You would be surprised. Its quite possible that the two rocks were created in the same collision a few mission years ago or such, and so were sent on similar orbital paths around the sun. We were just lucky that it was the smaller one that happened to be aimed slightly more towards us.Beryl77 said:This is exactly why NASA needs a bigger budget.
Anyway, pretty big coincidence that this happened merely a few hours before the asteroid DA14 will pass earth. Two in one day, doesn't happen often.
No, we'll see planet killers. Meteorites won't destroy us. Extremely large meteorites can level cities, sure, but they'll never end our planet. It's asteroids that'll kill us. Though we're not dinosaurs, so even impacts large enough to alter our climate wouldn't kill us off completely. And anything that large, we'd probably be able to nuke anyway.itsthesheppy said:The scary thing is, we had no idea. This thing just showed up and we're all scratching our thick monkey craniums and going "ooooh" at the sky.
The asteroid disaster movies lied to us. If a planet killer really hits us, we'll be dead long before it has time to show up on Reddit.
Is he really the best man to be asking>Karloff said:Phil Plate, Bad Astronomer,
I don't have the quotes in front of me, but I'm pretty sure astronomers more educated than I have made it clear that we don't have that many eyes on the sky, and that a planet-killer could easily sneak up on us.Denamic said:No, we'll see planet killers. Meteorites won't destroy us. Extremely large meteorites can level cities, sure, but they'll never end our planet. It's asteroids that'll kill us. Though we're not dinosaurs, so even impacts large enough to alter our climate wouldn't kill us off completely. And anything that large, we'd probably be able to nuke anyway.itsthesheppy said:The scary thing is, we had no idea. This thing just showed up and we're all scratching our thick monkey craniums and going "ooooh" at the sky.
The asteroid disaster movies lied to us. If a planet killer really hits us, we'll be dead long before it has time to show up on Reddit.
Not really. If we say an extinction level asteroid has to be at least 1KM across that's over 4 Billion cubic metres of rock (assuming it's spherical). Even firing the entire nuclear arsenal of the world combined (even borrowing the ones N. Korea has) would barely slow it down - worse it could shatter it into hundreds of smaller (but still massive) chunks that cause even more damage; think of it like buckshot from a shotgun - hundreds of individual fragments slamming into the Earth all across the surface.Denamic said:And anything that large, we'd probably be able to nuke anyway.
Consider the fact that Russia, as a land mass, is huge (bigger if you include all of Asia). Its like shooting an arrow at a target with the big white space around your target representing Russia and the board holding up your target being the ocean. You have 50/50 chance of hitting the ocean, or Russia.flarty said:Incredibly unlucky. Wasn't it only 100 years ago when one fell in Tunguska? Isn't that like lightning striking twice?
Kmadden2004 said:[obscure, nerdy reference powers: activate]
So when can we expect to send the mobile infantry out the Klendaathu to take out the damn, dirty bugs who threw these rocks at us?
If it had happened in the UK it would probably have been cloudy. I have NO idea how Brain Cox actually manages to have a sustained career in this country.F said:Thank God for all those Russian dash-board cams. If this had hit the UK we'd have probably missed it.
This is just the first step in the Blisk's FIENDISH MASTER PLAN!DVS BSTrD said:Someone Find Crypto! THE BLISK HAVE RETURNED!