Asteroid 2015HM10

[Yorkshire pud]

Tomorrow's the big day.  Do we get cake?

If it's rainy playtime can we bring games? 

[paladin1991]

Shouldn't we be able to see it in the sky?

[Yorkshire pud]

Shouldn't we be able to see it in the sky?

Stop it now!!! That's that astronomy science shit. Haven't you read the conspiracy theory nutcase rantings research?

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Our sky is filled with smoke horizon to horizon to horizon to horizon.  They say it's from wildfires, but I know it's from 2015HM10.  Actually, with any luck that asteroid will clear things up.

[onan]

Tomorrow's the big day.  Do we get cake?

Isn't it already tomorrow in Australia? There should be reports.

[Yorkshire pud]

Isn't it already tomorrow in Australia? There should be reports.

Jazmunda will be the first to tell us if he's been wiped out. He won't let us down with that important news.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Jazmunda will be the first to tell us if he's been wiped out. He won't let us down with that important news.

Yes, certainly Jazmunda would report his untimely death the moment it happened.

[onan]

Yes, certainly Jazmunda would report his untimely death the moment it happened.

Probably with an exciting YouTube video.

[Yorkshire pud]

Okay ladies, we're six hours into the 7th and the shelter is holding up well, amazingly! I don't know where the asteroid finally hit but it doesn't feel any different. Sure it's cold being underground wrapped in a tarp but the supplies are holding up. Good luck everyone.

[onan]

Okay ladies, we're six hours into the 7th and the shelter is holding up well, amazingly! I don't know where the asteroid finally hit but it doesn't feel any different. Sure it's cold being underground wrapped in a tarp but the supplies are holding up. Good luck everyone.

It was horrible. The devastation, I can't control the tears. Jesus, the carnage. Oh, wait, its a bug on the windshield. Well, now its September, right? The financial ruination of us all, maybe the asteroid didn't show up because... no money.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Closest approach is at 18:39 Barycentric Dynamical Time, whatever that is.

[Yorkshire pud]

Closest approach is at 18:39 Barycentric Dynamical Time, whatever that is.

You mean I can't leave the shelter yet? Damn. I forgot to fit a loo... erm..it's not good lads.

[Who]

Our sky is filled with smoke horizon to horizon to horizon to horizon.  They say it's from wildfires, but I know it's from 2015HM10.  Actually, with any luck that asteroid will clear things up.

Georgie, a Calgary man took flight with a lawn chair and 100 helium balloons.  Was that you going up for a closer look at the asteroid?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/jul/07/calgary-balloon-man-helium-daniel-boria-video?CMP=share_btn_fb

[Grov505th]

Well is 1918 Central Kabul Time and I am still here......Man I feel stupid for stealing   borrowing all these MRE's and Water.   I wonder if they missed them yet

[aldousburbank]

So, we all like, die tonight rIght?

[albrecht]

10:32 CDT in FEMA Region VI and I am still here I guess I will have to wait another week, for Jade Helm, to take me out since 2015HM10 seems to have been a bust.

[Yorkshire pud]

Look. The stink is getting to me after I invited a few of the neighbours into the shelter.. I'm going to swing for Stellar if he's been making this up.

[Who]

Look. The stink is getting to me after I invited a few of the neighbours into the shelter.. I'm going to swing for Stellar if he's been making this up.

This public service film from the 1950s may make life easier for you and your guests.  As the film points out, the greatest danger to shelter occupants is scuttlebutt.  It is vital that you do everything within your power to prevent scuttlebutt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vZvZKT8QQ

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Georgie, a Calgary man took flight with a lawn chair and 100 helium balloons.  Was that you going up for a closer look at the asteroid?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/jul/07/calgary-balloon-man-helium-daniel-boria-video?CMP=share_btn_fb

Nah, that was the balloonin' traffic report.  We can't afford helicopters up here.

[Yorkshire pud]

This public service film from the 1950s may make life easier for you and your guests.  As the film points out, the greatest danger to shelter occupants is scuttlebutt.  It is vital that you do everything within your power to prevent scuttlebutt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vZvZKT8QQ

Hmmm, it's a bit embarrassing. My shelter doesn't look much like that..well, when I say not much like, as in not at all. I didn't have time to dig it deep enough to stand up in. So we're pretty much crawling over each other with next door's fence panels used as a roof of sorts. Can someone call the all clear soon because quite honestly, I'm fed up with next door's dog cocking it's leg on me and it's owner not stopping it. They'll be a riot here if Stellar has sold us a load of bollox.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Hmmm, it's a bit embarrassing. My shelter doesn't look much like that..well, when I say not much like, as in not at all. I didn't have time to dig it deep enough to stand up in. So we're pretty much crawling over each other with next door's fence panels used as a roof of sorts. Can someone call the all clear soon because quite honestly, I'm fed up with next door's dog cocking it's leg on me and it's owner not stopping it. They'll be a riot here if Stellar has sold us a load of bollox.

I hope you had time to rig a rudimentary ventilation system 

[paladin1991]

Well is 1918 Central Kabul Time and I am still here......Man I feel stupid for stealing   borrowing all these MRE's and Water.   I wonder if they missed them yet

Probably not.  You can ship the MREs to me.  I'll hold them.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Well good news!  Stellar's projection was based on an hour's uncertainty in NASA's data.  That uncertainty is now down to less than a minute (as of July 6. 11:20 a.m.), and they still project its closest possible approach to Earth as .00295 AU., or about 274 000 miles, and its closest approach to Earth's orbital path as about 110 000 miles.

2015-Jul-07 18:39   < 00:01   Earth   0.00295283442178499   0.00295241046728209   0.00295325835807388   

[Yorkshire pud]

Well good news!  Stellar's projection was based on an hour's uncertainty in NASA's data.  That uncertainty is now down to less than a minute (as of July 6. 11:20 a.m.), and they still project its closest possible approach as .00295 AU., or about 294 000 miles.

2015-Jul-07 18:39   < 00:01   Earth   0.00295283442178499   0.00295241046728209   0.00295325835807388

What? You said 294000 miles, as in further than the moon is? Are you for bloody real you, you, you Canadian?!!!! I've been laying in my neighbours' shit for the last day and it's for nothing?

Where is Stellar? He's got some fucking answering to do!!!

[paladin1991]

What? You said 294000 miles, as in further than the moon is? Are you for bloody real you, you, you Canadian?!!!! I've been laying in my neighbours' shit for the last day and it's for nothing?

Where is Stellar? He's got some fucking answering to do!!!

Maybe he can hose you off.

Hoser.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

What? You said 294000 miles, as in further than the moon is? Are you for bloody real you, you, you Canadian?!!!! I've been laying in my neighbours' shit for the last day and it's for nothing?

Where is Stellar? He's got some fucking answering to do!!!

Sorry, I made a typo.  274 000 miles.  If the Moon weren't on the opposite side of the Earth, you might even have been able to see it from there.  Scary,  huh?  Better to be proactive than dead

[Yorkshire pud]

Sorry, I made a typo.  274 000 miles.  If the Moon weren't on the opposite side of the Earth, you might even have been able to see it from there.  Scary,  huh?  Better to be proactive than dead

How long before the next time we're wiped out?

[eddie dean]

aren't we supposed to all die today?

If so, who wants to go out with a 'bang'??

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

How long before the next time we're wiped out?

I hope I'm not becoming the Stellar spokesperson.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

This article may be of interest:

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/asteroid-2015-hm10-will-not-destroy-earth/

AUTHOR: SOPHIA CHEN,  SCIENCE  DATE OF PUBLICATION: 07.07.15.
TIME OF PUBLICATION: 12:30 PM.

Chill. Asteroid 2015 HM10 Isn’t Going to Destroy Earth

TODAY, ASTEROID 2015 HM10 will not destroy Earth. It will not arc like a fiery rainbow through the atmosphere and drop an inferno the size of Manhattan onto, let’s say, Paris or the Golden Gate Bridge. Billions of people will not die horribly, or indeed at all. No 1990s action heroism will be required.

So if indeed the prosaically-named 2015 HM10 is only coming within 270,000 miles of our planetâ€"further away than the moonâ€"why are so many people freaking right the hell out about it? Why is NASA’s Asteroid Watch Twitter feed spending valuable at-replies on assuaging hoax asteroid impact fears? Well…asteroid impacts have been extinction-level events on Earth before. They might be again.

But let’s be clear: Not today.

“2015 HM10 is a fairly ordinary near-Earth object, making a fairly ordinary close approach,” writes Eric Christensen, an astronomer who leads the Catalina Sky Survey, a project to discover rocks like this one, floating near Earth, in an e-mail.

Listen, you can’t even see this asteroid in the night sky with the naked eye. Discovered in April using a four-meter telescope in Chile, it’s only about 200 feet across. It’s just one of about 100,000 similar objects that orbit the sun at about the same distance, originating in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and pulled into closer orbits by the gravity of nearby planets. Near-Earth Objects this size get this close about once a year. Even most asteroids that do make it to Earth are nothing Earth-shattering (get it?). A car-sized asteroid burns up in our atmosphere probably once a month, which usually results in a nice light show and “perhaps a few small meteorites if we’re lucky,” writes Christensen.

That hasn’t stopped places like Reddit and the International Business Times from suggesting that 2015 HM10 qualifies as a “near miss” that’s going to “zip past” the only planet with human beings on it in the universe. It depends on your definition of “near” and “zip,” perhaps.

Timing might also be at fault. If you believe the people making a documentary film about how dangerous asteroids can be, last Tuesday was Asteroid Day, part of a “global awareness movement to protect Earth from asteroid impacts.” So the Internet was aflutter with asteroid-related news, including a webcast put on by NASA. Astronomers there repeatedly emphasized that the media frequently, um, misinterprets the danger of asteroid approaches. While finding and studying asteroids is an important task, nothing dramatic is imminent.

The last time an asteroid did any damage was 2013, when a 50-foot wide rock broke up over Chelyabinsk, in Russia. Almost 2,000 people were injured, mostly by glass from windows broken by fragments ejected by the explosion. No one died. “The effects from small impacts like Chelyabinsk are extremely localized, and so there is little threat to human populations from small impacts,” says Christensen. Plus, an impact as large as Chelyabinsk only happens every few decades. Impacts from large asteroids, longer than 450 feet in diameter, are even less likelyâ€"they only happen every 10,000 years or so.

Scientists do track the largest possible culprits. NASA-funded projects like the Christensen’s Catalina Sky Survey and Pan-STARRS are working to catalog 90 percent of near-Earth objects. Christensen says that they already know about 95 percent of the big onesâ€"the objects that are larger than 3,000 feet across. None of them have any chance of hitting the planet for at least a century. Does that mean scientists shouldn’t try to track more of them, or all of them? Of course not. Organizations and companies working with NASA are even developing a spacecraft to deflect the trajectory of an incoming asteroid if necessary.

The bottom line? For our solar system, today’s asteroid’s approach is business as usual, and it is really, really, reallyâ€"reallyâ€"unlikely that an asteroid will take a big chunk out of Earth anytime soon. “People tend to focus on the spectacular effects of potential impacts without realizing that large impacts are extremely low-probability events,” Christensen writes. “I don’t spend time worrying about damaging asteroid impacts, just like I don’t waste time planning how to spend my hypothetical lottery winnings.” Be not afraid, humans.