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insufficientmind t1_jdnsk2e wrote

NASA also says this:

"Newly-discovered asteroid 2023 DZ2 will sail safely past Earth today. Asteroids pass our planet safely all the time, but a close approach by one of this size (140–310 ft, or 43–95 m) happens only about once per decade. (There is no known threat for at least the next 100 years.)"

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[deleted] t1_jdo9erh wrote

[deleted]

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censored_username t1_jdocx9y wrote

>This asteroid is about 100X smaller than the one that killed the dinosaurs

Additional note, it is 100x smaller in linear size, which puts it around the order of a million times lighter than the chicxulub asteroid.

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[deleted] t1_jdob19t wrote

isnt the size of this one comparable to the one that landed in russia a decade or so ago?

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[deleted] t1_jdobd49 wrote

[deleted]

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assassin5 t1_jdopod1 wrote

In which case it would be like dropping a nuke in New York, no biggie.

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binzoma t1_jdord9w wrote

yes, but the probability of it hitting a population centre is VERY low. most of the world is water. most of the remainder is land that is farm/forest/desert/tundra

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daveinpublic t1_jdov5du wrote

I feel like I’m in an echo chamber

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TheRealJuksayer t1_jdoxzq8 wrote

But it is big, but it won't hurt, but it could hurt, but the earth is big...

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hunnerbunner2000 t1_jdpvfvl wrote

yes, but the probability of it hitting a population centre is VERY low. most of the world is water. most of the remainder is land that is farm/forest/desert/tundra

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FQDIS t1_jdp4gt4 wrote

^echo ^chamber… ^echo ^chamber…

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Guses t1_jdonewp wrote

You guys know about Tunguska? It was thought to be only 56-foot-wide (50 m) asteroid. It flattened trees over 830 square miles when it burst in the air. That's flattening an entire area 28 miles by 28 miles. And that's on the lower end of the range for DZ2.

Could easily kill millions of people in an instant.

Kinda scary that there are objects like this that are floating around and that we only notice at the last minute.

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LowVacation6622 t1_jdnzd9i wrote

"...No 'known' threat..." Therein lies the rub

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GhostBurger12 t1_jdo0ns3 wrote

Why is it a rub?

It doesn't infer there is an unknown collision threat guaranteed to show up in the next 100 years.

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Icy-Conclusion-3500 t1_jdo1whn wrote

It’s mostly a little ironic to note since they JUST discovered this asteroid that is making a close approach

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youdubdub t1_jdo8wpn wrote

Based upon your username, I’m thinking you are predicting any potential collision would rather be with a comet.

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Rhaedas t1_jdoart8 wrote

It actually validates the claim. There is still no known threat in the next 100 years.

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Icy-Conclusion-3500 t1_jdobtce wrote

Yes, but it’s said in like a “don’t worry!” way, but clearly we haven’t found them all.

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Rhaedas t1_jdochbw wrote

We'll never find them all if you include ones that are perturbed from the outer parts of the system to fall inward. And we'll definitely not find ones in time without a better search and detection program. Relying on amateur astronomers and rare free time at the major telescopes, both only done at night, it pretty limited and why so many near passes are discovered after they do pass and not before.

I do wonder if there's any validity in Asimov's prologue for Rama, where Spaceguard uses a nuclear blast (neutron?) to generate a radar image of the system to map just about everything. Of course Rama was conveniently not in this scan.

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danielravennest t1_jdrd3al wrote

> And we'll definitely not find ones in time without a better search and detection program.

There are already dedicated telescopes like Atlas. A much bigger survey telescope is under construction, the Rubin Observatory. It is expected to increase discoveries by a factor of 10.

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Rhaedas t1_jdrlzvf wrote

Both impressive and the results of Atlas since operation shows it's doing a great job. A space-based telescope system would be able to do so much more, especially since it wouldn't have the limitations of only scanning the night sky that a ground one does. A key point - any impactor that is in a orbit similar to Earth's is that the last years of its path will be from the Sun side of the planet. The sooner we see anything and can calculate mass and vectors the sooner we can do any action that we might be able to do. Another key point - to be able to do anything like deflection we have to get to the object first long before its arrival, so knowing years in advance is crucial.

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Guses t1_jdonwwo wrote

>There is still no known threat

Known being the key word. We didn't know about this thing until it was on top of us.

Risks are low but the outcome could be really really bad.

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danielravennest t1_jdrc942 wrote

The search programs have found nearly all the 1 km+ size "potentially hazardous objects" (come within 5% of the Earth's orbit size). They are working on the 140 meter and up size (city killers).

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xaeru t1_jdoq41e wrote

What is the known threat past 100 years?

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danielravennest t1_jdres22 wrote

Unknown. This asteroid was only discovered a month ago. To make long-term predictions you need to know the current orbit precisely. It hasn't been watched long enough to do that yet. The close pass will help. They can use radar to get some very good measurements

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daveinpublic t1_jdovsub wrote

Can we see it when it passes by?

What direction should we look? What time?

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r0ckH0pper t1_jdp8rcn wrote

There is no identified murderer in Chicago who is known to kill anyone today. But, I do know that means nothing and that death is nigh.

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anon-eh-maus t1_jdplr50 wrote

Yet its happened multiple times in the last 5 years. Sus

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ICumCoffee OP t1_jdo4fgz wrote

Asteroid can be live tracked over here : https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids/#/asteroids/2023_dz2

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IS_THIS_POST_WEIRD t1_jdof88w wrote

I've used the Eyes orrery to track spacecraft like New Horizons and JWST but didn't know it could do asteroids, too!

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Hunt3dstorm t1_jdoddjn wrote

would be cool if earth was shown in this render!

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otter111a t1_jdoeu8a wrote

It is. From the perspective of the “camera” the earth Uranus are in a line. Just follow the orbital planes around

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aurumae t1_jdoahwd wrote

“Half the distance to the moon” makes it seem like this is a very close approach, and in relative terms it is.

But the distance between Earth and the moon is still mind-bogglingly huge. So big, that you could fit all the other planets in the solar system end-to-end between Earth and the moon and still have space to spare

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dreamchains t1_jdoav8e wrote

Not quite, it depends on the orientation of the planets (pole to pole/side to side) and the position of the moon. But that makes it even more interesting to me how close those numbers happen to be.

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MinniMemes t1_jdolves wrote

The operative word is could, as in, given the correct positioning, you COULD make this occur. It’s not saying “you will make this occur, given any possible positioning/rotation.”

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the_ladies_love_my t1_jdompyb wrote

Dreamchains was hoping for some community confirmation lmao. Obviously a half glass empty type of person.

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dreamchains t1_jdovhv9 wrote

Notice how you had to clarify that you COULD do it, but only given the correct positioning? That was literally the exact point of my comment lmao. I was just trying to add to a cool fact, not argue semantics.

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d_barbz t1_jdp286p wrote

He didn't need to clarify it until you misunderstood it.

If you wanted to add to a cool fact your sentence would have been better off starting with something along the lines of "And", "Also" or even "However" rather than something that's attempting to be contradictory like "Not quite".

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r0ckH0pper t1_jdp6w3g wrote

Um, please keep this theoretical. No experimenting. Please.

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dreamchains t1_jdpbeoa wrote

You clearly don't understand what "not quite" means, so not sure why you're being so pedantic. It's not contradicting anything. It's saying his comment was "not completely or entirely" (definition straight from google) true. Really don't understand why you guys feel the need to get so defensive on behalf of someone I wasn't even attacking.

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d_barbz t1_jdpey9h wrote

The same reason you spoke up in the first place mate. We're all a bunch of pedantic fucks

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MinniMemes t1_jdsmtcj wrote

The pedantry started with your comment. “Not quite” starts with a negation. There’s no need to negate something that was already true. You can clarify without negating. In fact, it’s much more fun that way. Share first, rather than using language that is ‘gatekeep-y’.

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dreamchains t1_jdt2f08 wrote

You clearly still don't know what "not quite" means, even though I literally just copy pasted it. How much more could I possibly spell it out?

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daveinpublic t1_jdovnx8 wrote

I still think half the distance to the moon sounds pretty close.

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portmantuwed t1_jdpig9p wrote

250k miles seems pretty accessible to me and not "mind-bogglingly huge". this sub regularly posts about jwst newest galaxy thats 13 billion light years away. a day or two ago had a long running joke about the distance between castor and pollux being like some quadrillion tennis courts or whatever

most americans will drive over 250k miles in their lifetime. if you've driven coast to coast you can imagine doing it 99 more times and how far that is. its so much more imaginable than a light year

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aurumae t1_jdppk9t wrote

My point was to illustrate that even though the moon is the closest thing to us in space the distances are still vast compared to the sizes of the planets themselves. The Earth and moon are often depicted as being practically on top of each other, but the distance between them is two orders of magnitude greater than the size of either body. Like I said the distance is so big that you could fit all the planets in the solar system between the Earth and the moon (though as someone pointed out, only at apogee). Of course, since the moon is the closest thing to us, other distances are going to be much more impressive, but the fact that you could drop a great big giant thing like Jupiter in between the Earth and the moon and for it not even to be a tight fit I found really helped me to get a sense of the distance.

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MyWALife t1_jdpprcw wrote

And not only that, I’ve seen the moon with my own eyes. I can definitely imagine, “halfway to that.”

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dreamchains t1_jdob9a5 wrote

Appreciate not being misleading with the title and calling it a "near miss" or whatever

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loosebolts t1_jdocf0f wrote

How long have we got? 3:51pm EDT is 7:31pm GMT so was this 3 hours ago so obviously it passed by already, or have I got my time conversions incorrect?

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noctem92 t1_jdof972 wrote

Correct, so this post was created an hour before it passed.

Edit: it's now at a distance of more than 190.000 km again

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loosebolts t1_jdogkgb wrote

I think that’s what confused me as the post time I saw on Apollo suggested it was posted after it had already passed :)

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sithelephant t1_jdnv7hw wrote

A fun number to remember is that a circle with the diameter of the lunar orbit is very close to 1/64th the radius of earth. This means the earth covers about 1/4000th of the area which an asteroid has to pass through if it gets within the lunar distance.

So, if it goes past at 1 lunar distance, you have a 1/4000 chance of a hit (if it was random). 1/4 lunar distance, 16/4000 (1/250).

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Nowbob t1_jdo9nhq wrote

>a circle with the diameter of the lunar orbit is very close to 1/64th the radius of earth

???

What am I missing here? The lunar orbit is MUUUUUCH larger than the radius of the earth isn't it?

Wouldn't the lunar orbit being 1/64 the radius of the earth mean that the moon is whizzing past just barely overhead?

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Peat02 t1_jdo3zaz wrote

Wouldn't this be based on the volume of the lunar diameter sphere and the percentage that the earth makes up of that volume rather than the diameter?

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za419 t1_jdo52fp wrote

We'd have to do some orbital mechanics on this one. Most things in the solar system are roughly coplanar on the ecliptic, so the real shape is probably a section of the sphere a few degrees wide.

Or we could probably just guess and multiply the space available by a substantial number, because even that section is going to be pretty tall compared to the Earth. Space is big.

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Monnok t1_jdodiq3 wrote

Your Earth-volume : lunar-orbit-volume ratio works for the likelihood of finding the asteroid inside or outside of the Earth at any given moment.

But we can assume the object has an entire path of moments passing straight through on [basically] a line. An asteroid “looking ahead” directly at the round perimeter of the Earth might briefly occupy some point “in front” of the Earth before collision… but that’s still a collision path. And it’s never gonna get to any points on the other side. What it “sees” just is a flat disc in a flat disc. It’s either heading through the empty part or not.

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DoctorProfessorTaco t1_jdornit wrote

I think you mean 64x the radius of the Earth, not 1/64 the radius.

The radius of the Earth is 6,378km, I don’t think you mean that a circle with the diameter of the lunar orbit is 1/64 of that, or about 100km.

Additionally, even if you mean 64x larger, it’s still not quite correct. The average diameter of the lunar orbit is 768,000km. 1/64 of that is 12,000km.

What you probably meant to say was the average radius of the lunar orbit is approximately equal to 64x the radius of Earth, or that the radius of Earth is about 1/64 the average radius of the lunar orbit.

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reedef t1_jdo52pd wrote

You also have to account for the fact that the earth itself attracts asteroids even if they're not heading 100% towards the earth, though I'm not sure how large of an effect that is at interplanetary speeds

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OramaBuffin t1_jdoegks wrote

Not very high, asteroids are moving very quickly in general. Swinging by the earth will just slightly bend its trajectory rather than anything resembling sucking it in.

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reedef t1_jdp1shr wrote

So I started researching and Wikipedia actually has a calculation on this and for an asteroid with hyperbolic excess velocity of 12.5 km/s the effective increase of the cross sectional impact area is 80%. Not x10 or anything but not insignificant either.

The impact is going to be larger than that for objects that approach the earth from nearby orbits.

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n21lv t1_jdog2rl wrote

Funny how OP decided to be helpful and provide an alternative timestamp (the one in parenthesis), but as a true American, chose another US/Canada-specific time zone instead of something like UTC :)

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Throwawaycuzawkward t1_jdo82my wrote

Space: We live in it. Some stuff happens.

It's cool enough to spend your whole life studying it, and if you're lucky it won't kill you.

Also time and dinosaurs. SCIENCE.

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r0ckH0pper t1_jdp72ri wrote

The dinosaurs said the same exact words ya know. Long ago. And now they don't .

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Throwawaycuzawkward t1_jdp7cs5 wrote

Heh, science WILL kill us, and we can't all be Aldous Huxley and die on a clinical amount of LSD, but we will all go the way of the dinosaurs.

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r0ckH0pper t1_jdp93u1 wrote

Legacy counts, so LSD or meteor are a far better story than what I've likely to encounter ..

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jeffinbville t1_jdonahs wrote

"(There is no known threat for at least the next 100 years.)"

Good to know!

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razgoull t1_jdoyqep wrote

We had an earthquake in my town exactly at the same time it passed close to earth. Strange huh 🤔

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nighthawke75 t1_jdoeqzb wrote

Just within range of Dr Nesbitt's defense array.

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r0ckH0pper t1_jdp8dq8 wrote

Propaganda and lies! This is BS. That DZ2 was discovered less than a month ago o Feb 27, 2023. To believe NASA reassurance is folly. They can't have ANY certainty of the next 100 (Earth) years when they can't see the flying bricks even a month before they could collide. There may be a similar one just 5 weeks away from destroying a city that is yet to be seen by humans. Sure, the odds are low and I'm not worried. But, don't believe if a word of that bull crap from NASA ...

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Fritoincognito t1_jdpl8op wrote

Is this the one that's about the size of 20 tuna?

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jojomott t1_jdpm7p4 wrote

^(i am not a math guy, but I think NASA just said there is a 1 in 10 chance that this asteroid is going to hit earth.)

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kungwingfuchun t1_jdpy08p wrote

Glad you could post two time zones but no date op.

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kimilil t1_jdo88fq wrote

I like how on Reddit only 1/6th of the globe mattered.

And how just 4 americans can censor me from reaching the rest 5/6th of the world.

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