Big Ass-teroid

Do you know how close we came on Monday to this?


Well, maybe not exactly this, but an asteroid that is esitmated to be between 69 and 154 feet across came within 49 000 miles of Earth yesterday. Now I know that sounds pretty small for an asteroid but a similar sized asteroid hit Siberia in 1908 and it decimated 800 square miles of forest. Imagine what it would have done if it hit a populated area.

I also realize that 49 000 miles away doesn't sound so bad but on a cosmic scale that's frickin close. Most stories I've read have tried to describe it by saying it's about one fifth of the way to the moon, or that it's twice as high as some communication sattelites. I think those analogies are still too much for most people (including myself) to wrap their heads around.

So let's try to make it a little more relatable in more every day terms and distances. That 49 000 miles is about 6 times the diameter of the Earth. Say the average person is 5.5 feet, so 6 times that "diameter" is 33 feet. How would you feel if a bullet flew past you just 33 feet away? Pretty close, eh?

(Disclaimer: This analogy is probably still not that accurate, but it makes more sense than saying the asteroid came within one fifth of the distance to the moon.)

The next close call that scientists know about is in 2029 what an almost 900 foot wide object will pass within 20 000 miles of Earth. Please note that I said "the next close call that scientists know about". There are far more objects flying around out there than scientists can possibly know about. The likelihood is that if an asteroid hits us we won't have much time to do anything about it before it slams into us, does untold and irreparable damage to a sizable chunk of the planet and probably changes the very foundation of life as we know it.

Sleep tight!

(Amanda sent me this story this afternoon. I think secretly she wanted to blog about it but she didn't want to geek up her blog with sciencey stuff. So, I dedicate this to her.)