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Earth was hit by a mysterious ‘mini-moon’ fireball asteroid, scientists reveal
Metro UK ^ | Jasper HamillMonday 2 Dec 2019 11:53 am

Posted on 12/03/2019 10:44:29 AM PST by Red Badger

Humans have good reason to fear comets, asteroids and other massive space objects.

Now we’d like to add ‘mini-moons’ to the list of heavenly bodies we should be worried about.

Scientists have claimed our planet was recently hit by one of these mysterious rocks, which exploded in a gigantic fireball.

A mini-moon is an object which becomes entangled in Earth’s orbit as it’s zooming through space.

It will either whirl around the planet harmlessly forever, zoom off back off on its journey through the solar system or, in the worst case, smash into our planet.

‘Objects gravitationally captured by the Earth–Moon system are commonly called temporarily captured orbiters, natural Earth satellites, or minimoons,’ scientists wrote in a new study published in The Astromomical Journal.

‘TCOs are a crucially important subpopulation of near-Earth objects (NEOs) to understand because they are the easiest targets for future sample-return, redirection, or asteroid mining missions.

‘Only one TCO has ever been observed telescopically, 2006 RH 120, and it orbited Earth for about 11 months.’

However, it’s believed that an ‘extremely slow fireball’ which exploded over South Australia may have been a mini-moon.

It was picked up by six different detectors when it went kaboom in August 2016.

No-one was hurt in the incident, but it shows that the movement of objects through the region of space close to Earth is highly unpredictable.

If the rock had been larger, it could have done some major damage.

It’s very difficult to guess what’s going to happen to an object when it encounters Earth’s gravity because its movements are ‘chaotic in nature and predicting its pre-impact trajectory is very difficult’.

What this means is that if we saw a big asteroid in our planet’s orbit, we wouldn’t necessarily be able to say where and when it was going to hit Earth – or even if it was going to simply zoom around humanity’s homeworld and then travel off into space.

This year, Nasa has discovered two asteroids which could be on a collision course with our planet.

The space agency keeps a database called Sentry that contains details of all the space rocks with a chance of smashing into Earth.

This list is updated every time a new object that could hit humanity’s homeworld is discovered.

In the past six months alone, two separate rocks have been discovered which could crash into us.

The first is called 2019 ND7 and was observed in July.

This beast is almost 200 metres wide, which is large enough to wipe out an entire city.

A view of the devastation caused by the Tunguska event.

==============================================================

It could be bigger than a meteor which detonated over Tunguska, Russia, in 1908 and flattened trees over an area of 770 square miles.

The ‘Tunguska event’ caused an explosion of 15-megatons – which is roughly 1,000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The rock which caused this mighty kaboom was between 60 and 1,000 metres wide, although most estimates indicate it was at the smaller size of this range.

Describing this incident, Nasa wrote: ‘Although a meteor the size of the Tunguska can level a city, metropolitan areas take up such a small fraction of the Earth’s surface that a direct impact on one is relatively unlikely.

‘More likely is an impact in the water near a city that creates a dangerous tsunami.’

Luckily, there is only a very small chance of the asteroid hitting Earth. Nasa has calculated the risk at 1 in 310,000, meaning there’s a 99.99968% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth.


TOPICS: Astronomy; History; Outdoors; Science; UFO's
KEYWORDS: 2006rh120; 2019nd7; astronomy; australia; catastrophism; minimoon; minimoons; nothing2dowithufos; quasisatellite; quasisatellites; russia; science; tunguska
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1 posted on 12/03/2019 10:44:29 AM PST by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger
Mini-moon....


2 posted on 12/03/2019 10:48:20 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: Red Badger

with God as my witness, I didn’t know Stacy Abrams could fly.


3 posted on 12/03/2019 10:48:45 AM PST by rfp1234 (All hail President Fartwell.)
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To: Red Badger
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

― H.L. Mencken

4 posted on 12/03/2019 10:48:55 AM PST by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrats' John Dean])
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To: Red Badger

5 posted on 12/03/2019 10:52:34 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: BenLurkin

6 posted on 12/03/2019 10:54:39 AM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain...................)
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To: Red Badger

Got Jesus?


7 posted on 12/03/2019 10:55:11 AM PST by right way right (May we remain sober over mere men, for God really is our only true hope.)
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“Tunguska, Russia, in 1908”

And here all this time I thought it was a Tesla experiment gone awry. I read it on the internet.


8 posted on 12/03/2019 10:55:52 AM PST by Clutch Martin (The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.)
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To: Red Badger

Awesome


9 posted on 12/03/2019 10:55:55 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: Clutch Martin
Neither the Tunguska event or the explosion in August 2016 can be blamed on Trump or we would hear a lot more about them.

I once read that if the object which caused the Tunguska event had hit earth three hours later it would have hit St. Petersburg, Russia. Not sure if that is correct (if they are on exactly the same latitude).

10 posted on 12/03/2019 11:04:14 AM PST by Verginius Rufus
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To: Red Badger

The Minimoon is a Harsh Mistress.


11 posted on 12/03/2019 11:27:58 AM PST by Charles Martel (Progressives are the crab grass in the lawn of life.)
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To: Charles Martel

I see what you did there...................


12 posted on 12/03/2019 11:31:33 AM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain...................)
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To: Steely Tom
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” ― H.L. Mencken

Worth repeating...

13 posted on 12/03/2019 11:32:06 AM PST by GOPJ (UN-elected bureaucrats steal power and taxpayer dollars - they belong in prison.)
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To: Red Badger

What is it about these “mini-moons” that differentiates them from asteroids? They look like the same thing to me.


14 posted on 12/03/2019 1:12:43 PM PST by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: JimRed

A mini-moon is an asteroid that has been captured by Earth’s gravity and becomes a ‘moon’..................


15 posted on 12/03/2019 1:24:25 PM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain...................)
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To: Red Badger

So they are not the ones that will catch us by surprise...they’ll be tracked to a fare-thee-well.

So, how come they didn’t spot this one until the blast?


16 posted on 12/03/2019 1:32:26 PM PST by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: JimRed

Too small, I suppose, or it came from an unusual direction...............


17 posted on 12/03/2019 1:38:12 PM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain...................)
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To: Red Badger

Minimoons and maximoons are essential for calculus.


18 posted on 12/03/2019 2:41:45 PM PST by GingisK
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To: GingisK

Unless it’s a Null...................


19 posted on 12/03/2019 2:42:43 PM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain...................)
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To: SunkenCiv

*ping*


20 posted on 12/03/2019 8:23:37 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (Dear Mr. Kotter, #Epsteindidntkillhimself - Signed, Epstein's Mother)
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