
Incoming ‘Moby Dick' asteroid goes missing near Earth - ColinWright
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25086-incoming-moby-dick-asteroid-goes-missing-near-earth.html#.UwTl8tsZW1F
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JAFTEM
Article says it was last seen 14 years ago, so it's obviously not some
asteroid we've been monitoring too recently that just inexplicably disappeared
like I, someone who doesn't know much about astronomy, assumed from the title.
We apparently were just wrong in calculating its trajectory..

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mathattack
The "incoming" in the title suggests a trajectory aimed at grabbing eyeballs
and clickthroughs. :-)

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jneal
As does "goes missing near Earth" I don't think going missing 14 years ago
equates to going missing near Earth.

~~~
aaronem
3.4 million kilometers at closest approach doesn't even equate to "near
Earth". But what better can you expect from the New Scientist?

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mturmon
Here's a nice press release
([http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news182a.html](http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news182a.html))
regarding the impact of a small NEO (2-3 meters in size) last month with
Earth.

Being small, it was discovered only 21 hours before impact, and its sonic
signature is believed to have been observed in the mid-Atlantic around
Bermuda.

Larger asteroids with orbits that will come near Earth's are being discovered
routinely by sky surveys (e.g., Catalina,
[http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/css_mission.html](http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/css_mission.html))
as far away as Jupiter.

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wslh
Are you joking? Yesterday it seems like a meteor impacted the province of
Santa Fe in Argentina: [http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/scientists-probe-
meteor-...](http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/scientists-probe-meteor-link-
to-argentina-explosion_912507.html)

Why nobody connected it with this "Moby Dick" ?

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MrZongle2
Because unless there's some proof, there's no reason to believe that the two
events are related.

Case in point: last year's meteor event over Chelyabinsk, Russia took place
shortly before a publicized close-pass of Earth by asteroid 367943 Duende.
Many people quickly jumped to the conclusion that the two were related when,
in fact, they were conclusively _not_.

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wslh
It was not a conclusion just nobody pointed the provable connection.

Sorry you are wrong about the scientific method. The proof came later, the
hypothesis first. If two improvable events came together it's worth the
investigation beyond if the events are related at the end or not. When I said
connection I meant two events happening at the same time.

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nextstep
For comparison, the asteroid from the extinction level event which killed the
dinosaurs was about 5 kilometers in diameter.

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roc
And the object that exploded over Chelyabinsk last year was estimated at 20m
in diameter.

So 270m, while a long way off "catastrophic", is well into "serious".

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greenyoda
It could still be catastrophic. If it hit a large city, it could immediately
wipe out millions of people. If it hit the ocean near the shore, it could
create massive tsunamis. If it fragmented into tiny particles on impact or
caused a huge firestorm, it could block out enough sunlight to cause a
"nuclear winter" scenario:

 _" Similar climatic effects are believed to have followed large comet and
asteroid impacts in the past, due to sulfate bearing rock being pulverized and
lofted high into the air combined with the ignition of multiple forest
firestorms, which is sometimes termed an impact winter..."_[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter)

~~~
justin66
Not to mention if it came down in a politically tense time and the ensuing
confusion triggered us to deploy the instruments of our civilization's
destruction, which we like to keep ready at hand.

~~~
aaronem
I think I remember reading that one. _Lucifer 's Hammer_, right?

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zellyn
Every good SF reader knows that an asteroid that suddenly disappears is
actually an alien spaceship. :-)

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Wonderdonkey
This is really interesting because there seem to be two camps on this. A lot
of stories are reporting the asteroid as missing, while others report pictures
taken by the Dubai Astronomy Group. One of those camps has it very wrong.
[http://www.express.co.uk/news/science-
technology/460471/Aste...](http://www.express.co.uk/news/science-
technology/460471/Asteroid-the-size-of-three-football-pitches-flies-past-
Earth-at-27-000-mph)

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NAFV_P
One of the ones that got away?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1490_Ch'ing-
yang_event](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1490_Ch'ing-yang_event)

