{"id":303,"date":"2009-03-01T19:50:46","date_gmt":"2009-03-01T23:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/?p=303"},"modified":"2009-04-24T16:01:20","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T20:01:20","slug":"100-meter-asteroid-will-pass-earth-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/100-meter-asteroid-will-pass-earth-monday\/","title":{"rendered":"100 meter asteroid will pass Earth Monday!"},"content":{"rendered":"

100 meter asteroid will pass Earth Monday!<\/a>: “<\/p>\n

Kelly Beatty at Sky and Telescope reports that an asteroid about 100 meters across will pass the Earth on March 2, missing us by a scant 60,000 kilometers! That’s a clean miss, but still pretty close. The rock, called 2009 DD45, was discovered only a few days ago — it’s small and faint, making it easy to miss. Closest approach is at 13:44 UT, and it happens over the Pacific. Hopefully lots of amateur astronomers will get images of it; it’ll be bright enough for awhile to catch. The problem is it’ll be moving really fast across the sky… well, fast meaning half a degree per minute, which in turn means getting images of it will be very tough; it’ll streak through a telescope’s field of view like a meteor at that rate.<\/p>\n

You’ll never see it naked eye; at magnitude 10 at brightest it’s a fraction as bright as what you can see with just your eye. It’s also too high up to be a danger to any satellites (space is big, so even one getting much closer is really unlikely to smack into something). Still, it’s pretty cool.<\/p>\n

And I’ll add that while news like this scares some people, it actually makes me feel somewhat better: we’re getting really good at finding these kinds of things. Sure, if this rock had happened to be headed right for us we’d only have a few days warning before it hit (generating an enormous blast, as much as a high-yield nuclear weapon). But the thing is we’re looking for and finding such rocks<\/em>. That’s the first step; identifying potentially dangerous impactors. We’ve shown we can do it. <\/p>\n

The next step is to do something about them. Smart folks are working on it<\/a>, and I bet in the next few years we’ll have a realistic and deployable plan on what action to take if we do see one drawing a bead on us. Since the odds of getting hit at any given time are low, statistically speaking we still have time to figure this all out. <\/p>\n

But we don’t have forever. Let’s let 2009 DD45 be a reminder of that. We need to start doing something about these things, before we find one that really is<\/em> scary.<\/p>\n

[Note: Please digg the original article from S&T,<\/a> not my post. Kelly deserves the credit!]<\/p>\n

”<\/p>\n

(Via Bad Astronomy Blog<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"