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An asteroid just buzzed past Earth, and we barely noticed in time
News article in The Conversation: An asteroid just buzzed past Earth, and we barely noticed in time
A bit of science: Asteroid 2019 OK to flyby Earth at 0.19 LD on July 25 - the largest of the year
Video showing the asteroid's orbit: Asteroid (2019 OK) Just Missed Earth and it was really close at 54,000 mph
What does "In time" mean in this context? The article itself states that there wouldn't even be time to evacuate with the window of time that we currently have to prepare for an impact, and if we don't have time for that we're really not in a position to Armageddon our way through the situation.
The title should really be "An asteroid just buzzed past Earth, and we noticed it way too late to do anything about it anyway".
Here's an article about a fascinating event, involving an asteroid that passed between the Earth and the Moon, and describing how the asteroid was discovered - and even some graphics showing the asteroid's orbit...
... and all you can focus on is a minor wording issue in the headline.
I personally am in favor of improved detection of asteroids to enable us to do more than notice them far after we can do anything about it and would love more science funding across the board so that we can find out more of the cool things out there. There was a lot of cool stuff in your links that I definitely did not comment upon.
That said, we truly didn't notice it in time to do anything but notice it. Is it wrong to call it out as an issue, when our news is mischaracterizing the reality of the science and technology involved? I look forward to the day when we actually can notice in time to do something, but this is not that day.
Semantic obsession is one reddit tradition I sincerely hope doesn't catch on here. It's a cancer to discussion.
I, too, am a fan of semantics.
I might be wrong about this, but something that size and speed would have created a crater around 7 city blocks wide.
I used this asteroid calculator. I wasn't sure what the asteroid was made of so I assumed dense rock. If it were iron, it looks like it could take out an area six times wider.
This was not a "world ender".
No, it wasn't. That's probably why it's not described as a "world ender" in any of the links I posted here, nor anywhere else I looked.
In fact, the first article I saw about this asteroid described it as a "city killer" - so your estimate of "around 7 city blocks" seems about right.
If any city were to be erased without any warning now, it would be a historic event. I can’t even begin to imagine what would happen to our society. Maybe nothing, maybe this will increase the funding into astronomy incredibly. Who knows
This is pretty common every year. So are impacts, didn't we just have one blow up over the Bering straight last December? Here's a fun video: Asteroid Discovery Map from 1985-2011. Shows you just what we're up against here, and what's in that video (plus everything we've found since) is likely a fraction of what's really out there. We're living inside a rocky hurricane. Significant impact is a when, not an if. We need to get better at early detection.