Then the bugs missed Buenos Aires by a large margin.
Russia reports amazing meteorite strike
- Thread starter jmc247
- Start date
Then the bugs missed Buenos Aires by a large margin.
Correct. Since the asteroid is approaching from the south, any smaller object associated with it would've hit the Southern Hemisphere. Russia is "behind" the Earth's curve from its POV. So it's impossible that this meteoroid could've been a moonlet of the asteroid or a fragment traveling along the same trajectory. This is just one hell of a humongous coincidence.
But hopefully it'll drive home the urgency of developing an effective asteroid defense system for the planet.
Well, yeah. I mean, have you seen the X-Files?!
What comet? The approaching body is a near-Earth asteroid made of stony material. It orbits close enough to the Sun that any ice would've long since evaporated away. Comets come from further out in the Solar system, past the "snow line."
And of course by last night we had 2012 DA14's orbit calculated precisely enough to know there was zero chance of it hitting the Earth. Something would've had to push it rather suddenly off course in order to make that happen.
Otherwise, as a rule, there's some merit to your observation. More than 3/4 of the Earth's surface is water, so the odds are heavily in favor of asteroids impacting or exploding over water. But the odds of an impact over Russia aren't quite as great. Certainly it's got a larger area than any other single country, but it's only a bit over 1/9 the total land area of the planet, so the odds overall are in favor of a land impact somewhere other than Russia.
It's interesting to see how my post was taken since last night. No, I don't think it was launched, and no I don't think it's part of a fleet of asteroids that are going to strike us.
I was going more for the fact that in science a lot of discoveries start with someone saying "gee, that's funny". The coincidence of this event definitely falls in that territory and may lead us to discover additional knowledge about our solar system.
I was going more for the fact that in science a lot of discoveries start with someone saying "gee, that's funny". The coincidence of this event definitely falls in that territory and may lead us to discover additional knowledge about our solar system.
New headline: Scientists discover that our solar system is TRYING TO KILL US!
I'd like to know more.
Apparently this is the largest space impact since 1908 and the most injuries from an impact in recorded history.
I'd recently learned about this dash-cam phenomenon in Russia, due to so many accidents taking place where each person claims the other was at fault. The dash-cams help make it clearer as to who was really at fault. I wonder if in the long run it'll bring a little more order to their roads.
Anyway, it meant for a terrific spread of videos capturing this meteorite impact event. Really fantastic and unprecedented. RussiaToday has a decent montage in one 2.5 minute video.
What's really alarming is that the asteroid expected to pass by Earth this afternoon at some mere 17,000 miles away would have hit the Earth if our orbit around the sun was just 15 minutes behind! That's so damned marginal it's scary as all hell. Who's to say that those 15 minutes will be made up on the next fly-by, making it an impact instead some 30 years from now?
Anyway, it meant for a terrific spread of videos capturing this meteorite impact event. Really fantastic and unprecedented. RussiaToday has a decent montage in one 2.5 minute video.
What's really alarming is that the asteroid expected to pass by Earth this afternoon at some mere 17,000 miles away would have hit the Earth if our orbit around the sun was just 15 minutes behind! That's so damned marginal it's scary as all hell. Who's to say that those 15 minutes will be made up on the next fly-by, making it an impact instead some 30 years from now?
Seeing this thing hurtling through the sky, flaring up like it did, with visible flames in the middle of the sky(!), then that humungous boom?! I would not blame anyone for wondering if it was an attack or the end of the world.
That sonic boom was HUGE! I've heard some, mostly when I was younger but also some with the shuttle landing in the desert, and they were never that loud. What causes the volume? Size? Speed?
That sonic boom was HUGE! I've heard some, mostly when I was younger but also some with the shuttle landing in the desert, and they were never that loud. What causes the volume? Size? Speed?
Didn't take a week.I told my mom last night if the comet hit it would hit water or Russia.
They always hit Russia, next week Russia will come out and say it's the USA's fault.
Not to mention great video fodder for Tosh.0. I swear to God, the most insane people in the world are Australians and Russians. They make our rednecks look tame by comparison.
Science is to say. Orbits can be calculated very precisely, and there's only one chance in 4.7 million that 2012 DA14 will hit the Earth within the next century.
A friend of mine whose husband is an asteroid expert pointed out on Facebook that close flybys and atmospheric explosions like this happen every single day -- it's just that most of the explosions are smaller or happen over unpopulated areas, and most of the flybys are by smaller objects that don't get as much advance notice. The coincidence is not that these things happened within a day of each other, since that's actually pretty commonplace; the coincidence is that they both got so much notice.
What startled me was the videos from those dash cams. This huge blinding light is flying overhead, sometimes seeming to head right for the car, and you don't hear the drivers panicking or see them veering off the road or anything -- they just keep driving along normally while the world might be ending in front of them, for all they know. Are Russians really that fatalistic?
Reports say it wasn't just a sonic boom; the meteoroid (which has been named KEF-2013, by the way) exploded in the atmosphere.
Oh yes, I am aware of that... we have all kinds of debris entering the atmosphere every day. It's a wonder that our satellites and international space station haven't suffered more damage than they have at this point. Even a pea sized piece of rock flying at 50k mph can easily rip a hole right through the metal walls of our crafts, and there's nothing you can do about it (no laser tracking computer that can pulverize the debris before it hits).
I also understand that orbits can be calculated precisely, however there is always a margin for error when it comes to passing objects. We can't accurately predict how other gravitational forces will affect the object, including this present passing. As Sojourner pointed out, the asteroid will experience a change to its path due to the gravitation forces from Earth on this fly-by. They may be able to predict if it will bend it in such a way as to bring it closer or further away on the next pass, but I don't believe they can make an accurate estimate on the exact distance it will pass next time. Even this time, there was open speculation on whether or not a satellite might be damaged since it passed inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. If measurements were truly precise, they would have been confident to say there was no possibility of a satellite being damaged.
Relatively speaking, for a passing object to fly within the ring of geosynchronous satellites is EXTREMELY CLOSE compared to the orbit of the moon. I wonder how much advance warning we'll have with a larger object, say of 3x the size. Something like that could cause a massive disruption to our environment and extensive damage to life and property if it landed in a densely populated area.
