Get Ready for the Space Rock!

[Duper]

Looks like we're going to have a near miss ... or near hit ... or whatever ... on Friday.

2012 DA14 is estimated at 50m in size weighing in at 180K tons and will pass the earth within geosynchronous orbit.

Wiki Info

NASA Picture of the Day

[Isaac]

I don't mean to science on you, but it's a fact that if it were it made of bacon it would be a meatier.

[sdfgeoff]

That is irrefutable logic.

[Duper]

I don't mean to science on you, but it's a fact that if it were it made of bacon it would be a meatier.

Hm.. that brings up and important question....

[Alter-Fox]

Would it be fried enough to eat by the time it hits the ground?
BTW, what part of the planet will it be passing by? I've never got to see a meteor shower for real before. And I've this feeling it may be the cause of one.

[Top Gun]

Would it be fried enough to eat by the time it hits the ground?
BTW, what part of the planet will it be passing by? I've never got to see a meteor shower for real before. And I've this feeling it may be the cause of one.

No, meteor showers are caused by the Earth passing through trails of debris left by comets. A single fairly-small rock like this wouldn't leave such a trail.

[Alter-Fox]

Ok.
But would an asteroid made of bacon of that size be fried enough to eat by the time it hit the ground? This question must be answered and seriously overcooked by the atmosphere.

[Duper]

Here's a pretty cool link.

http://www.space.com/19733-asteroid-201 ... y-faq.html

[roncli]

Reminds me of this.

[sdfgeoff]

Bump it into orbit and mine it.

[Krom]

Well, looks like bits and pieces of this one that nobody could see (too small) got a little closer than expected:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-575 ... rning-sky/

[Duper]

Ya know Krom, that occurred to me too, but the talking heads seem quick do dismiss that. I wonder if we'll see more over the next week or so.

[Tunnelcat]

How do the talking heads even know? They can't see something that small. I say it's too much of a coincidence that a large asteroid does a close flyby, and it just "happens" that a smaller meteor crashes down at the same time. The odds seem much greater that there was a bunch of debris following in the same orbit as that of the asteroid.

[Duper]

Well, i didn't mean to imply I thought they were right..

It's not surprising that "they" would throw that kinda thing out there.

On a side note, I read where some Russian official (part of the nationalist party iirc) was blaming it on the Americans and it being a new weapon. ...wth?!?

[Krom]

Of course if they determine that it came from a different angle/trajectory, then I'd have to agree that it was just cosmic coincidence that it happened today.

Hopefully given the number of videos that show this coming in, they will be able to figure out where exactly the cameras were and then triangulate the meteors trajectory, which should be able to absolutely confirm or deny if this was debris from 2012 DA14 or not.

I was also amused by the extremists claiming it was a new American weapon. If only it were true, it would be awesome "Behold our new weapon, we call it: METEOR RAIN!".

[sdfgeoff]

Meteor Rain: Sounds like some super-power from one of those old 2D fighting games....

I also considered the same thing, so if anyone can show me a comparison of where the Russian meteor and the DA14 came from, I will be most interested.

[Tunnelcat]

My bad. They could tell which way the meteor came from based on it's trajectory and sensor information. It's not related to the asteroid's passing, although it is one hell of a coincidence. And they've now upgraded the size of the thing to 10,000 tons!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aster ... 30215.html

Part of it left a nice round hole in a frozen lake.

[Krom]

Apparently the Russian meteor was moving from north to south while 2012 DA14 was moving from south to north so they are completely unrelated other than the timing of it.

But yeah, it was a big one alright. It is definitely a good thing the bulk of it exploded so high in the air, if it had come in steeper and exploded in the lower atmosphere it could have been a lot worse than a couple thousand injuries mostly from breaking glass... As ridiculous as it sounds, they were very fortunate. Its pretty scary really, only a small difference in the angle changes it from breaking windows to instead outright flattening the entire city.

It seems the universe is not without a sense of irony: On the same day many eyes were turned to observe one asteroid we detected making the closest flyby we knew of, another fairly large asteroid actually hit the atmosphere before we knew about it. Just goes to show, while we are getting better at detecting asteroids every day, there is still much work to be done.

[sigma]

it is necessary to recognize that we can't not only prevent falling on the earth, but we can't predict, notice and calculate a trajectory for definition of a place of falling at all and much larger meteorite, for example for evacuation of inhabitants. Well on mine that this meteor fell after all not on December 21. Otherwise victims would be much more, irrespective of the area of its falling... This video is shot from distance of 750 kilometers from Chelyabinsk:

[sigma]

Chelyabinsk meteorite fragments up close. The largest one found to date weighs 1 kilogram.
locals already sell some splinters =)

[Foil]

Very cool, sigma, thank you!

[Isaac]

Trying to profit off a meteorite seems kinda meteorwrong.