reedef t1_jdo52pd wrote on March 25, 2023 at 9:37 PM

Reply to comment by sithelephant in [NASA on Twitter] Newly-discovered asteroid 2023 DZ2 will pass Earth more than 100,000 miles (161,000 km) away–about half the distance to the Moon–making its close approach at 3:51 p.m. EDT (12:51 p.m. PDT) by ICumCoffee

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

OramaBuffin t1_jdoegks wrote on March 25, 2023 at 10:49 PM

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.

reedef t1_jdp1shr wrote on March 26, 2023 at 1:44 AM

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.