Friday, February 15, 2013

Asteroid & Meteor...Is The Sky Falling?!?


Hey Chicken Little, what's up with this?  Early on Friday morning, reports out of Russia came to light of a meteor streaking across the sky.  This had people exclaiming the following: 



This meteor was not any small hunk of change.  Estimates show the size of this meteor to be about 10 tons!  It exploded into smaller fragments upon entry into the earth's atmosphere, sending a sonic boom and shock wave over many square kilometres which shattered windows, collapsing roofs and shaking the ground.  Video of the meteors entry you must see can be found here: 

 
It's quite the "Cosmic Coincidence" that this happened so close to the next big astronomical occurrence.  This afternoon, the 15th of February 2013 one of the closest passes of an asteroid will happen at 2:24 PM.  Just how close will this be?  Take a look:



This is expected to be the "closest" pass of any asteroid of this size in modern history!  Here are the details to put it into perspective.  The moon is 239,000 miles away from earth, this asteroid is expected to pass only 17,200 miles from earth!  The nearest point to earth will happen at 2:24 PM this afternoon.  The asteroid itself is about 150 ft wide, or roughly the size of half a football field.  This asteroid will pass closer to the earth than many of our GPS and weather satellites (~22,000 miles) and will be within the gravitational pull of the earth.  Experts say, there is "no chance" this will make an impact on earth.  In case you wondering, it will NOT be visible across North America.   

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