A massive asteroid estimated to be double the size of a Boeing 747 is headed toward a close approach with Earth next week.
Asteroid 2016 NF23 is expected to skim past us on August 29 at just over 3 million miles away, or about 13 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
The huge space rock is traveling more than 20,000 miles per hour (32,400 km/h) and is considered to be a âpotentially hazardousâ object given its proximity â but, its trajectory should see it soar safely by in the early days of September.
By pure coincidence, the article by Seth Baum was published just 5 days after a small asteroid exploded over early warning Tule station in Greenland.
This paper studies the risk of collision between asteroids and Earth. It focuses on uncertainty in the human consequences of asteroid collisions, with emphasis on the possibility of global catastrophe to human civilization. A detailed survey of the asteroid risk literature shows that while human consequences are recognized as a major point of uncertainty, the studies focus mainly on physical and environmental dimensions of the risk. Some potential human consequences are omitted entirely, such as the possibility of asteroid explosions inadvertently causing nuclear war. Other human consequences are modeled with varying degrees of detail. Direct medical effects are relatively well-characterized, while human consequences of global environmental effects are more uncertain. The latter are evaluated mainly in terms of a global catastrophe threshold, but such a threshold is deeply uncertain and may not even exist. To handle threshold uncertainty in asteroid policy, this paper adapts the concept of policy boundaries from literature on anthropogenic global environmental change (i.e., planetary boundaries). The paper proposes policy boundaries of 100 m asteroid diameter for global environmental effects and 1 m for inadvertent nuclear war. Other policy implications include a more aggressive asteroid risk mitigation policy and measures to avoid inadvertent nuclear war. The paper argues that for rare events like large asteroid collisions, the absence of robust data means that a wide range of possible human consequences should be considered. This implies humility for risk analysis and erring on the side of caution in policy.
A two-ton rock from the depths of space just plunged into the Pacific Ocean, and researchers want to find it. Fortunately, an oceanic research vessel is nearby, and itâs ready to deploy its high-tech to aid in the search. The Nautilus contains sophisticated sensors and two remote-controlled submarines that can scour the seafloor for fragments.
This asteroid flyby was so close it was about halfway between the Earth and Moon. Howâd we miss THAT? #SCINow
An asteroid approximately the size of a football field flew close by Earth only a day after it was first spotted this weekend. This near miss is a perfect example of an argument Iâve been making for some time: These are the asteroids we should worry about, not the so-called potentially hazardous rocks being tracked by NASA and periodically hyped by panicked headlines.
NASA scientists first observed the asteroid, now called 2018 GE3, on April 14, according to a database. It ventured as close as halfway the distance between Earth and the Moon, and was estimated to be between 47 meter and 100 meters in diameter (~150 and 330 feet). This is smaller than the asteroids governed by the NASA goal, which is to track 90 percent of near-Earth objects larger than 150 meters (~460 feet) in diameter. Nevertheless, it still could have caused a lot of damage if it had hit Earth.
If you read tabloids or Google news headlines, you probably hear about âpotentiallyhazardousasteroidsâ all the time. But, like weâve said before, those are not the asteroids you need to worry about. Potentially hazardous asteroids are those that NASA has determined could possibly hit the planet in the distant future, generally those within 20 lunar distances of Earth and 140 meters in diameter or larger.
In its early life, the Earth would have been peppered nearly continuously by asteroids smashing into our young planet. These fiery collisions made our world what it is today. It may seem like things have changed since then, given the vast assortment of life and wide blue oceansâand things have indeed changed. At least in some respects. However, Earth still receives thousands of tons of matter from space, but this is in the form of microscopic dust particles (as opposed to recurrent, energetic collisions).
Fortunately, in modern times, a large asteroid colliding with the surface of the Earth happens only very rarely. Nevertheless, it does happen from time to time.
As most are probably already aware, it is widely believed that an asteroid initiated the dinosaursâ extinction some 65 million years ago. And more recently, the Russian Chelyabinsk meteor hit our planet in February of 2013. It entered at a shallow angle at 60 times the speed of sound. Upon contact with our atmosphere, it exploded in an air burst. The size of this body of rock (before it burned up and shattered) is estimated to be around 20 meters (across) and it weighed some 13,000 metric tons.
Humanityâs brutal and bellicose past provides ample justification for pursuing settlements on the moon and Mars, Elon Musk says.
The billionaire entrepreneur has long stressed that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species â a giant leap that would render us much less vulnerable to extinction.
Human civilization faces many grave threats over the long haul, from asteroid strikes and climate change to artificial intelligence run amok, Musk has said over the years. And he recently highlighted our well-documented inability to get along with each other as another frightening factor. [The BFR: SpaceXâs Mars Colony Plan in Images].
Recent headlines have contained lots of asteroid-nuking talk. Thereâs a team of Russian scientists zapping mini asteroids in their lab, and supposedly NASA is thinking about a plan that would hypothetically involve nuking Bennushould it threaten Earth in 2135.
Itâs true that NASA is drafting up ideas on how one might nuke an incoming asteroid, a theoretical plan called HAMMER, or the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response, as weâve reported. But scientists probably wonât need to use such a response on the âEmpire State Building-sizedâ asteroid 101955 Bennu, which is set to pass close to Earth in 2135. Diverting such a threat could be much, much easier.
âEven just painting the surface a different color on one half would change the thermal properties and change its orbit,â Michael Moreau, NASAâs OSIRIS-REx Flight Dynamics System Manager, told Gizmodo. That would involve literally sending a spacecraft to somehow change the color of some of the asteroid.
Thereâs lots we donât know about asteroids just yet, which is why NASA has sent the probe OSIRIS-REx toward Bennu. This mission aims to scoop up and return a sample of the rock in 2023.
There is a minuscule chance, around 1 in 2,700 odds, that Bennu will strike Earth in 2135, reports the Washington Post. The rock isnât big enough to end humanity, but it could cause some major damage. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will study the rock more, and NASA will continue to collect data to either rule out the chance of an impact or increase the odds.
But donât worry about Bennu yet. Should the odds of a Bennu strike grow too high, the laws of physics will allow for a much easier solution than nuking. We could just splash it with some paint.
The sun pelts everything in the solar system with a slew of tiny particles, for example. This imparts a little bit of pressure. These particles are of no consequence to our own orbit, since Earth is incredibly massive, but Bennu weighs only around 13 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Thatâs very light, comparatively. Given the 120 years or so weâve got and the amount of distance Bennu has left to travel before its nearby approach, if scientists could make some of it more susceptible to the solar radiation, that would slightly alter its path enough that it would miss us. Doing so would require changing part of its surface so it absorbs more radiationâfor example, by covering one side of it with paint. Scientists first need to better study its orbit around the sun to determine the best course of action.
All that is to say, as usual, weâre not about to be hit by the giant asteroid in the headlines.
There are asteroids we need to worry about, of course. But as weâve reported before, weâre not tracking them. The government has only required that NASA track asteroids larger than a football field or so. Something smaller could go under the radar and cause significant local damage without the 120 years of warning Bennu has afforded us.
The thought of nuking asteroids makes for great science fiction. But instead, you should spend more time upset that we donât know what smaller asteroids are threatening us, rather than worry about the ones scientists are tracking that could be diverted more easily.
