quote:

a giant asteroid — dubbed “Apophis”

How big of a fella is he?

"Might be closer" is an understatement. According to the article, this 300' wide rock is going to pass within 20k miles of earth. It will pass within the orbit of some satellites. For frame of reference, the moon is ~225k miles.

I would think that at 20k miles, it would be considered a threat since they don't know exactly what it's going to do when it's within earth's gravitation influence.

quote:

According to the article, this 300' wide rock....

Also according to the article: "Known as asteroid 2006 QV89, the space rock, which has a diameter of 164 feet...."

All these articles- they're trying to scare people. Astronomers are trying to further justify their paycheck. The news media wants clicks, which translate into ad revenue.

It's just more fearmongering. There's no real danger, none at all.

When there's a real threat of such a catastrophe, we'll all know it.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:

quote:

a giant asteroid — dubbed “Apophis”

How big of a fella is he?

Asteroids of Apophis’ size, roughly 367 yards (340 meters) across, only come this close to Earth approximately once every 7,500 years. This rarity presents an invaluable opportunity for scientific exploration and understanding.

20,000 miles is within the Clarke Belt of geostationary orbiting satellites

potentially communications satellites, military surveillance, weather and others - the 'Belt' is pretty full

I wonder if we will get a discount on our cell phone bill if Verizon loses a few birds

Space is mostly empty space.

The danger from a really large impact won’t be from a known body; those are tracked with great accuracy. Apophis is one of these known objects- by the time it becomes potentially hazardous, we will either have stupided ourselves out of existence or have the tech to stop it. A global killer like the one that finished off the dinosaurs is almost impossible to miss detecting.

It’s the intermediate sized ones like the one that exploded over Russia that are the wild card for regional/city busting. As was the case over Chelyabinsk, they can be a complete surprise. That one was only about 60’ across and exploded about 100,000 feet above the ground and caused tremendous damage. It released the energy of between 500-600 kilotons, or approximately 26-33 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That is a big boom and with little or no warning would be devastating.

Our trusted news sources have such a good track record for accurate, precise predictions... I wasn't worried until they said, "However, it's nothing to lose sleep over."

Work has been such a shit-show the last six months that an asteroid impact in my front lawn would seem like an improvement.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
All these articles- they're trying to scare people. Astronomers are trying to further justify their paycheck. The news media wants clicks, which translate into ad revenue.

It's just more fearmongering. There's no real danger, none at all.

When there's a real threat of such a catastrophe, we'll all know it.

Yes it will be announced and widely known. And it will be a surprise. And there will be no way to stop it. And depending on the physics involved related to the object, and how it affects areas regionally or globally, people will suffer to some degree, perhaps catastrophically, to various scales depending, and possibly worse. On the other hand, from what I have read about so far, it seems that volcanic activity has been responsible for much larger changes than impacts from space over geological epochs, and more recently, the unresolved disappearance of Homo Neanderthalensis because of his limited range compared to other Homo species. But if you're near ground zero for either type, you're screwed.

Statistically I agree that there's no real danger as you say. But at some point it will probably be over for Homo anything along with a whole lot of other common life.

One simple fact in all this...

We are all going to die at some point in time.

This sounds like a pitch that Mr. Haney did on green acres to sell meteor insurance.