
A 390FT rock will scrape past Earth closer than the Moon tomorrow - LinuxBender
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1156302/NASA-asteroid-tracker-Asteroid-2019-OD-scrape-Earth-closer-than-Moon
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simonebrunozzi
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Technical_Impact_Hazard_Scale)

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

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

~~~
hughes
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...

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Pfhreak
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
Even a 390 ft nickel-iron meteor would only be dangerous if it entered over
populated areas and the odds of that are low.

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gibolt
I'd be curious how many other bodies pass within specific distance ranges
every year.

Is this rare or pretty common?

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bsmith
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](https://theskylive.com/how-far-is-2019od)

~~~
typpo
In a similar vein, I built this orbital simulation that shows the orbits of
2019 OD and Earth: [https://www.spacereference.org/solar-
system#ob=2019-od](https://www.spacereference.org/solar-system#ob=2019-od)

Along with a more level-headed collection of facts about the asteroid, which
is not classified as Potentially Hazardous:
[https://www.spacereference.org/asteroid/2019-od](https://www.spacereference.org/asteroid/2019-od)

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networkimprov
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.

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dredmorbius
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](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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_basalt)

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

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DaveSapien
Here you go:
[https://www.spacereference.org/asteroid/2019-od](https://www.spacereference.org/asteroid/2019-od)

~~~
somada141
Thanks for that, very interesting. Couldn't quite figure out whether I'd be
able to see/photograph it from Australia during the night but then again I'm
pretty clueless.

