HEADS-UP! ASTEROID 2012 DA14 HEADING TOWARD EARTH

ASTEROID ‘2012 DA14’ IS COMING. AND SO IS DISAGREEMENT OVER HOW MUCH WE SHOULD FREAK OUT

From Dateline Zero

First off, don’t fret: In February of 2013, Asteroid 2012 DA14 will give travel ridiculously close to Earth; but is unlikely to hit the planet. But future passes could be a real threat to humanity. It’s enough of a threat, in fact, that some folks at NASA are discussing plans to swat the asteroid away from the Earth.

In February 2013, a 150-foot asteroid will pass by Earth so close, it will actually pass under our own man-made satellites. Part of the alarm is that this proverbial on-coming train was only discovered in February of this year.

Because it’s only a recent discovery, there’s reportedly some discussion over how close, exactly, this object will pass and what impact its path will have on the planet. (Excuse my use of the word “impact.”)

Articles have already surfaced over the past weekend about NASA officials discussing how best to save the planet. Other articles have started pish-poshing the hand-wringers and doomsday-ers.

A more alarmist article appeared in RT. The article includes talk about how there isn’t time to build a spaceship to save the Earth, and firing paint at the space-rock. (Jerry Bruckheimer, is that you?)

Paint would affect the asteroid’s ability to reflect sunlight, changing its temperature and altering its spin. The asteroid would stalk off its current course, but this could also make the boulder even more dangerous when it comes back in 2056, Aleksandr Devaytkin, the head of the observatory in Russia’s Pulkovo, told Izvestia.

The RT article goes on to say that “NASA expert Dr. David Dunham told students at Moscow’s University of Electronics and Mathematics” that there is a possibility the asteroid will collide with Earth, but further calculation is required to estimate the potential threat.

“The Earth’s gravitational field will alter the asteroid’s path significantly. Further scrupulous calculation is required to estimate the threat of collision,” said Dr. Dunham, according to RT. “The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most part of it will never reach the planet’s surface.”

The body of RT article was originally pretty frightening in tone. However after publication, the article was edited to remove some of the more alarming language.

Discover Magazine‘s ‘Bad Astronomy’ blog replied with an article of their own. They counter the ONOZ!OMG! tone of the RT piece with: “No, asteroid 2012 DA14 will not hit us next year.”

Next year, on February 15, 2013, DA14 will actually get pretty close to Earth. It will pass us at a distance of about 27,000 km (17,000 miles) — well beneath many of our own orbiting satellites! To the best of my knowledge, this is the closest pass of a decent-sized asteroid ever seen before the actual pass itself.

However, let’s again be very clear: it will miss. In astronomical terms, 27,000 km is pretty close, but in real human terms it’s a clean miss.
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Unsurprisingly, though very irritatingly, I’ve seen a lot of websites writing about this as if the asteroid will hit. For example, rt.com has a very confused article about DA14 claiming it will somehow both miss us and hit us.

The eye-rollers are understandable — and I confess that I am one of them. (However, I do dig a good headline, such as “Heads-Up! Asteroid Heading Towards Earth!”) The past few years have brought one doomsday prediction after anther.

That said, history shows that impacts from space have happened and will happen again. Even the finger-wagging ‘Bad Astronomy’ article admits that future passes from 2012 DA14 could strike the Earth. Therefor, plans to avert such an impact are imperative.

The JPL website lists the next close pass as February 2020. We have some time — less than a decade — so we’d better make good use of it.

Original post at Dateline Zero