A 150ft-long asteroid will skim past the Earth today - closer than any other near-miss on record. The huge chunk of rock - so big it is capable of wiping out London - will travel closer to the planet than many satellites. But while it should be visible as a tiny dot of light crossing the sky to those using binoculars, scientists say there is no chance it will hit Earth.

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
reply to post by RestlessNRG

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My thoughts exactly!

This is going to be the closest near miss ever, its going to be so close that it might be closer to the earth that some satellites are.

Amazingly, twice (two different radio news services--one being NPR that my boss keeps on at work) have ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY ESTABLISHED that the Russian meteorite as NOTHING to do w/2012 DA 14.

Don't ask ANY questions. In mere hours (in the dead of night for what would be western experts, and w/o the crater or soil being examined) it has been DETERMINED that the two incidents are NOT related.

I could have told you that in seconds. The meteor hit Russia, which means it came from a completely different direction than 2012 DA14; the latter is coming up steeply from the south, from basically right below the planet. It couldn't hit the Urals period. Secondly, the meteor came from the direction of the sun, which is why nothing was seen beforehand. That's our blind spot. This should be a wakeup call to us both to get sun-orbiting satellites out there searching the area of space between earth and the sun for small asteroids, and to stop being distracted by non-issues like 2012 DA14. While nearly every amateur astronomer was glued to that rock, another came from a completely different direction and smacked us in the head.

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by Glinda

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That's more like it..at least some reasoning. But, if not related, see my concern above... Is it just target Earth week or something?

edit on 15-2-2013 by Gazrok because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by samuel1990

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
reply to post by RestlessNRG

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My thoughts exactly!

This is going to be the closest near miss ever, its going to be so close that it might be closer to the earth that some satellites are.

If you'd done some research you'd know for a fact that it will be closer than some satellites. Ugh.

Please research your facts before starting a thread.