Asteroid just misses Earth last Friday

[Jonty]

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_612037.html
Astronomers say an asteroid the size of a football pitch has 'just missed' the Earth.
It was only spotted as it drifted away after its closest approach.
The rock passed within 75,000 miles at 23,000 miles per hour and could have wiped out a city if it had hit.
Asteroid 2002MN was well inside the orbit of the moon at its closest point on June 14.
It wasn't spotted until three days later by astronomers at the Linear search programme in New Mexico.
The last time an asteroid is known to have passed so close was in 1994.
2002 MN is a lightweight among asteroids and not capable of causing damage on a global scale.
The near-miss happened just as UK telescopes on La Palma were being tested to search for so-called Near Earth Objects.


That's a bit scary.

[caddmannq]

Ya know, 75,000 miles is like ten times the diameter of the earth. It's not like it just barely missed us.

If Shaq missed the basket by that much, the ball would have landed at the free-throw line. Not close at all!

[desmocat]

football pitch.. wassat?
in 'merican terms that is.

[Mike]

A Soccer field. Thanks Eddy...

[Epidemic]

Ummm that is way tooo close. It goes back to another post I did some time ago. This is the one of the valid reasons for 100 megaton nukes to be in existance.

I would like to see nasa beef up their early warning systems and point some nukes up or put em on the international space station.

In terms of distance from earth that is a hair parter. We continue to be lucky. But we do have the technology to do something about this.

[Gomer]

LOL I just read the size of a "football" first... I was thinking "woopity doo." The second reading and explanation of "football" pitch made it make mroe sense.

[caddmannq]

Awww...that's like a pea hitting something the size of Manhattan island. It would take 1 1/4 million soccer fields to cover the earth.

We're just not talking mega-quake destruction here...

[Epidemic]

def not extinction class. But we had one of them about 2 years ago come within 200,000 miles


I read the football way the first time I laughed.

[alondra]

at the speed they travle , a hit, would mean wide spread destruction.

[kenyg]

Would have been bad news - 75,000 miles, in the cosmic perspective, is missing by a hair.


Ken