this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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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.

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[–] samus12345 4 points 3 hours ago
[–] BoxOfFeet 7 points 5 hours ago
[–] scarabic 2 points 4 hours ago

This article is mostly a week in the life of our modern detection and monitoring systems, but of course everyone is immediately sucked into the topic of armageddon. The more we can detect, the more insignificant or only mildly interesting objects we will become aware of. So get used to it. There’s going to be asteroid news in our future other than “END OF WORLD NIGH.”

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

A 27-inch asteroid

Shameless clickbait headline.

[–] humorlessrepost 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Depends on how fast it’s going.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

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".

[–] Dasus 5 points 6 hours ago

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...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Can you please course correct? Earth has a nasty infestation that needs some clearing

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[–] TheBat 19 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Agent641 10 points 11 hours ago

Fucking teasing bitch.

[–] FlyingSquid 7 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

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.

https://www.jpost.com/tags/asteroid

[–] ProfessorProteus 5 points 9 hours ago

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 😺😸

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

No banana for scale?

[–] Etterra 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Who's aiming these things? If you're gonna keep throwing them at Russia, then at least put a crater where Putin's hiding.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago

Wife saw two shooting stars in short succession a few days ago. I wonder if it was little grains preceding this guy or just random junk.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

What is an inch, what is a mile, what is a feet?

Is this even about space?

[–] Kbobabob 6 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

A mile consists of a lot of feet

A foot consists of many inches

Easy peasy.

[–] Strobelt 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

How many eagles in a mile in freedom units?

[–] tacosplease 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

We talking wingspan or beak to tip?

[–] Glitterbomb 3 points 4 hours ago

Butt to silencer

[–] [email protected] 30 points 18 hours ago (5 children)

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.

[–] scarabic 1 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I'd rather we get eradicated but the rest of nature is fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago

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.

[–] Jumi 14 points 13 hours ago

Better a terrible end than unending terror

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

Please let it be soon

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[–] Nurse_Robot 37 points 19 hours ago (8 children)

Comparing a 27" asteroid and a 1200' asteroid as comparable seems wack

[–] credo 1 points 1 hour ago

The point is, if they could detect a 27” asteroid, something bigger won’t be an issue [for detection].

[–] scarabic 1 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] scarabic 0 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] scarabic 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

says "mm = millimeters" next response "mm = meter meter". Good troll. Truly outwitted yourself there.

[–] scarabic 0 points 1 hour ago

Reaching. Anyway…

[–] Nurse_Robot 3 points 12 hours ago

There's a long list of things we do that make no sense. We've got damn good food though

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[–] PugJesus 58 points 22 hours ago (12 children)

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?

[–] Zron 2 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

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.

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