Newly discovered asteroid to buzz Earth this weekend

[4bucksagallon]

Source: CBS News

A newly discovered asteroid the size of a house will buzz Earth this weekend.

At closest approach Sunday, the 60-foot rock will pass a safe 25,000 miles over New Zealand. That's about one-tenth the distance between here and the moon. It's also beyond the orbit of our highest communication and weather satellites.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/asteroid-to-buzz-earth-this-weekend/

[BlueJazz]

1. For a minute I thought about dragging out my scope until the realization that...

..it would be like trying to view a 3/4 inch rock at 25 miles.
My scope is a 10" ...so forget that.

[Orrex]

10. Mount the telescope on your roof instead.

Simple!

[BlueJazz]

18. Actually, I had thought about that at one time but then I moved away from...

...the bright lights of the city.
On the other hand, I would be closer to the stars.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. 'Big as a house, huh? Whose house?

Run's house!

[Louisiana1976]

4. Probably some 1%er's house. This asteroid was discovered pretty late--I wonder how late

they'll discover the next asteroid to hit Earth.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

5. There's a good chance we'll never see the big one coming

Or worse, it'll be three days allowing enough panic to set in.

[gvstn]

9. If it is the big one it won't really matter.

Smaller ones that have an orbit that is hidden by the Sun until a few days before seem to be more common than I would like. I thought they had twin satellites mapping the Sun? Shouldn't one of those be able to see these once invisible asteroids?

[tclambert]

16. We didn't detect the Chelyabinsk meteor until it was still 18 miles above the Earth's surface.

That's when it blew up in the atmosphere, which kind of gave away its presence. So, yeah, you might be right, especially if the big one approaches from the daylight side.

In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, they gave the characters three weeks notice after the failed attempt to save the planet. That's about as close to the 3 day storyline I could find. That might make for an interesting twist on the asteroid impact storyline. "We interrupt this broadcast for a breaking news story: A giant asteroid will destroy all life on Earth in three days. Republicans blame Obama."

[onecent]

19. LOL It's good to have a laugh this morning......!!!

[heaven05]

21. someone in this thread said

we've detected "pretty much all those that could pose a risk to the planet as a whole". Could that be true? Only the little ones like Chelyabinsk are the real problem/danger? on edit: a lot of sites came up when I googled-asteroid/meteorite destroying earth? I guess up to 95% of the 'big ones' have been accounted for. Even 'armageddon online'.com came up, got a chuckle out of that one.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. Sixty feet isn't that big...

I have a ranch style house- they tend to be long in comparison to width.

[nilram]

3. About 3100 miles beyond geosynchronous satelites

So, still seems pretty darn close.

[christx30]

6. Barely far enough away

to avoid the ego of the average politician. n/t

[KinMd]

8. I'm shocked Obama doesn't have a strategy to deal with the asteroid

[Orrex]

11. Bolide-ghazi!

[byronius]

12. That is extremely funny.

[mountain grammy]

13. Good one!

[tclambert]

15. The universe is shooting at us.

[AverageJoe90]

17. That's kinda the scary thing about these small rocks.

We have the technology to find larger rocks, and in fact, we've discovered pretty much every one that could potentially pose a major threat to the planet as a whole. It's the smaller ones that are so hard to find, like the one over Chelyabinsk this last Feb.; if we ever get another surprise report of a meteorite exploding somewhere on Earth, it'd be one of those: not nearly enough to end all life as we know it, but still enough to really wreck up a huge chunk of a major city, and ruin pretty much everyone's day over there.

[randome]

20. No worries. The JLA is monitoring the situation from their satellite headquarters.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]