5 comments

  • simonebrunozzi 1739 days ago
    Despite being large (390 ft, or ~130 meters for us using the metric system), its composition (mostly solid ice) makes it so that in the case of the wrong trajectory and an impact on Earth, most of it is supposed to evaporate and burn; it would quickly be fragmented in thousands of pieces, and have huge impacts in a small area, and almost no impact to the Earth's ecosystem. This is AFAIK, and I am not an astronomer or an expert. Please correct me if I am wrong. Unfortunately there's no Palermo Hazard scale for this particular asteroid [0].

    There's some very relevant Wikipedia pages about the subject [1], [2].

    [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Technical_Impact_Hazar...

    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Geological_signif...

    [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance

    • hughes 1739 days ago
      So the headline is that a near-Earth object is not only going to miss Earth by a wide margin, but also even if it did hit us nobody would notice...
      • Pfhreak 1739 days ago
        People would definitely notice. A 390 foot meteor bursting into many smaller meteors is still going to be a spectacular show (and likely cause some damage.)

        It's just not going to be an extinction level event.

        • ls612 1739 days ago
          Even a 390 ft nickel-iron meteor would only be dangerous if it entered over populated areas and the odds of that are low.
      • simonebrunozzi 1739 days ago
        Well, assuming my very basic math is right. As said, I am not an expert, and I might be very wrong about how that scenario would have played out.
  • gibolt 1739 days ago
    I'd be curious how many other bodies pass within specific distance ranges every year.

    Is this rare or pretty common?

  • bsmith 1739 days ago
    This reporting is terrible (and pretty hard to read) but here's a cool graph of the approach to Earth: https://theskylive.com/how-far-is-2019od
  • networkimprov 1739 days ago
    Volcanism is a much greater threat to civilization than meteors.

    In the past 1500 years, at least three eruptions have caused global crop failures: Tambora, Samalas, Ilopango.

    • dredmorbius 1739 days ago
      Vulcanism has a ... generally ... bounded upper scale,[1] astronomical impactors do not, and demonstrably modest impactors have had devastating results, with numerous candidates existing. Fortunately they're sparsely distributed.

      ________________________________

      Notes:

      1. Volcanic traps caused by flood basalt eruptions being an extreme outlier upper bound, see the Siberian Traps, 500 million ya, as a notable example.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps

      There have been 18 identified, most 100s of millions to billions of years ago, though as recently as 10 mya. Yellowstone is among the younger (17 mya). The events may be associated with meteor impacts as well -- evidence is poorly preserved.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_basalt

  • rhodo 1739 days ago
    Any idea if this will be visible from the ground anywhere? I've been searching online to no avail.