Asteroids on the starboard bow

Yeah, thanks Dave. I'll be setting up the telescopes for a bit of astro-photography, with any luck. Since here is one of the better places to observe it.

 

We should get the 'mericans to blow it out of the sky! :-D j/k lol

17k miles, seems so far away but in reality with all the physics etc of planets, that's a little close for comfort.

 

The condensed fact blurb.-

It's 45 meters in diameter weighs 130,000 metric tons. 2.5 megatons if TNT would be the yield if it hit earth, enough to level and entire city or hundreds of square miles, an object like this hits every 1200 years.

Thank god we have smart people to let us know how much danger we're in:-D

 

Well yeah, they have to warn us of these things, otherwise we might concentrate on things they don't want us thinking about :-D

One day, I will be a "They" :-D

 

Battle stations....EVERYBODY PANIC :eek

Now that this headline is out of the way from the size of the asteroid it will only be Armageddon if it hits your town but more likely to splashdown in the ocean.

Hmmm new headline Asteroid Causes Tsunami......EVERYBODY PANIC :eek


...and so goes the news roflmao

 

Wow, closer than some of our own satellites. That's freeking close alright. I'll be sure to buy a lottery ticket for the day before. With my luck, I'll win just before the news that "they" have miscalculated and we can all bend over and kiss it goodbye. The world goes into a panic, the lottery offices are pillaged, the rock sails by without incident, and I'm left holding a winning ticket with nothing to show for it.

 

2.5MT? pfft, I fart bigger explosions than that :-D

Just because I read a lot on explosives etc. For those who don't know... the Little Boy Bomb dropped on Hiroshima was around 13-15KT, so 2.5MT is approximately 165 Little Boy's.... yes 165 Nuclear bombs equivalent of Hiroshima... are ya scared yet? :-D

But having said that, it's much smaller than the Tunguska event of 1908 which was supposedly 15MT.
Still, anyone interested in big bangs, the Tsar Bomba was detonated by the Russians and it's yield was ... wait for it... 57 Megatons!... can you say "Are you frickin' kidding me!!" Village 55km's away was flattened and buildings damaged as far away as Norway... As pontless as it was and the damage to the planet etc was horrendous... it's an awe inspiring amount of energy, the explosions itself was around 40 miles wide.

So yeah, I just felt like saying that :-D

 

I'm fascinated too atomic weapons was the subject of my high school English coursework dissertation:-D I recommend Trininity and beyond the atomic bomb movie narrated by Bill shatner if you haven't seen it-

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114728/

The Tsar bomb could have been a lot worse it was actually one of the cleanest nuclear bomb ever detonated with the most fissionable fuel turned into energy. The original bomb was designed to be 100MT but due to atmospheric pollution they removed a stage and replaced the nuclear fuel with lead, if they hadn't it would have increased the atmospheric radiation caused by previous nuclear testing by one third.

I always wondered why bombs were never made larger with more stages added and was surprised to learn it isn't a designed problem, larger bombs would simply expel their energy up toward space instead of across the earth, wasting the extra power. The same goes for large asteroid impacts the initial explosion doesn't cause the most death, the death is caused by the dust blown into the atmosphere which blocks out the sun.

 

This is so cool. I have emailed all links I can find to my dad, whose main hobby is astronomy. So he probably knows all about it already, but now he knows I want pictures! LOL

 

Is it just me thinking it, or has there been a bunch of these "near hits" the past several years? Portents and omens, perhaps?

 

Upon review of your file, I note that your membership is still in "pending" status. You have moved up the list a bit recently, so yes, someday you will likely be a Stonecutter too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZI_aEalijE&feature=player_detailpage

 

Which is why they were usually detonated above the ground level to increase the effectiveness.