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Early asteroid warning

Posted at 4:37 PM on September 27, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Fresh Eye on the Radio (with Mary Lucia)

If there were an asteroid heading this way, how much notice would you want? The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System reports that an "object" about 150 feet apart across is going to come within 4 million miles of earth next month. That's a big miss, right? So how come it's classified as a "potentially hazardous object?" Could forecasts be off by 4 million miles?

The object was discovered on September 16th. We're hearing about it now.

Ruminations on this and other news of the day in today's chat with Mary Lucia of the Current.

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Comments (7)

I think you mean "across" not "apart".

In context, 4 million miles is pretty far, since the moon is 250,000 miles away. There were a couple smaller asteroids that passed well within the earth-moon distance just last month.

Posted by bc | September 27, 2010 4:54 PM

That's what I thought, which is why it's odd they didn't put it in the "The Gophers will win a football game before this baby hurts us" category.

Posted by Bob Collins | September 27, 2010 5:11 PM

A fun twitter feed if you want to feel those earth ending nilly willies every couple weeks.

Link

Kinda breathe a sigh of relief everytime I see one miss us.

Posted by gml4 | September 27, 2010 6:01 PM

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog has an entry about this very topic today. According to Phil, the asteroid won't likely be in our neck of the woods unti 2098, and the chances of it actually hitting us is very low.

Posted by Dave | September 28, 2010 9:02 AM

So my take away from this story is...

Bob is still doing the 4:20 news update on the current.

Posted by bj | September 28, 2010 9:04 AM

// until 2098,

Likely just before kickoff the next time the Gophs are in the Rose Bowl, then.

Posted by Bob Collins | September 28, 2010 9:10 AM

You're assuming that the Gophers will still be a Division 1 football team at that point.

Posted by Dave | September 28, 2010 9:37 AM

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