Watching killer asteroids; recents finds (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 25, 2015, 12:35 (3110 days ago) @ David Turell

Another close fly-by coming this October, 1.3 lunar distances close, in five days:-http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/23/city-busting-earth-grazer-asteroid-imminent-near-miss-just-discovered-2-weeks-ago/-"Yet another indication that Asteroids are a far more serious threat than climate change. NASA scientists have just in the last few weeks detected a previously unknown Asteroid, a quarter of a mile across, approaching at an unusually high speed of 35km / second, which is due to narrowly miss the Earth on 31st October this year. The asteroid will only approach within 1.3 lunar distances of Earth, so this particular body poses no threat - but in terms of the scale of the solar system, this upcoming event counts as a very near miss. This asteroid is a wakeup call, a reminder of just how vulnerable we are to catastrophic impacts, and how little warning we might receive if such a threat were detected.-***-"How likely is such an impact? Thankfully really large impact events are very infrequent, though multi kiloton impact events are common - at least 26 such events have been detected since 2001, mostly in uninhabited regions. But there is no upper limit to the size of an impact event, and as this recent imminent near miss demonstrates, a serious threat could arise with very little warming.-"What could be done to mitigate asteroid impact risk? At the very least better monitoring systems could be deployed, to try to provide at least some warning. Chelyabinsk received no warning when it was struck by a meteor. This asteroid was only detected a few weeks ago.-"With enough warning people could be evacuated from likely impact zones. Even very large threats could potentially be addressed, if there was enough time to prepare.-"In my opinion it is obscene that the world is spending countless billions chasing the imaginary perils of the climate dragon, while neglecting a far more serious threat to people's lives."-Comment: Now here is a real project for the feckless UN.