Meanwhile, in global asteroid disaster news

For soooo many reasons.

Nevermind the "that they a" error in the sentence... I like that it implies that some astronomers don't recognize that a false alarm could make them look ridiculous.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39897000/jpg/_39897925_chapman_203.jpg

And 2004 AS1? It turned out to be bigger than anyone had
thought - about 500m wide. It eventually passed the Earth at a
distance of about 12 million km - 32 times the Earth-Moon
distance, posing no danger to us whatsoever.

Ha..... ha..... *cough*.... ha?

(That said, between the 1908 blast and Halley's Comet's really close approach in 1910, and the subsequent amount of freaked out people back then, I wonder if this fueled the current standard for astronomical research we have today)

500m wide is still tiny, on the cosmic scheme of things. You'd be doing very well to see one of those before it hit you.

so how much damage would that do if it hit the world? My suspicion is substantial numbers of people killed, but not the end of life as we know it.

xpost

Should I ask for my Xmas gifts now?

Due to its size, 2020 EF will most likely not cause an impact event, likely breaking if it enters Earth's atmosphere. It's big enough, however, to cause an explosion in the sky that could be dangerous, as illustrated by the 2013 meteor explosion over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, which produced a flash 30 times brighter than the Sun and caused 180 cases of eye pain and 70 cases of temporary flash blindness.

CNEOS said the asteroid is expected to approach Earth on March 18 at 11:15 p.m. EDT. During this time, the asteroid will fly past Earth from a distance of 0.04241 astronomical units or roughly 3.9 million miles from the planet’s center.

more good news, apparently we had an exploding meteor over the Bering Sea in late 2018 with an blast as powerful as "10 Hiroshimas" but nobody noticed until ages later after checking the data from a Japanese weather satellite.

turns out there's this youtube guy who believes that the GREAT DAYLIGHT FIREBALL of 1972 was two miles across and not just 10-45 ft as the authorities wd have us believe

he's basing it on triangulation and the famous linda baker video and i suspect him of at least two very basic errors but he's a bad narrator and it's hard to say

if he's right it was a near miss extinction-wise tho!

I noticed earlier that netflix have a not very good christmas treat in store - a movie about this scenario being imminent and nobody gaf ... sort of Meh..loncholia

i'm excited about it!

It might be ok. I was re-watching Meloncholia the other day and thinking it isn't a great movie but the last hour of it is utterly fantastic.

well that's a rogue planet rather than asteroid but that's how Von Tryhard rolls!

oh i meant i was excited abt the coming mass extinction i dont care abt the stupid movie

when it happens I don't want to be that character dismissing it as a fly pass and then going into the stables to blow my brains out when I realise the end is coming. I want to watch it happen!

Sorry guys... but we'll blow it out of the sky:

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/16/1046700417/nasa-launches-an-asteroid-hunter-named-lucy-with-a-beatles-connection