other words we are moving really fast.
You guys that remember your Physics know MV and 1/2MV^2.
Little things going fast can really mess up your day.
Hey rellik, in space, which direction is “up”?
Peg,
Vectors I,J,K.
I tried to state something
rather complex simply, I just repeated
an article written by a Stanford
publication, they used the term up, rather
than the more mathematically
correct vectors.
Its the velocity squared thing. Double the mass , double the energy. double the velocity and the energy is quadrupled (2×2=4). It applies to frictional loss too. Used it a lot in fast and dirty power plant math.
It’s four times as far away as the moon for heaven’s sake.
Why is this news?
Let me know when one comes by that we can actually see with the naked eye.
Good grief….no telling how many times there have been asteroids bigger than this….closer than this…and we never heard a word about it.
It’s news because we gotta buy gold and freeze dried food and stuff because we’re scared of what it could do if it was actually real close.
Shucks I was hoping for one to hit Hollywierd or DC or shitcago, Detroit and or host of other places.
I was listening to a religious video earlier that said another planet used to exist between Mars and Jupiter. That planet was flung out of its natural orbit by some force and is now known as Niburu. Learn something new every day. Or not.
Tell me what a natural orbit is.
Venus rotates around the sun way before it
spins once on its axis.It also spins in the opposite direction from all the other planets.
Mercury spins so that only one side is always exposed to the sun.
Mars is dead, you want to go there knock yourself out. Radiation and solar winds will kill you.
We are weak and survive only because the earth is really special.
There is no Niburu.
rellik, what is the difference between “rotate” and “revolve”?
Peg,
Revolve is somewhat obsolete for planets and such.
Revolution/spin is a much better word to use.
I’m just an retired engineer/scientist,
not an astrophysicist.
The asteroid belt does not have all that much mass to it, from the numbers I have seen. Latest on Nubiru I have heard is that it is supposedly a part of a system with a dwarf sun, maybe a brown dwarf. Dual sun systems are actually very very common. Our system is one, according to some conspiracy theorists that have looked at large amounts of data. There are videos that clearly show the solar wind going backwards, and doing other things that would only be explained by the presence of a brown dwarf in our system. The theory is that the brown dwarf, discovered in the early 80s (There are even articles in public papers about it) is supposedly on approach and will be here soon. The chemtrails in part would be there to shield from extra radiation caused by the brown dwarf system. If this theory is correct, more natural events should start happening as it gets closer. Some people are pretty worried. Watch for potential interesting natural events starting as soon as this fall, if the brown dwarf is coming like some data suggests.
Tir,
You are crazy.
off subject
can you tell me how
to grow spinach, and keep
the pigs out of it?
Oh, please! Not yet another close encounter. I just can’t take it anymore.
I feel like I’m living in a universe made up of incompetents, like God and his Angels are the “Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
I know I’m a minimizer, but let’s start with some basics. The Earth’s surface is about 71% oceans.
More than a 2 in 3 chance any space debris is gonna hit water.
How much of a Buckingham Palace Asteroid (if it were to hit us) makes it to the surface ?
How much asteroidite surviving does it take to produce a Tsunami that threatens life and property ?
Don’t want to see any hit us, but I think unless it was an extinction level piece of space crap, individually we have way more pressing attention items than asteroids.
<bb
Dammit…
One big splash in the pond. Regardless unlike the man man stuff that can be undone (abet with extreme difficulty) there is nothing one can do about this. Your analysis is thought provoking.
I’m doing the same as I do – getting up tomorrow, having a couple of smokes, a couple of cups of coffee, feed the cat and getting going to work. Got a fair job come in today for tomorrow and glad to have it. If some damned space rock strikes, ……. not much I can do about it anyway. As I’ll be on the Gulf Coast working on a networking issue on one fine-ass yacht….. It ought to be one hell of a wave that’ll be the last thing I see. Cool. That’d be a cool way to go.
Not everything is frightening. Why can’t this be presented as news without turning it into something awful. It could effect tides a tiny bit. Very little mass. The greater the mass, the greater the gravitational effect. The moon has a significant effect on ocean tides (waves).
_
Surprised he ain’t running the “One Doctor Believes The Moon Will Leave Earth’s Orbit Soon” story, or an advertiser that is selling turn water into fuel pills.
WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
Cool! Direct hit please,,,,,
It’s not a bird. It’s not a plane.
This just in: President Donald Trump has been colluding with the astroid.
People them talking about asteroids with more power than a nuke is cause for concern. All they gotta do is drop the bomb and say we miscalculated the asteroids path. This is a way to cull the masses without accountability. When they start talking about asteroids aliens and ufos look out.
I guess if it hits then it must have been in God’s plan to reset earth.
And just how, Mr. sensationalist, yellow journalist, is this rock “potentially” hazardous?
Short answer: It’s not and never was. Unless it suddenly decides to defy Newtonian physics and take a hard left after passing the Moon.
More and more “scientific” organizations are loosing all of their scientific credibility because of this type of attention getting hysterics.
Still waiting; how many times have we heard this before?
WERE ALL GOIN TO DIE!!
bb in GA, thank you for a little clarity and sanity amidst all the doomer reports. I like the people with the “We’re all gonna die!” stuff, too, I like the humor angle as well. We probably would all do well to just calmly look at the data, and make good decisions, if needed, and breathe normally. I am fond of not being greatly disturbed by anything, it’s a habit I have always cultivated in order to think clearly.
if you think nasa is real then your really in trouble
Shawn, if you think grammar isn’t important, they YOU’RE really in trouble. Your is possessive. You’re is a contraction of you are. If you can’t read and write your own language, how are you ever going to convince anyone that a multi-billion dollar National Air and Space Administration is fake?