Asteroid near miss on Monday...

[Voicy]

Original Article here

AN ASTEROID of a similar size to a rock that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs whizzed close past Earth on Monday .

2009 DD45, estimated to be between 21m and 47m across, raced by at 3.44pm (CAT), the Planetary Society and astronomers’ blogs reported. The gap was just 72 000km, or a fifth of the distance between Earth and the Moon, and only twice the height of satellites in geosynchronous orbit, the website space.com said.

The estimated size is similar to that of an asteroid or comet that exploded above Tunguska, Siberia, on June 30, 1908, flattening 80 million trees in a swathe of more than 2000km².

2009 DD45 was spotted last Saturday by astronomers in Australia, and verified by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Centre (MPC), which catalogues solar system rocks.

The closest flyby listed by the MPC is 2004 FU162, a small asteroid about 6m across which came within about 6500km of us in March 2004. — Sapa-AFP

We almost got wtfpwned.

[Wraith_One]

Aww nearly. Maybe next time.

[SharkBait]

Aww nearly. Maybe next time.

Agreed, I am tired of earth, we need a new place to fsck up.

[Maplassie]

I was playing asteroids last night.

[sycogrim]

DUDE WTF and we havnt reached 10000 posts on the TK yet damn that was close ROFLMFAO.... dude I would have died with a bottle of champagne in one hand a cigar in the other and slide into heaven with my socks on and say WOOHOO wat a ride lets do it again ROFL...

[Voicy]

DUDE WTF and we havnt reached 10000 posts on the TK yet damn that was close ROFLMFAO.... dude I would have died with a bottle of champagne in one hand a cigar in the other and slide into heaven with my socks on and say WOOHOO wat a ride lets do it again ROFL...

You're one crazy pilchard, has anyone ever told you that?

*you came to the right place!*

[sycogrim]

You're one crazy pilchard, has anyone ever told you that?

*you came to the right place!*

dude they dont call me syco for nothing lol...

[Dohc-WP]

And i was watching Armageddon Last nite

[Oculate]

And i was watching Armageddon Last nite

Shat brix much?

[lilDeath]

We get hit every day by floating debris, some as big as dust, bricks and bigger. We are just a floating target in this big thing called space...

On a daily basis, the Earth is bombarded with tons of interplanetary material. Many of the incoming particles are so small that they are destroyed in the Earth's atmosphere before they reach the ground. These particles are often seen as meteors or shooting stars. The vast majority of all interplanetary material that reaches the Earth's surface originates as the collision fragments of asteroids that have run into one another some eons ago. With an average interval of about 100 years, rocky or iron asteroids larger than about 50 meters would be expected to reach the Earth's surface and cause local disasters or produce the tidal waves that can inundate low lying coastal areas. On an average of every few hundred thousand years or so, asteroids larger than a mile could cause global disasters. In this case, the impact debris would spread throughout the Earth's atmosphere so that plant life would suffer from acid rain, partial blocking of sunlight, and from the firestorms resulting from heated impact debris raining back down upon the Earth's surface. The probability of an asteroid striking the Earth and causing serious damage is very remote but the devastating consequences of such an impact suggests we should closely study different types of asteroids to understand their compositions, structures, sizes, and future trajectories.

Link

There are interesting debates surrounding the Tunguska event, some saying it was not an asteroid, but caused from earth for instance.