Everybody duck!

Sparks

Seen on Major News About Minor Objects:

Just as A/CC was closing up the day's news, a little after 5pm MST (0000 UTC), word came that near-Earth object observers with night skies were swinging their telescopes around to watch the progess of the closest-ever observed flyby of an asteroid. All calculations are that there is NO danger of impact. And, even if there was a possibility, this object is so small it probably would self-destruct very high in the atmosphere.

MPEC 2004-F24 issued at 2355 on March 17th UT announces 2004 FH and shows without comment that this object will fly past Earth at 0.0004 AU tomorrow night — 15.6% of the distance to the Moon, or a bit more than 59,800 km. (37,150 miles). Based on a rough estimate from its brightness, it is tiny — on the order of 25 meters/yards wide.

The previously closest recorded flyby, according to the IAU Minor Planet Center's Closest Approaches page, was at 0.00056 AU = 84,000 km. = 52,000 miles by 2003 SQ222 last September 27th.

25 metres - that's about enough to do a fair relocation on a medium-sized city, if it's composition was right (i.e. metal rather than the rock-or-ice that they're assuming it is when they say it'd burn up), and it was spotted 24 hours from closest approach.
That and the recent keeping quiet of astronomers who discovered an asteroid whose initial hour of observations gave it a decent chance of actually hitting us (and given it's size, doing a lot of damage) ought to make you a little more nervous, no?

Glad to have brightened your day

GuanYin

I've read before that the odds of us spotting an extinction level object early enough to do anything about it are roughly half to the odds of us being hit by such an object in any given lifetime.

That made me nervous!

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/near_miss_asteroid_2004_fh.html?1832004


Any thing known about the body itself ?

amen

there was a closer fly by
late sixteies/early seventies

it skimmed the atmosphere
some guys caught it on film
its on discovery every now and again

LastIrishMonkey

if that was coming direct for earth what the hell could we do about it we have no plan of action ! or do we ?

dgarrad

As far as I know there's no real plan of action. We seem to rely on our atmosphere protecting us from most things, but that won't be much good for large objects. Somebody would probably suggest trying to nuke any large asteroids that came towards us, but that more than likely wouldn't help much, and that's even if we could get a large enough bomb to the asteroid.

I think for know we just REALLY hope nothing comes towards us! :dunno:

Capt'n Midnight

Contary to popular belief Nukes don't vaporise things. On a TV documentary (poject orion?) one guy explained that he found most of the parts of the steel tower used for the first A-Bomb test (trinity?)

Also there is a chance that the object will be a "dirty snowball", Icebergs are nuisence - you can't blow them up - all you get is a crater and some steam - they don't shatter , you can't melt them by covering with carbon - as soon as it starts melting the carbon washes off.

Places like NORAD and deep mines would survive a KT impact and nuclear power would survive a nuclear winter (iceland have geothermal greenhouses too)

Of course a really big hit would send shockwaves that would liquify the crust.

albertw

Originally posted by LastIrishMonkey
if that was coming direct for earth what the hell could we do about it we have no plan of action ! or do we ?

this one was pretty small 25meters or so I read. So if it was to hit, then evacuate the area, and fid a good vantage point to view from.

Cheers,
~Al
--
www.irishastronomy.org

Sparks

We don't have a plan for dealing with a large asteroid on a collision course. We don't even have that much of a plan for spotting it, and since asteroids don't emit light, it's tough to spot the ones we do spot.

There are several theories on how to defend against it, but they all depend on adaquate warning and the capability to go meet the body in interplanetary space a long way out, neither of which we have. Plans range from dropping dust on one side of it, thus absorbing more heat, thus causing outgassing which would alter the course of the asteroid, to doing similar things with nuclear weapons (like project orion, but with a large rock, you set off the device on one side and get some delta-v in the other direction, thus changing it's course), right down to actually destroying the rock by using a large solar collector to melt it to slag.

Thing is, we can't do any of those right now, and the only thing we could do, firing a nuclear warhead at an asteroid shortly before impact, would be the worst thing to do as instead of a single large hit, you'd get a ducks-eye-view of a shotgun blast, with radioactive pellets....

Gleanndún

i think the idea os firing a missile at it (not the diversionary scenario) is precisely to break it up into smaller pieces, which would allow far more of the object to burn up (greater surface area to volume) which is a good idea. unless u end up with the previously mentioned outcome. Quack!>.<