Anyone feel like ducking Friday? Why? Well Wednesday astronomers got a bit of a nasty surprise. Asteroid 2012 BX34 was spotted quite literally in our back door. What's worse BX34 was going to get MUCH closer. By Friday it was one fifth the distance to the Moon or 36,750 miles! And yes sports fans, that is one of the closest approaches on record.
In all fairness I ought to tell you the good news - BX34 will pass by, close, but a miss and it is small - about 37 feet across. Oh and it passed by at 10:30 est.
3 comments:
Hey Mallet Head!
Truth? I suspect that it never would have hit the ground. More than likely it would have exploded in the upper atmosphere when maximum dynamic pressure was reached. Depends on composition more than anything, but say that a rock hit the ground at orbital speeds of that size I would expect a crater of several meters for sure.
You know what's funny about this. I live in South Carolina and work at a business that is right next door to Fort Jackson (one of the largest Army training centers in the country). Around 10:30 Friday morning I heard and ungodly roar outside of the building (I'm on the sixth floor of a twelve story building). I looked out hoping, in a way, to see something streaking by in the sky. Turns out that it was a group of tandem rotor helicopters that were doing flight training from the fort. They had the blades pitched so that the turbulence was shaking the windows in the building!!
Oh that's a riot Homer!
Wow, Fort Jackson! coool!
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