Asteroids.....not the video game

[rlditmars]

I love anything to do with space. But it cracks me up how we think we have everything figured out only to be embarassed again. The media reports that the meteor that blew up over Russia today has nothing to do with the 150 foot diameter asteroid that's about to pass within 17,000+ miles of earth today. Just a coincidence. Really? Is it so hard to admit that while you were watching for a goose to fly by, you missed the bee that was traveling with it?

That would be like someone in a Chicago suburb reporting a tire of an airliner crashing through their roof, and then in a completely unrelated story, "emergency vehicles were called out on the runway at Chicago's O'hare airport as a jetliner was forced to land witout one of it's landing gear."

Me thinks someone doesn't want to suffer the embarassment of admitting they didn't see it coming.

[Quantum Constrictors]

Yup I am a huge astronomy geek.

I believe either the meteor was traveling with the asteroid or it could have broken off.

Either way. I would have pooped my pants if I saw that in the sky in Russia.

[swansonbb]

According to Phil Plait, this had nothing to do with 2012 DA14. Had it been, it would have had a north/south trail. Also, we couldn't have seen this one anyway - it was only about a meter across.

[rlditmars]

According to Phil Plait, this had nothing to do with 2012 DA14. Had it been, it would have had a north/south trail. Also, we couldn't have seen this one anyway - it was only about a meter across.

If that is true then it is quite an amazing coincidence. Not saying it couldn't be, but it doesn't seem very plausable. Further, if thats what a one meter asteroid can do, imagine the destructive force that would be associated with the one about to fly by. Makes you feel really insignificant in the scheme of the universe.

I have a picture of the moon as my desktop screen and on it there are numerous (hundreds) craters. But especially interesting is a ring mountain range looking formation, that apears to be the crater of a much larger impact. It occupies a space roughly 10 to 20% of the face that is illuminated. Now that had to be a big rock. Think it would be a little troublesome trying to swat that one away.

Sometimes it is hard to grasp how vast space is. Reading an article the other day talking about Voyager leaving our solar system which may take from 2 to 5 more years because the are not really sure how to define the edge. But in it it talked about the distance being X number of miles. Further it talked about light taking approximately 16 hours to reach the same distance. It took us over thirty years to go that far. The next closest star system is 4.2 light years away. So traveling at the same rate, it would take Voyager over 40,000+ years to reach the next star system. Our galaxy (not the universe) is estimated to be between 100,000 and 120,000 light years across. Then there is a vast expanse between it and the next galaxy. And so on, and so on. I am pretty confident that I don't need to worry about little green men. Unless your talking about those scary dudes at the Vancouver Canucks games.

[Badgemash]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but they have nothing to do with each other. The trajectory of the Chelyabinsk impactor was almost opposite of what it would be if it was associated with 2012 DA14. It came in from a completely different direction. You can expect on average one meteorite impact per square kilometer of land every 10,000 years (this also applies to oceans, but we don't care about those so much because they're almost impossible to recover). There are about 20,000 tons of this stuff hitting the atmosphere every year (typically very tiny grains that burn up in the atmosphere), and usually one or two witnessed falls every month, so it's really not as rare of an event as people think. This fall is just unusual for the large size of the impactor, and the number of witnesses who caught it on video. Unfortunately since it was so well observed and widely reported, the cost of any recovered material is going to be ridiculous. This happened with the Tissint meteorite in Morocco in 2011, because it was a witnessed fall of a Martian meteorite it costs $600-800/gram, when the typical going rate for Mars meteorites is $200-300/gram.

[swansonbb]

If that is true then it is quite an amazing coincidence. Not saying it couldn't be, but it doesn't seem very plausable. Further, if thats what a one meter asteroid can do, imagine the destructive force that would be associated with the one about to fly by. Makes you feel really insignificant in the scheme of the universe.

It is amazing, but all coincidence. Keep in mind, there are always objects either passing by, or burning up in our atmosphere. The moon doesn't have an atomosphere - hence the craters.

The one that is flying by, if it hit, would be the equivalent of a 2.5 megaton bomb. We're hit by one about once every 1200 years. The last one that hit was in 1908 - also in Russia. While (I don't believe) it left a crater, it did flatten 830 acres of trees. Pretty impressive.

I'm still holding out hope for the little green men. Or a zombie apacolypse.

[Badgemash]

It is amazing, but all coincidence. Keep in mind, there are always objects either passing by, or burning up in our atmosphere. The moon doesn't have an atomosphere - hence the craters.

The one that is flying by, if it hit, would be the equivalent of a 2.5 megaton bomb. We're hit by one about once every 1200 years. The last one that hit was in 1908 - also in Russia. While (I don't believe) it left a crater, it did flatten 830 acres of trees. Pretty impressive.

I'm still holding out hope for the little green men. Or a zombie apacolypse.

We actually get hit all the time, they're usually just pretty small (like marble and baseball sizes). Big ones like what just came down in Russia are more rare, but like you pointed out not super rare. In addition to the Tunguska event in 1908, Russia was also whacked by the Sikhote-Alin meteorite in 1947, which was around 70 tons (I've purchased it for $0.31/gram which tells you how much of it there is lying around). Most of the huge craters you see on the moon are remnants from the Late Heavy Bombardment (4-3.7 bya), since the moon has no active tectonics or atmosphere all the lovely craters were preserved. The moon does still play an important role in protecting the Earth from impactors, but luckily for us most of the really huge stuff has already gone. If 2012 DA14 were to impact Earth, it would leave a similar sized hole to Meteor Crater in AZ, about a mile across. Bad news if you live were it hits, but no where near an extinction level event.

I can't pretend I wouldn't be a little excited for an actual zombocalypse! Yay Walking Dead is back on!

[Mike41793]

If i saw something like that here, i would have assumed it came from russia. Oh the irony, lol.