Comments on: The newest (tiny) threat to Earth: 2010 ST3

By: Jeromy Lashway

Jeromy Lashway — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 14:47:10 +0000

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By: jf

jf — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:21:36 +0000

any relation with “elenin” ?

By: Un meteorito de 50 metros podría impactar la Tierra en el 2098 — Tecnoculto

Un meteorito de 50 metros podría impactar la Tierra en el 2098 — Tecnoculto — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:01:20 +0000

[...] Fuente [...]

By: lamentira

lamentira — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:43:30 +0000

Hi Phil,

through a comment from one of the visitors of my blog, I found this simulator of the 2010 STE asteroid orbit.

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=+2010+ST3&orb=1

If you wait till 2098 you will check that the distance between ST3 and the Earth is never less than 1 UA.
What is wrong?

Thank you!

By: Un nuevo peligro para la Tierra | La mentira está ahí fuera

Un nuevo peligro para la Tierra | La mentira está ahí fuera — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 21:00:29 +0000

[...] Bad Astronomy VN:F [1.9.5_1105]please wait…Rating: 4.5/5 (2 votes cast)Un nuevo peligro para la Tierra, 4.5 out [...]

By: Dan I.

Dan I. — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:27:07 +0000

2098 isn’t that far off. But when I hear these things like “It might hit us in 2300″ I always think.

“Well if we can’t figure out something to do by then we have failed as a species and get what we deserve.”

By: ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid to pass Earth Earth in mid-October - Dateline Zero

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:16:58 +0000

[...] article at Discover Magazine‘s blog has this: “The newest (tiny) threat to Earth: 2010 ST3” How big a threat is this object? Well, not very: there’s “a very slight [...]

By: GumbyTheCat

GumbyTheCat — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:01:33 +0000

Being able to see something 150 feet across from 20 million miles away is a much-needed boost to the still-underappreciated but vital field of NEO detection. Technology like this could save millions of lives someday, by giving people enough time to evacuate a city in the event a small NEO is found to be on a collision course with the city or nearby offshore. Is this the only Pan-STARRS system? If so, there need to be more.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:09:21 +0000

Wonder what would happen if it hit an ice area in Antartica, the Arctic or Greenland?

Has anyone modelled meteorite impacts on glaciers, ice sheets and ice caps?

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:42:50 +0000

Evan T (37) said:

The real question is, which is worse for humans: disintegrating the asteroid and having the kinetic energy pumped into the atmosphere as thermal energy (how much would 1.8 x 10^17 J raise atmospheric temperature?), a ground impact (and the ejecta that comes along with it) or an ocean impact (and the accompanying tsunami)? Any ideas?

Erm … well, you’re getting into some pretty detailed calcs there.

For instance, if you look up the specific heat capacity of air and the mass of our atmosphere, you can work out an average increase in atmospheric temp if the energy is all dumped into the atmosphere. But I know almost nothing of fluid dynamics so I have no idea how the heat would actually be distributed if this were to be the case.

In terms of a ground impact, the effects would largely depend on what kind of ground it hit – how deep the soil, what kind of bedrock, that kind of stuff. And, again, to answer your question requires getting stuck into an awful lot of detail, and those calcs are outside my areas of knowledge (i.e. I don’t know how to go about calculating the effects of a ground strike).

As for a tsunami impact, IIUC the effects depend on the angle of impact and the depth of the water (depeer water = bigger tsunami, again IIUC). However, by way of comparison, an article in New Scientist about 4 or 5 years ago described a mountainside on one of the Canary islands that is geologically unstable, and if it falls into the Atlantic it would wipe out most of the eastern seaboard of the USA. More mass there than this rock, but far less energy, so I don’t know how useful the parallel is.