Giant asteroid set to narrowly miss Earth

A giant asteroid will only just miss earth later this year, according to NASA.

The huge rock, dubbed YU55, will pass within 201,700 miles of our planet in November.

If it crashes into earth the impact would be equivalent to 65,000 atomic bombs, while the crater would be six miles wide and 2,000 ft deep.

The asteroid, which weighs 55 million tons and is 1,300ft wide, will be the largest ever object to get so close to our planet. It orbits the sun every 14 months.
It will be closer to us than the moon, which is on average 238,855 miles away and will be visible through a small telescope.

The best times to view it will be between 23:28 on 8 November and 07:13 on 9 November (UK time).

According to NASA spokesman Dave Yeomans, there is no chance YU55 will crash into earth… for the time being. He said in statement: “YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years.”

He added: “During its closest approach, its gravitational effect on the Earth will be so minuscule as to be immeasurable. It will not affect the tides or anything else.”

Nonetheless, it has been officially labeled a ‘potentially hazardous object’ by the space agency.

YU55 was discovered by Robert McMillan, head of the NASA-funded Spacewatch Program at the University of Arizona in 2005, but it’s not the only ‘near-earth object’ they are monitoring.

NASA are also keeping tabs on WN5, an asteroid that will pass the planet in 2028, and ‘99942 Apophis’, a celestial body measuring 1,200 ft which could zoom past us on April 13 2036.

They also believe an even bigger asteroid has a one-in-a-thousand chance of colliding with earth in 2182.

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Can someone please tell me how the earth's gravitational pull isn't going to affect this thing. Does it have something to do with the speed it's traveling??

reply to post by iamhobo


no its because of its size. look at the size of the moon and its gravity only affects the tides.

It wont be close enough to the earth to have an effect, if it was passing the earth and hitting the satellites that orbit the earth then yea that will have an effect but not at over 200,000 miles away.

It would however have been a disaster if it hit the moon, we need the moon more than you think.

When it comes to UFOs etc i don't believe NASA at all but when it comes to stuff like this i think they are telling us the truth.

It will be fascinating to see it go by but its nothing to worry about.

this asteroid will collide with comet elenin, some parts will hit earth...

reply to post by noordmo


Something about this was posted yesterday. Search is your friend!

Originally posted by Schkeptick
reply to post by noordmo

 

Something about this was posted yesterday. Search is your friend!

Not only yesterday...but fourty seven times in the past 5 months..

Originally posted by Schkeptick
reply to post by noordmo

 

Something about this was posted yesterday. Search is your friend!

Not only yesterday...but fourty seven times in the past 5 months..

reply to post by amongus


Lucky u that u have seen this before, I haven't seen it before ...

Okay I think I was misunderstood.

The moon revolves around the earth because of earth's gravitational pull. My question was why wouldn't the earth's gravitational pull have an effect on the asteroid. Couldn't it get caught in the gravitational pull and rotate around the earth until it made an impact? Then I asked if it wasn't an issue because of the speed the asteroid was traveling.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

FYI

PDUK

Originally posted by iamhobo
Can someone please tell me how the earth's gravitational pull isn't going to affect this thing. Does it have something to do with the speed it's traveling??

It is virtually impossible for earth to capture a comet or asteroid into orbit because the body is traveling faster than earth orbit escape velocity, otherwise mankind could never launch a space probe or missions to the moon. I was looking into this very though just last week and the facts bear out in easy to understand mathematics.

Most orbiting moons were created during the solar system accretion processes as leftover mass too far away from the host planet to have collided into the planet and thus scooped up the leftover mass to eventually form larger orbiting bodies. There are several exceptions speculated, but the time frame of the speculations are still billions of years ago, ie. our own moon, Pluto's large moon Charon, believed to be from large body slow collisions, Triton of Neptune is a large moon believed to be captured by Neptune but Neptune has the largest Hill sphere in the solar system due to its extreme distance from the sun, there is also belief Venus was turned upside down by a large body collision that went on to collide with the sun, but all of this happened billions of years ago. Should a body enter into a planets Roche zone it would be torn apart and dispersed out, around, or into a collision path to the planet, the rings of the gas giant planets are the remains of large bodies that entered into a planets Roche zones.

As a final point some tiny bodies have been effected to enter into unstable orbits of larger planets that have eventually broken away from the gravitational pull, the orbits were highly irregular, elliptical, and in some cases disputed as even being in orbit at all. In the case of Jupiter a passing body usually collides, or gets thrown into a different orbit around the sun, as what happens to many comets that get too close to the sun, they simply get annihilated.

Escape velocity is the key issue. Earth's is about 24,500 mph, which is 10.95 m/sec, most asteroids are in the 20 and above velocity range, comets can pass by as fast as 40 m/sec and faster.

reply to post by Illustronic


This asteroid goes around the sun once every 14 years. Wouldnt that imply it travels 14 times slower than the earth? Or is the orbit elliptical and therefor much longer than earths orbit?

EDIT: after review I noticed its only 14 MONTHS, sorry....but the question still stands...somewhat

reply to post by Waldy


Mercury has an elliptical orbit, it speeds up and slows down depending on its distance from the sun, while its year remains constant. Pluto has the greatest elliptical orbit and inclination. The Asteroid in question has to have a wider elliptical orbit than earth, or it would be a Trojan moon. Its orbit is probably much greater than earth's, and also might have a greater inclination. I'll have to look into that after work but it would stand to reason if it crosses our orbit, and does not become bound in our orbit in one of the Lagrangian points.

It's interesting to note that 2001 WN5 has an absolute magnitude of 18.3. This is 3.6 magnitudes brighter than 2005 YU55, and indicates that it could be nearly a kilometre in diameter. The approach distance is currently calculated to be around 250,000 kms, which is 75,000 kms closer than 2005 YU55. Less than a year after that, we have the potential show stopper 99942 Apophis passing less than 38,000 kms from the centre of the planet. This asteroid is very similar in size to 2005 YU55, and it will be visible to the naked eye as a moving point of light!

I have no idea about the "even larger object" supposedly heading our way in 2182. The IAU Minor Planet Centre has a list of all calculated close approaches of PHAs (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids) between now and 2200, and there is nothing for 2182....