Potentially Dangerous Asteroid Spotted Passing Earth

[Rhyshaelkan]

Nice to see Obama at least increasing the amount spent on tracking objects to seal our fate.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/potentially-dangerous-asteroid-passes-Earth-100429.html

[JohnHunt]

This asteroid has been known about for 4.5 years, and that was before the WISE mission. My point is that the residual risk (risk from objects that we don't know about) is decreasing daily. The bigger the asteroid the more likely we have already detected it. 4.5 years is a mighty long time to evacuate from ground zero. So I would anticipate few human deaths even if it did hit. There are many smaller asteroids that we don't know about but then, the smaller they are, the less the damage. We are now routinely discovering small meteors (e.g. 10-30 feet diameter) a day or so before they would hit. Eventually the focus should be not on discovering large asteroids at a distance or even small asteroids at a distance but rather small meteors (e.g. 5 feet diameter) with routinely at least 3 days notice. At that point very few people should ever have to die.