Asteroid to pass closer to Earth than the moon

An aircraft carrier-sized asteroid, a little over four football fields in diameter, is heading toward Earth and it will pass closer to our planet than the moon.

NASA has classified the asteroid as a “potentially hazardous object” and it will pass to within .8 lunar distances on November 8. It is the closest approach to Earth of an object this size in over 30 years.

What would happen if an asteroid this size crashed into Earth?

It would result in a 4,000 megaton blast, magnitude 7.0 earthquake and - if it falls into the ocean - could cause a 70-foot high tsunami within 60 miles of the crash site, according to an expert at Purdue University.

However, this space rock poses no threat of an Earth collision for at least the next 100 years, according to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program.

So what’s the big deal?

Encounters of objects this large this close to our planet won't happen again until the year 2028 when an asteroid will pass near Earth to within .6 lunar distances.

NASA plans to study the asteroid with the Goldstone radar antennas in California’s Mojave Desert. Goldstone antennas are very sensitive radio telescopes used to investigate quasars, radar mapping of planets and comets.

Scientists plan to reconstruct the shape of the asteroid with a resolution as fine as 13 feet (4 meters) using the antennas. Several days of high resolution operations are also scheduled at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

It will also provide a rare opportunity for amateur astronomers to directly observe an asteroid with optical telescopes.

The asteroid will approach Earth from a sunward direction and it will be a daylight object until the time of its closest approach on November 8. The best time to see the asteroid will be after the hours of 4 pm EST (21:00 UTC).

We don't have any deep core drillers anymore because of the moratorium on offshore drilling! We're doomed!

They're just unemployed. If we send them to this asteroid, we're saving the world AND creating jobs. Woohoo!

The asteroid ends up striking earth because Greenpeace sued to stop the mission until an enviormental impact study could be completed.

Instead of drillers, lets send up propulsion specialists, put it into orbit around the earth, and save it for the next whacko dictator/tyrant we need to liberate a country from. Of course there may be some civilian casualties, but we seem to be okay with those lately.

Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 to as high as 30 megatons of TNT (21–130 PJ), with 10–15 megatons of TNT (42–63 PJ) the most likely—roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested on March 1, 1954, about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.

While based soundly on physics, your conclusion is incorrect.

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

This object did not strike the surface. Instead, friction from moving around within the Earth's atmosphere heated the object up. The different components of the object expanded at different rates (as different materials do when heated) and caused it to explode in mid-air.



There are other possible explanations for Tunguska besides the air burst of a large meteor, that just happens to be the most plausible. That it is plausible is what is most relevant here. Such large air bursts can and do happen, and they can be in the city-destroying nuclear weapon range. It is at this juncture that I should point out that Little Boy exploded a quarter of a mile in the air. It wasn't what most people would consider to be even remotely close to the ground.

My post was regarding the effectiveness of a meteor placed in orbit for causing large amounts of damage to the Earth, not its efficacy in eliminating dictators.

My post was regarding the effectiveness of a meteor placed in orbit for causing large amounts of damage to the Earth, not its efficacy in eliminating dictators.