Summary
A 27-inch asteroid, C0WEPC5, entered Earth’s atmosphere over Siberia on Tuesday, creating a harmless but visible fireball.
This marked Earth’s fourth detected asteroid strike of the year and only the 11th “imminent impactor” ever recorded.
The asteroid was detected by the Kitt Peak National Observatory ahead of impact, showcasing advancements in asteroid detection.
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
Wife saw two shooting stars in short succession a few days ago. I wonder if it was little grains preceding this guy or just random junk.
Who’s aiming these things? If you’re gonna keep throwing them at Russia, then at least put a crater where Putin’s hiding.
Feel free to criticize the Jerusalem Post for other reasons, they deserve it, but their reports on near-miss asteroids where they compare their size to random things is always amusing.
It’s amusing, but not very helpful. Granted, what could the average reader do with an exact size, besides adjust their level of panic?
On second thought, the first one is very easy to picture 😺😸
No banana for scale?
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
Boo you whore
Fucking teasing bitch.
What is an inch, what is a mile, what is a feet?
Is this even about space?
A mile consists of a lot of feet
A foot consists of many inches
Easy peasy.
How many eagles in a mile in freedom units?
We talking wingspan or beak to tip?
I’d love to know what percentage of the Earth’s population would be totally fine with an asteroid taking us all out. I’d be willing to bet it’s higher that it’s ever been.
I’d rather we get eradicated but the rest of nature is fine.
There is a deep sea and creatures living deeply underground. Chance is even if an even wiped out everything on the surface of the earth after some few million years the surface is populated again.
Better a terrible end than unending terror
Please let it be soon
🙋
What’s with the weird title?
Doesn’t “Asteroid nearly hits Siberia” convey the information that an asteroid nearly hit earth?
Neither really convey that it did hit Earth('s atmosphere) and just burned up harmlessly. The title reads like it missed, in which case it doesn’t make much sense to me to mention Siberia at all.
It explains why I, not in Siberia, didn’t notice the asteroid.
Comparing a 27" asteroid and a 1200’ asteroid as comparable seems wack
I don’t understand why imperialists decided to use one apostrophe to indicate the larger unit and two to indicate the smaller unit. It makes no bloody sense.
There’s a long list of things we do that make no sense. We’ve got damn good food though
At least they didn’t use metric.
Anything but metric, bro. How many bison could fit into that asteroid?
I can’t remember, I actually only use metric now. I think you need to convert asteroids to hogheads first, if they’re tobacco that’s 1000 lbs per hogshead. Frankly it makes my head hurt.
As an American I have no idea why we don’t use metric.
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
If we pray to it, do you think it’ll deign to hit us?
Unfortunately, it’s only like 350 meters wide.
The big one that took out the dinosaurs was 10 to 15 kilometers.
A 350 meter asteroid would just make a lot of noise and make a little splash if it survived to hit the ocean, or a little hole in the ground if it managed to strike land.
We need to pray for bigger space rocks.
350m is definetely going to make a strong impact.
The Tunguska Asteroid was expected to be 50-60m in width https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
And that released 3 - 50 Megatons of energy. For reference the nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had about 20 kilotons. So about a one thousands of that. The greatest man made explosion, the sowjet Tsar bomb had about 50 Megatons of energy.
A 350m asteroid has about 7 times that length and probably at least three times the diameter. So we are looking at an impact with the mass of at least 50x that, so 150 - 2500 Megatons. If that hits central Europe the immediate blast would probably kill a few hundred million people.
What if I pray for it to hit me, specifically
I think many of these asteroids are caused by an intergalactic alien game of ‘Road Bowling’ and aliens just drunkenly throwing asteroids as far as they can while having a laugh at the local bar.
There’s a not so great book called The Killing Star, where aliens that are never described in the book decide for an unknown reason that we need to be destroyed, so they just hurl as many asteroids as they can at our solar system. It worked pretty well.
Not a bad “low-tech” way to destroy a rival civilization in another solar system. A good idea in an otherwise disappointing book.
You might enjoy a similar plotline in the excellent Bobiverse book series. (I don’t think it shows up until the second or maybe even third book, so don’t go in expecting that immediately.)
Seconding this. Excellent hard science series that spends equal time on both being a nerd and being nerdy.
Just glancing at what those books are about, they sound fun and I’ll check them out, thanks. In the case of The Killing Star, that was the plot point that attracted me to it, but the execution was clumsy and the ending was not exactly a cliffhanger, but it didn’t feel like a resolution either.
When I was done reading it, my dog decided it needed to be chewed up. It was the only time she ever chewed up a book. I guess she felt even more strongly about it than I did.
Yeah, I know that kind of book you mean. It’s not a popular opinion, but I felt similarly about Annihilation (though I only read the first book of the series, so maybe things would have improved later).
They usually try to avoid planets with intelligent life but we recently fell below the threshold
They got us with the pog, missed us with the slammer.
(I actually have no idea how pogs work)
It was aliens. The asteroids are a cover for the fight they had with us today.
So, yes. I think the ‘asteroid’ would grant this request. But you’d have to get the message channeled through a psychic, and frankly, I don’t trust them much.
It must be Apophis! Tries to keep the peace treaty with the Asgards by making our extinction seem like a natural disaster!
I’m from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all!
I have “giant fucking asteroid” on my 2025 bingo card, so I hope they hold out that long.
This would finally get rid of taxes.
Lol … I thought you comment said “Texas”
Well, possibly that, too.
I’ve seen jewelry made from meteorites. It’s cool!
Terry Pratchett apparently had a sword made from a meteorite.
Alec Steele made a video about trying to work meteorite metal.
I’ve seen a movie about a meteorite once.
Aliens were supposed to invade today but I guess there wasn’t enough melee in South Korea, so I guess I’ll settle for a colossal asteroid impact instead.
The simulation is officially broken…
