Quote Originally Posted by swansonbb View Post
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.