Summary
A 27-inch asteroid, C0WEPC5, entered Earth’s atmosphere over Siberia on Tuesday, creating a harmless but visible fireball.
This marked Earth’s fourth detected asteroid strike of the year and only the 11th “imminent impactor” ever recorded.
The asteroid was detected by the Kitt Peak National Observatory ahead of impact, showcasing advancements in asteroid detection.
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
If we pray to it, do you think it’ll deign to hit us?
I think many of these asteroids are caused by an intergalactic alien game of ‘Road Bowling’ and aliens just drunkenly throwing asteroids as far as they can while having a laugh at the local bar.
They usually try to avoid planets with intelligent life but we recently fell below the threshold
They got us with the pog, missed us with the slammer.
(I actually have no idea how pogs work)
There’s a not so great book called The Killing Star, where aliens that are never described in the book decide for an unknown reason that we need to be destroyed, so they just hurl as many asteroids as they can at our solar system. It worked pretty well.
Not a bad “low-tech” way to destroy a rival civilization in another solar system. A good idea in an otherwise disappointing book.
You might enjoy a similar plotline in the excellent Bobiverse book series. (I don’t think it shows up until the second or maybe even third book, so don’t go in expecting that immediately.)
Seconding this. Excellent hard science series that spends equal time on both being a nerd and being nerdy.
Arthur C. Clark “The Hammer of God”
Star Trek “The Paradise Syndrome”
Just glancing at what those books are about, they sound fun and I’ll check them out, thanks. In the case of The Killing Star, that was the plot point that attracted me to it, but the execution was clumsy and the ending was not exactly a cliffhanger, but it didn’t feel like a resolution either.
When I was done reading it, my dog decided it needed to be chewed up. It was the only time she ever chewed up a book. I guess she felt even more strongly about it than I did.
Yeah, I know that kind of book you mean. It’s not a popular opinion, but I felt similarly about Annihilation (though I only read the first book of the series, so maybe things would have improved later).
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I’m from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all!
It must be Apophis! Tries to keep the peace treaty with the Asgards by making our extinction seem like a natural disaster!
Unfortunately, it’s only like 350 meters wide.
The big one that took out the dinosaurs was 10 to 15 kilometers.
A 350 meter asteroid would just make a lot of noise and make a little splash if it survived to hit the ocean, or a little hole in the ground if it managed to strike land.
We need to pray for bigger space rocks.
350m is definetely going to make a strong impact.
The Tunguska Asteroid was expected to be 50-60m in width https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
And that released 3 - 50 Megatons of energy. For reference the nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had about 20 kilotons. So about a one thousands of that. The greatest man made explosion, the sowjet Tsar bomb had about 50 Megatons of energy.
A 350m asteroid has about 7 times that length and probably at least three times the diameter. So we are looking at an impact with the mass of at least 50x that, so 150 - 2500 Megatons. If that hits central Europe the immediate blast would probably kill a few hundred million people.
What if I pray for it to hit me, specifically
Hey, no hogging the roid!
Comparing a 27" asteroid and a 1200’ asteroid as comparable seems wack
At least they didn’t use metric.
Anything but metric, bro. How many bison could fit into that asteroid?
I can’t remember, I actually only use metric now. I think you need to convert asteroids to hogheads first, if they’re tobacco that’s 1000 lbs per hogshead. Frankly it makes my head hurt.
As an American I have no idea why we don’t use metric.
I don’t understand why imperialists decided to use one apostrophe to indicate the larger unit and two to indicate the smaller unit. It makes no bloody sense.
There’s a long list of things we do that make no sense. We’ve got damn good food though
Uh I’d just like to point out that a meter is m and a milimeter, which is shorter, is mm. So y’all apparently don’t make any bloody sense in metric either.
’ = foot
‘’ = foot foot?
mm = meter meter so 2 meters amirite?
Making fun of the imperial system is an old game and so easy to play that I’ve never seen anyone actually lose at it, until now. LOL
says “mm = millimeters” next response “mm = meter meter”. Good troll. Truly outwitted yourself there.
Reaching. Anyway…
The impacts are not comparable but perhaps in terms of detection methods they are handled mostly the same. On the one hand, being able to detect a 27 inch asteroid doesn’t matter much but on the other hand, if you can detect something that small, maybe you can detect anything that does matter. Unfortunately, I don’t think asteroid size is the only factor in detectability. A lot of it has to do with which direction it is coming from and if that is functionally obscured by the Sun or other objects.
The point is, if they could detect a 27” asteroid, something bigger won’t be an issue [for detection].
I’d love to know what percentage of the Earth’s population would be totally fine with an asteroid taking us all out. I’d be willing to bet it’s higher that it’s ever been.
Better a terrible end than unending terror
🙋
I’d rather we get eradicated but the rest of nature is fine.
There is a deep sea and creatures living deeply underground. Chance is even if an even wiped out everything on the surface of the earth after some few million years the surface is populated again.
Please let it be soon
On some sardonic humor level, sure. But I don’t think many people are actually ready to die tomorrow, and no one is ready for an impactor that does something in between like plunge us into 200 years of suffering because we can’t grow 70% of the crops we need.
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
Boo you whore
Fucking teasing bitch.
I have “giant fucking asteroid” on my 2025 bingo card, so I hope they hold out that long.
Someday.
A 27-inch asteroid
Shameless clickbait headline.
Depends on how fast it’s going.
AFAIK meteors come with a velocity spread of about a digit, which translates to a couple digits of energy, and then back to a single digit of blast radius. In Siberia that’s a nothingburger all around.
Also, the headline did say “massive”.
Headline is tricksy, first mention of “asteroid” (referring to the small one) isn’t with the descriptor “massive”, but the second one is.
They just added the one that’s gonna miss so they could get “massive” in the headline.
Also, one can play around with asteroid impacts with this fun little tool.
https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/
Only goes down to 1m, so larger than what it was. Iron core and I put it to 100km/s (fastest you can in that, default being like 17km/s) dropped it in Siberia, and it blew up 53 km above the ground. Tried again with switching angle to straight down and…
What’s with the weird title?
Doesn’t “Asteroid nearly hits Siberia” convey the information that an asteroid nearly hit earth?
Neither really convey that it did hit Earth('s atmosphere) and just burned up harmlessly. The title reads like it missed, in which case it doesn’t make much sense to me to mention Siberia at all.
It explains why I, not in Siberia, didn’t notice the asteroid.
This would finally get rid of taxes.
Lol … I thought you comment said “Texas”
Well, possibly that, too.
Feel free to criticize the Jerusalem Post for other reasons, they deserve it, but their reports on near-miss asteroids where they compare their size to random things is always amusing.
It’s amusing, but not very helpful. Granted, what could the average reader do with an exact size, besides adjust their level of panic?
On second thought, the first one is very easy to picture 😺😸
No banana for scale?
What is an inch, what is a mile, what is a feet?
Is this even about space?
A mile consists of a lot of feet
A foot consists of many inches
Easy peasy.
How many eagles in a mile in freedom units?
We talking wingspan or beak to tip?
Butt to silencer
Who’s aiming these things? If you’re gonna keep throwing them at Russia, then at least put a crater where Putin’s hiding.
Can you please course correct? Earth has a nasty infestation that needs some clearing
Infestation is the correct term
Aliens were supposed to invade today but I guess there wasn’t enough melee in South Korea, so I guess I’ll settle for a colossal asteroid impact instead.
