Per BBC News:
The object, known as 2009 DD45, thought to be 21-47m (68-152ft) across, raced by our planet at 1344 GMT on Monday.
The gap was just 72,000 km (44,750 miles); a fifth of the distance between our planet and the Moon.
Considering the name of the object, the absolute earliest we’ve known about it would have been January 1st of this year. Three months time is a very small window before a potential impact with an object “68-152ft across”. Enough mass to annihilate many cities (and some states) and significantly alter the landscape of our Earth. We would only have had, a most, three months to prepare for its arrival. This doesn’t fill me with too much confidence that any known method of altering the trajectory of threatening space debris would do the least bit of good. I’m not saying that we are prepared for a “Armageddon” style interception of any kind, but it is a sobering report to say the least. I hope that people eventually realize that we have to start making more substantive efforts towards protecting our planet from the possibility of a calamitous impact from space.
At this point in our understanding of these objects would authorities on the subject even bother to predict where such an object (or larger) would strike? Would such information do more harm, in terms of widespread panic, than good, considering we are in no way prepared to prevent it and we would have potentially so little time to evacuate? Would the response be to quietly shuffle support structures into place to prepare for the aftermath? I would hope that we would risk panic to save more lives, but who knows?
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
“Begging your pardon, sir…but it’s a bigass sky”
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Here, let me take your mind off it…
All better now?
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
lol
but seriously, doesn’t this news disturb you on a fundamental level? You want to think that there would be some recourse (besides dying with great haste).
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
If you sit down and get yourself worked up over it yeah it gets to you, but it’s no different than nuclear holocaust, super volcano eruptions, bird flu pandemics, alien/zombie invasions, giant CGI monsters or any of the other 6 million ways the human race could spontaneously come to a end. It like Stephen Hawking says, the only way to insure continued survival is to get all our balls out of one sac and spread our cheeks off this planet.