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Earth Space

A Car-Sized Asteroid Made the Closest Earth Flyby a Space Rock Has Ever Survived (space.com) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the didn't-see-it-coming dept.
New submitter louisfreeman shares a report from Space.com: A newly discovered car-sized asteroid just made the closest-known flyby to Earth without hitting our planet. On Sunday (Aug. 16), the asteroid, initially labeled ZTF0DxQ and now formally known to astronomers as 2020 QG, swooped by Earth at a mere 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) away. That gives 2020 QG the title of closest asteroid flyby ever recorded that didn't end with the space rock's demise. What's slightly concerning is the fact that the flyby wasn't expected.

The Palomar Observatory didn't detect the zooming asteroid until about six hours after the object's closest approach. "The asteroid approached undetected from the direction of the sun," Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, told Business Insider. "We didn't see it coming."
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A Car-Sized Asteroid Made the Closest Earth Flyby a Space Rock Has Ever Survived More

A Car-Sized Asteroid Made the Closest Earth Flyby a Space Rock Has Ever Survived

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  • Did it have a Tesla logo? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Thursday August 20, 2020 @03:23AM (#60421559) Journal

    (Sorry, coudn't resist.)

  • Every time I see an article about an asteroid making a pass closer to earth than any other, it always seems to include "we didn't see it coming until just before" I don't expect some agency to warn me in time to grab my ass and kiss it goodbye at that last minute. But do we really need to be paying these people ?

    • Re:We didn't see it coming (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <me&brandywinehundred,org> on Thursday August 20, 2020 @03:40AM (#60421595) Journal
      Probably makes sense to get better at trying to find them.

      • Probably makes sense to get better at trying to find them.

        Uh, perhaps we should get better at finding why we're ignoring the problem, since we've clearly been accepting the we-didn't-see-it-coming excuse for years now.

        Wonder how much more shit are we going to put in orbit for warmongering/spying/entertainment/social media/internet addiction reasons, and yet nothing will go up to help search for deadly asteroids. Priorities I guess...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Probably makes sense to get better at trying to find them.

        But we ARE getting better at this. Yea, we still have some blind spots, but we are better than we where 10 years ago.

        However.. I've got to ask.. What difference does it make? Even if we had a month's notice of this event, what could we have done? Apart from hunkering down in a whole as it whizzed by, not much. Maybe we should be thinking about how to do something about these things?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AvitarX ( 172628 )
          I'd think that there'd be perks to knowing the time, and definitely the location of anything up to the size of a football field according to this:
          https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-sizes-that-can-damage-cities-states-planet-2018-6#an-asteroid-more-than-half-a-mile-wide-would-start-to-have-global-implications-11

    • Re:We didn't see it coming (Score:5, Informative)

      by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Thursday August 20, 2020 @04:46AM (#60421705)
      A "car sized" asteroid would reach and strike earth as a "shoe box sized" asteroid. We're paying "these people" to detect bigger, many lives threatening objects.

      • Exactly. Perhaps its more clear when described as a "car sized" meteor which would result in a "shoe box sized" meteorite. Although, if it had been moving at a percentage of the speed of light, the energy would still make it a pretty spectacular impact. It must have been moving at a pretty good clip not to have been captured by Earth's gravity well.

        I do get spooked when a significantly large asteroid/comet comes inside the Moon's orbit to the Earth.

        • Re:We didn't see it coming (Score:5, Informative)

          by Sique ( 173459 ) on Thursday August 20, 2020 @06:43AM (#60421863) Homepage
          Even more exact would it have been to call it a car-size meteoroid (the celestial body), which would have caused a large meteor (the actual light we see when it glows in the atmosphere) and landed as a shoe-box sized meteorit (the remaining object hitting the Earth's surface).
        • A 'shoe box sized' fragment of a nickel-iron asteroid entering Earths' atmosphere at Mach 10 would cause as much damage as a small tactical nuclear warhead when it impacted.

          • True, but Mach numbers aren't the best for describing celestial objects. Mach is the ratio of a flow or vehicle's speed to that of sound in that medium, and the speed of sound changes with altitude all the way up to space where it's basically zero and Mach becomes meaningless.

          • But why would you assume its a dense nickel-iron car sized rock, when its probably made of silicon (quartz)? Meteors happen all the time; meteorites not as much, because meteors usually burn up in the atmosphere. A shoe boxed sized meteorite is a magnitude less common, but its not civilization ending, or even life threatening, unless it actually manages to land in a concentrated population area.

            • Because my All-Seeing Crystal Ball is out for recalibration so I can't peer into that rock and tell you what it's made of, so I made an assumption just to pose a theoretical example.

      • Re:We didn't see it coming (Score:5, Funny)

        by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Thursday August 20, 2020 @05:50AM (#60421805)

        A newly discovered car-sized asteroid [...] initially labeled ZTF0DxQ

        Dammit, now I've got to change my email password!

      • Was it sedan-sized or SUV-like in bulk?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by hackertourist ( 2202674 )

      We've been making massive progress in detecting asteroids in the last 25 years: we went from 10,000 known asteroids in 1990 to 600,000 in 2015.

      Asteroids "we didn't see coming" are getting smaller and smaller because we've found almost all of the large ones now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Hmmm...so you haven't been getting the memos on asteroids we have detected and determined they might pass close by but are not destined to hit the Earth? I don't know why that would be. Maybe they just think you wouldn't be interested in near misses. On the other hand it could be a plot of mythic proportions just to keep you specifically in the dark. Those sneaky scientists are always up to some nefarious schemes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      After the fact detection still gives base-data for risk management. You want to be blind and deaf instead?

    • Well, "these people" as you call them are usually motivated by passion rather than greed. No one chooses a field in science because they think they will get rich.

      Therefore, I suspect that if we want to be warned earlier than later (let alone the capability to do something about it) we should increase, rather than decrease funding.

    • But do we really need to be paying these people?

      I think that Caltech do various academic pursuits including running the Palomar observatory. And I suspect the observatory itself isn't used exclusively for trying to track asteroids.

      But are you paying these people? It's a private university. If you don't want to pay them, stop making donations ... or enrolling in their classes.

  • We just had a close miss with Rosanne Barr! :)
  • What would have happened if it hit earth, say in Los Angeles?

    • Re:What would have happened (Score:4, Informative)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday August 20, 2020 @04:13AM (#60421653)

      The Chelyabinsk meteor was significantly bigger, so it’s likely that this one wouldn’t have done a whole lot - other than possibly provide a light show.

      • There is still a significant amount of energy to be dissipated, this rock is about 10% of the volume of "Chelyabinsk meteor", so a release of energy similar to the recent Beirut blast. This a sky show and shock wave in the mid Indian ocean according to NASA,

      • The Chelyabinsk meteor was significantly bigger, so it’s likely that this one wouldn’t have done a whole lot ...

        The Chelyabinsk meteor would have done a hell of a lot of damage if it had been over a city - it is estimated to have been as powerful as a half-megaton bomb. As it was, its epicentre was over a lightly populated area.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      What would have happened if it hit earth, say in Los Angeles?

      Simple: It does not. The actual risk is a hit in water, with a followup tsunami.

      • look at Beirut, but it depends on the angle it hits the atmosphere, straight down Beirut, sideways many windows broken, near miss off shore coastal flooding, near miss inland forest fire. Local damage only.
    • if it hit LA?

      not enough damage unfortunately...
  • Great thought, just missed.

  • Just great. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday August 20, 2020 @04:57AM (#60421725)

    The Palomar Observatory didn't detect the zooming asteroid [minorplanetcenter.net] until about six hours after the object's closest approach.

    Now, even asteroids are using Zoom.

  • The 1972 daytime fireball skimmed the atmosphere and was visible in daylight, it was supposedly the size of a 'small truck' https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap0... [nasa.gov]
  • 2020 OG sounds like a weed strain
  • The Universe spans from our planet in every direction and every angle. So much space, and so few entities with powerful telescopes to resolve potential impactors, especially those that may not be illuminated by our Sun or are made up of material not reflective enough.
  • Title: A Car-Sized Asteroid Made the Closest Earth Flyby a Space Rock Has Ever Survived

    It's the Vanguard of the Mars Revenge Invasion -- but Musk [theverge.com] started it, of course.

    Expect all the women to disappear shortly.

    • I hear there's already plan to prevent a Martian attempt to steal Earth's women. We're just going to send them Amber Heard and open the popcorn.

  • 1830 miles sounds like a long distance away but keep in mind that the moon is 130x further away.

  • ... for that manhole cover.

  • I thought that record was held by the 1972 fireball! https://youtu.be/wIv7wL9nWMQ [youtu.be]

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