There seem to be more and more of these “close encounters” with asteroids lately. Hopefully it’s only because our detection methods are improved. Still a little scary, one way or the other.
This one was discovered on Saturday, closest just hours later, this small asteroid came closer to Earth than weather and television satellites orbit.
Source: Asteroid buzzed Earth this weekend, hours after discovery | Human World | EarthSky
Marcha's Two-Cents Worth 
Closer than our satellites is shiver-close!
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It certainly is!
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In a way, I’m glad I didn’t know about that until the threat was past.
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I know. Several years ago a meteorite hit a woman’s car puncturing a hole in the trunk. I would have loved to have seen her insurance agents expression when she filed the claim.
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I hope she wasn’t in the car at the time!
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No, as I recall it was parked. I remember it because it occurred in my home town of Peekskill, NY! I didn’t live there at the time but it was one of those “what are the odds” moments since I’d written a novel about an asteroid collision. Never published it, may dig it out again someday.
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That sounds like and interesting book – plus, an asteroid collision is possible, which is scary.
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I wrote it back in the early 80s before such things were really acknowledged. I don’t think they’d found the crater in the Gulf of Mexico yet that verified the Alvarez Theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs. It won 1st place in a state writing contest but that’s as far as I got with it. Larry Niven’s “Lucifer’s Hammer” was a good asteroid collision story.
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Most asteroid stories that I have heard revolve around the extinction of the dinosaurs, yet meteorologists can predict meteor showers and act like they are entertainment. You probably know more about this sort of thing than I, but aren’t meteors just small bits of asteroids?
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Sometimes, either asteroids or comets. But there’s a big difference between those “small bits” and getting slammed with an actual errant asteroid whose orbit crosses ours. There are quite a few of them, actually, which they try to track but just because it’s small enough to elude detection doesn’t it mean it can’t kick Earth’s butt in a big way.
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Is there a rule that defines an asteroid’s size? Or are they considered to be asteroids by the way they behave? I know these are probably odd questions, but I’ve never thought much about them.
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Quite a few of them have names and size-wise are in the minor planet range with Pluto such as Ceres. Most of them are located between Mars and Jupiter though there are some in other orbits as well. They’re the ones we usually have to worry about, though Jupiter’s gravity can sometimes kick one out of it’s usual orbit and thus become an Earth-crosser.
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Fascinating! I had no idea they could be that large.
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Big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs and potentially us.
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From what I’ve heard, it would depend on where an asteroid hit and what size it was would determine the damage it inflicted.
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If it’s big enough it’s going to present a major problem regardless of where it hits since it can alter the weather and even change the axis of rotation. If it hit in the ocean it would create a huge tsunami. Ever see the movie “Deep Impact?” Represents it pretty well.
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I hadn’t thought of tsunamis – except as a potential issue with a landslide in the Canary Islands, which could have the Atlantic end up way too close to my back door. I’ll watch Deep Impact – thanks for the tip.
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