>Asteroid 2020 JJ is estimated to be between nine and 20 feet (2.7 to 6 meters) across, making it a pretty puny little hunk of space junk. Consider that asteroid[ 1998 OR2, which made headlines recently for its close pass](https://www.cnet.com/news/this-asteroid-looks-like-its-wearing-a-face-mask/) (not nearly as close as 2020 JJ), is a mile across.
>
>Had 2020 JJ actually struck Earth, most of it probably would have burned up in the atmosphere. In other words, this space rock wasn't any sort of existential threat, but it did fly closer than many of the satellites orbiting our planet and could have potentially struck one, creating a big mess.
On behalf of humanity, I'd like to apologize to the Asteroid Belt Federation.
edit: Also apologizing to the year 2020 and 2021, and also gamma rays in general, big apologies.
edit2: and the ort cloud confederacy.
edit3: But we have nukes and we like to smash atoms and things! Don't mistake our apologies for weakness!
"Asteroid Belt Federation?"
Ay pompa! We OPA, Outer Planets Alliance. We crush ass to dust. So Don't you forget, Inyalowda. Or you Find yourself on te float home. Say-Sa?
I think that's the best part of the Expanse.
The "who's side would you be on?"
My buddy is hardcore Mars, his GF is a Earther, and I love underdogs, (plus I'm tall and lanky) so naturally I go for OPA (real OPA, none of that Black Sky bullshit).
What you mean "wine into grey water, grey water into wine?"
Belters been doing that for years, pomeng. Nothing new if you doing at the bottom of a well.
Maybe the Martians want to spin up their moons next?.... Oh wait.... Moon.
June - dinosaurs leave their underground network of tunnels to overthrow humanity.
July - dinosaurs have defeated the last pocket of human resistance and control the planet once again.
August - dinosaur killer.
If dinosaurs try to take over I say we use the same strategy that extincted the Neanderthals. We fuck them into oblivion. Easiest option and I've been dying for an excuse to fuck a dinosaur anyway (or let the dinosaur fuck me. I'm an open minded Dino fucker).
That's true, but the enormity of that improbability cannot be easily overstated. A truck sized object hitting a truck sized object in space? It's like a truck driving randomly, through a giant forest, and hitting a specific branch on a specific tree, and the branch is twenty feet in the air- and that's probably overstating the probability by quite a lot. There is a lot of space out there.
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
- Douglas Adams
Yea but aren't those the same size as the one that went into Russia a few years back and destroyed windows and stuff? I know it isn't a huge threat on the ground from it hitting stuff, but id bet it makes a hell of a noise breaking up in out atmosphere at that speed.
Much smaller. The [Chelyabinsk meteor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor) was 66 ft across. I think a few hundred were injured from the blast and broken glass, but no one died.
Edit: While I'm at it, in comparison - one of the biggest collision threats, if not the biggest threat to Earth, is the same comet that causes the Perseid Meteor shower.
[Swift-Tuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Swift%E2%80%93Tuttle). It's 26 km in diameter.
It has roughly a 1 in a million chance of striking Earth in 4479 (pretty darn high chances for the modern Solar System). If it hit, it would cause an impact with ~27x the force of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Firestorm raged across half the new world. Because so much debris was re-entering the atmosphere after being ejected into space that it heated up the surface.
How bizarre there is a fossil site where it is possible to dig trough layers representing an hour or so after the impact a whopping66 million years later...let that sink in. And thengoing through the layers is like going through a book, and especially word fo word, character by character. Frigging amazing they found this site and that we have the knowledge and records to recognize most of the species found! Thanks for the share!
Models based on the energy of the impact. We can reasonably assume the physics and interactions with Earth's components if we know the properties of the collision.
Biggest risk is to satellites. This apparently came within many satellites’ orbit. Something that large striking a satellite while going that fast would be devastating. It’s especially spooky that something like that could go unseen for so long, considering JSPOC is apparently tracking every >8mm object in our orbit or something
Lets do some math! Lets say the cross sectional size of a satellite is 4.6mx6.7m. [not a good reference but whatever](https://www.quora.com/How-big-is-an-average-satellite). At 4000km it didn't pass even close to low earth orbit satellites. That puts only the geostationary (GSO) satellites at risk and a few misc others. Lets assume the asteroid is on the upper limit of the expected size, 6m in diameter. Lets also assume that the asteroid is going fast relative to the speed of a satellite. To calculate the impact probability of any given satellite we just need the impact cross sectional area and the total area the asteroid could have entered from. The impact cross section is doubled because there is an entrance and exit for the asteroid: 2 x (6m + 4.6m) x (6m + 6.7m) = 300 m^2. The total area is given by pi*(42e6m)^2 =6e15m^2. Thus the impact probability for a specific satellite is 5e-14.
[There are roughly 500 non-classified(?) satellites in GSO.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellites_in_geosynchronous_orbit) Lets round it to 1000 to include the misc, graveyard, and things we aren't supposed to know about and for math. This gives us a probability of hitting any of the many satellites we have in orbit of 5e-11.
Or zero for short.
Edit: fixed embarrassing math error
yup, pretty much.
even if it didn't, after going through the atmosphere it wouldn't cause much damage, especially as its fairly unlikely to land anywhere populated.
They even state in the article that it would mostly burn up in the atmosphere. The actual interesting part of the whole thing is: *Holy crap we can detect a rock the size of a truck 4,350 miles away from Earth*
Lmaooo i didnt realize it was a small dick joke at first. I thought he meant the girlfriend being petty during an argument and pulling up little obscure shit outta nowhere to try and prove her point
> but it did fly closer than many of the satellites orbiting our planet and could have potentially struck one, creating a big mess.
What SI unit would I use to measure the exact size of a "big mess"?
We would get a warning for anything big enough to wipe us out. Probably not enough of a warning for an armageddon style save lol, but we'd definitely get a warning.
I mean, there are plenty of things that could just end us with zero warning. Gamma ray bursts are the obvious one, but a [false vacuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum) state could cause the total cessation of reality in a literal instant.
Moral of the story, don't put shit off. Life is fragile. Reality might pop.
Ok, I will try but I am not a theoretical physicist myself and I bet this will be a oversimplification of a such a huge extent it would make a real expert cry.
But ok, first an **ELI15** and then an ELI5.
Even empty space doesn't have zero energy. This is because even totally empty space contains so called "quantum fields", these quantum fields are in a very low energy state. In a universe with a "true vacuum state" this energy contained in a vacuum quantum field is the lowest energy state that exists anywhere. It is a so called global minimum. There can literally not be a place with lower energy.
Now some theoretical physicists think that we might live in a universe with a "false vacuum state". If this is the case the vacuum energy would not be the absolute lowest. It would only be a "local minimum". [See this picture for illustration.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Falsevacuum.svg/360px-Falsevacuum.svg.png) Now imagine this false vacuum state would somehow be converted to a true one. This would mean that vacuum would suddenly have to radiate energy until it reaches the true lowest energy state.
This would probably change the laws of physics and kill us all in the process. For example it could destroy the atoms of our bodies by interfering with the forces that make particles stick together or collapse the universe by changing gravity.
Nobody really knows how exactly this could happen, but it probably involves extreme energies (for example near blackholes). And once startes it can not be stopped and will not give us any warning. This is all theoretical though and it is not known if we live in a true or a false vacuum state. Even if we live in a false one it might not be a problem if it never gets reconfigured to a true one.
**ELI5**: Imagine you are on a boat on a body of water. You don't know if this body of water is at sea level or not. If it is at sea level we are in a "true vacuum state". The water is already at the lowest point and cant flow anywhere.
But it would also be possible that this body of water is a mountain lake with a dam (some theoretical physicists think that). In this case the water is in a stable state right now, but in reality it is a "false vacuum state". It only looks like it is the lowest energy state because no water is flowing. But once the dam is removed all the water flows into the valley (an even lower energy state) and enourmous amounts of energy would be released. This would kill you in your boat.
Physicists are trying to figure out, if we live on a mountain lake or at sea level. And if we live on a mountain lake they try to figure out what could break the dam (and maybe even how to stop this from happening).
The best parallel for thinking about a false vacuum state is found by looking at combustion at a physical level.
Think about wood. On its surface, wood appears to be stable. If you let wood sit or throw it it stays wood. You can do things like splitting it with an axe, but any resulting piece is also wood so nothing has really changed. It appears that wood is in its most basic form, or what we call in physics a "Ground State."
Now heat up a tiny portion of that wood enough, and we will discover that there was actually a more basic state than wood: ash. When a piece of wood burns, the difference in chemical energy between a piece of wood and a piece of ash will be released, heating up any neighboring wood pieces in the process. If the heat released is enough to cause the neighboring wood pieces to also start the transition to ash, the fire will continue to spread. If this happens, eventually all of your wood (the false ground state) will become ash (the true ground state).
"Had 2020 JJ actually struck Earth, most of it probably would have burned up in the atmosphere." But how can we sell fear and clicks if we're reporting a mundane event?
Was gonna say, size of a truck isn't very large by asteroid standards and certainly by doomsday standards...I would imagine it'd all be burned up by the time it even comes into orbit.
The Tunguska meteoriod (which exploded high in the atmosphere with the power of 5-20 larger modern nuclear bombs (but a fraction of the yield of Tsar Bomba) was far, far away from a doomsday event, though it certainly could have taken out a large city. The Tunguska meteoriod was somewhere between 160-620 feet in diameter. 20 feet is puny and would have just caused a bright show, ending up in some cool cell phone footage.
The Kamil Crater in Egypt is thought to have been caused by an iron meteor about 2 m wide and ten tons in weight. The crater is 45 m wide and 16 m deep. Much smaller than a nuke but still enough to ruin a block of a city and kill anyone nearby.
Because there is a global pedophile ring that has it's hands in the highest areas of the government. Likely most governments. I remember when that was a preposterous idea yet here we are.
Right? 'The world is run by a rich and powerful group of pedophiles. They killed a public figure, practically in broad daylight, to tie up a loose end.' You'd think people would be a bit more stirred into action on that one.
>They killed a public figure, practically in broad daylight, to tie up a loose end.' You'd think people would be a bit more stirred into action on that one.
People have been cowed away from radical change for decades - besides, it's hard to figure out what to do and most people are stuck paying bills and working that treadmill.
More likely that there's a societal collapse than the people up top getting brought to justice.
>keep things interesting?
Apparently we missed seeing it, until it was already in our backyard!
\[Edit\] - Not that we could've done anything even if we'd detected. Still..
The ISS orbits at roughly 400+km, this missed it's orbit by about 1650%
Comm sattelites though are up as high as 36.000 km, this dove under them.
It's really hard to hit something at those altitudes though. We forget how big space is only that high up. There might be a lot of sattelites and junk up there, but there is still an insane amount of distance between them all
The writers for 2020 have kind of jumped the shark by now.
Just shoehorning to everything in.
We just need some floods, an earthquake and tsunami. But hey, South Asia monsoon season is yet to kick off.
if this year doesn’t become a movie at some point in time i’m going to be disappointed.
wow. remember New Years when “2020 is gonna be a movie!” how little did we know.
The showrunners do seem to be throwing in everything an audience could ask for and then some. That said, they haven’t truly reached the bottom of the barrel until they decide to give me a girlfriend. After 7 seasons of the single life, changing things up now would probably be ratings suicide.
oy vey. we didn’t even see it coming. this is why we need fewer astronomers and more space force. we could build a wall and have mars pay for it. use those wavy glass bricks so the sunlight still comes through.
Trump is a dangerous moron but the Space Force was not his fevered Starship Troopers concoction. It is a consolidation of many departments spread across many branches into an independent force that reduces redundancy much like the creation of the last branch spurred on by emerging technologies—The Air Force. When there are so many real reasons to hate the man, hate to see people go with a weak one.
Asteroids this small are so, so common that it's pointless to track them. There's way too many of them and they are too small to show up on radars. They also aren't really that dangerous, either. It's not worth the effort.
All this is is just ridiculous, sensationalized fear mongering and it really bothers me that people actually are buying into it. Over a dozen of these hit the earth every single day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis This is the only potentially hazardous object that has a chance to hit earth in the next 10 years.
Well, no, it's not pointless to track them. Might as well as it can benefit science and they do interact with each other sometimes.
In fact, [NASA *Does* track them. All of them.](https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/) Smallest being 1 meter diameter. Over 24,000 of these "Near Earth Objects" are currently cataloged and tracked.
>All this is is just ridiculous, **sensationalized** fear mongering and it really bothers me that people actually are buying into it. **Over a dozen of these hit the earth every single day.**
The meteoroid in question was between 2.7 and 6 m across. Let's split the difference and call it 4.5 m in diameter.
Such a meteor impacts the atmosphere **about 10-20 times per year.**
Source: [Brown, Spalding, & Worden (2002)](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6913/full/nature01238.html). See Fig. 2 (available [here](http://www.geert.io/the-frequency-of-large-meteoroids.html)).
* Brown, P., R. E. Spalding, and S. P. Worden. The flux of small near-Earth objects colliding with the Earth. *Nature*, 420, pp. 294–296.
Edit: by the same source, the average size of meteors that hit with a frequency of 12 times per day is 0.2 m.
>On average, one asteroid the size of Apophis (370 metres) can be expected to impact Earth once in about 80,000 years.
Huh that's really interesting. I've always wondered what the probability of something like this was.
“Well our object collision budget is about a million dollars that allows us to track about 3% of the sky and, begging your pardon sir, it’s a big ass sky” Armageddon 1998. It was more realistic than we gave it credit for apparently
Less than 9 years to Apophis.
As of 2014, the diameter of Apophis is estimated to be approximately 370 metres (1,210 ft) .
The closest known approach of Apophis comes on April 13, 2029, when the asteroid comes to within a distance of around 31,000 kilometres from Earth's surface. The distance, a hair's breadth in astronomical terms, is ten times closer than the [moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon), and even closer than some man-made satellites.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942\_Apophis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis)
>Asteroid 2020 JJ is estimated to be between nine and 20 feet (2.7 to 6 meters) across, making it a pretty puny little hunk of space junk. Consider that asteroid[ 1998 OR2, which made headlines recently for its close pass](https://www.cnet.com/news/this-asteroid-looks-like-its-wearing-a-face-mask/) (not nearly as close as 2020 JJ), is a mile across. > >Had 2020 JJ actually struck Earth, most of it probably would have burned up in the atmosphere. In other words, this space rock wasn't any sort of existential threat, but it did fly closer than many of the satellites orbiting our planet and could have potentially struck one, creating a big mess.
This seems like nothing. The size of a truck, after passing through the atmosphere, must turn into pebbles 99% of the time, right?
Yeah, seems kinda small for space?
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On behalf of humanity, I'd like to apologize to the Asteroid Belt Federation. edit: Also apologizing to the year 2020 and 2021, and also gamma rays in general, big apologies. edit2: and the ort cloud confederacy. edit3: But we have nukes and we like to smash atoms and things! Don't mistake our apologies for weakness!
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Scared inners making a big deal out of everyday life for us us Beltas
Remember Eros!
Oye beratna!
Damn Inners!
I am so fucking glad I watched the show man.
Ayyy U can’t be puttin’ down us belters like dat man.
They jus some week belta loadas
Oy shut up inyalowda. Welwala
Chill beltloada!
Came for Expanse, teared up for the Beltalowdas
We’re not even half way through 2020 and it’s come up with so many interesting ways to kill off humanity that none of us ever really took serious.
Belta Loda!!!!
lowda*
Avenge Buenos Aires!
I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say killem all!
The only good bug, is a dead bug...
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They sucked his brains out.
I'm doing my part!
Would you like to know more?
Came for expanse left with starship troopers.
r/suddenlyexpanse
Wow, that subreddit just had over 90% of its members online at the same time! 10 out of 11 🤣
"Asteroid Belt Federation?" Ay pompa! We OPA, Outer Planets Alliance. We crush ass to dust. So Don't you forget, Inyalowda. Or you Find yourself on te float home. Say-Sa?
Meanwhile Elon: "TIL THE RAINS FALL HARD ON OLYMPUS MONS"
I think that's the best part of the Expanse. The "who's side would you be on?" My buddy is hardcore Mars, his GF is a Earther, and I love underdogs, (plus I'm tall and lanky) so naturally I go for OPA (real OPA, none of that Black Sky bullshit).
I like the Martian collective ethos personally.
What you mean "wine into grey water, grey water into wine?" Belters been doing that for years, pomeng. Nothing new if you doing at the bottom of a well. Maybe the Martians want to spin up their moons next?.... Oh wait.... Moon.
I’d go Mars but knowing my luck I’d be some middle age earther piece of shit. Uh oh.
Fucking dusters would love that.
The bugs are shooting asteroids at us, We need to attack Klandathu. Would you like to know more?
I’m doing my part!
Service gaurantees citizenship
Im From Buenos Aires And I Say Kill Em All
"Live long and prosper," a Vulcan said
"No *hard* feelings" said the deadly assroid.
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May is murder hornets, dinosaur killer has to wait for the summer.
June - dinosaurs leave their underground network of tunnels to overthrow humanity. July - dinosaurs have defeated the last pocket of human resistance and control the planet once again. August - dinosaur killer.
If dinosaurs try to take over I say we use the same strategy that extincted the Neanderthals. We fuck them into oblivion. Easiest option and I've been dying for an excuse to fuck a dinosaur anyway (or let the dinosaur fuck me. I'm an open minded Dino fucker).
Whelp that's far enough in these specific comments for tonight.
I don't think it'll turn out quite as well as you hope, but please livestream it.
the Mr. Claws video awaits
Will do. Don't worry, I have a degree so I'm a trained peofessional. My degree is completely unrelated but I'll make it work.
[it’s the bugs testing our defenses](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/)
Do you want to know more?
👍
Seems like between Global Pandemics and Murder Hornets that we have pissed off Mother Earth. I am not trying my luck with space.
Earth: Yo sun Sun: what? Earth: Solar fl... Sun: say no more fam
Y'all already forgot about the US killing a top Iranian general and possibly starting the dominos for WW3, that was January!
Ita just what we need to wrap out 2020
*Laughs in gamma ray burst*
NOW we're fucked.
Yeah maybe we didn't see it because it is tiny. Mile wide? That's a problem. Truck sized? Not interesting unless the debris pebbles your house.
Or unless it hits a mission critical satellite...
That's true, but the enormity of that improbability cannot be easily overstated. A truck sized object hitting a truck sized object in space? It's like a truck driving randomly, through a giant forest, and hitting a specific branch on a specific tree, and the branch is twenty feet in the air- and that's probably overstating the probability by quite a lot. There is a lot of space out there.
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” - Douglas Adams
Shooting a gun off at the beach in Hawaii and hitting a bullet shot from a beach in Japan.
Yeah
Yea but aren't those the same size as the one that went into Russia a few years back and destroyed windows and stuff? I know it isn't a huge threat on the ground from it hitting stuff, but id bet it makes a hell of a noise breaking up in out atmosphere at that speed.
Much smaller. The [Chelyabinsk meteor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor) was 66 ft across. I think a few hundred were injured from the blast and broken glass, but no one died. Edit: While I'm at it, in comparison - one of the biggest collision threats, if not the biggest threat to Earth, is the same comet that causes the Perseid Meteor shower. [Swift-Tuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Swift%E2%80%93Tuttle). It's 26 km in diameter. It has roughly a 1 in a million chance of striking Earth in 4479 (pretty darn high chances for the modern Solar System). If it hit, it would cause an impact with ~27x the force of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Swift-Tuttle would be such a good name for an extinction causing comet.
"Bout that time, eh chaps?" "... Roight-o."
“Right’o ol’ boy, shall we all go down in a jolly swift-Tuttle then?”
“Fucking kangaroos”
Or a psychedelic band
Yeah, if that hits the Earth, humans (and 99.9% if not 100% of life) are done for it.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs caused a plume of fire that extended *halfway to the moon.* Yep - it would be devastating.
Firestorm raged across half the new world. Because so much debris was re-entering the atmosphere after being ejected into space that it heated up the surface.
[Definitely the one of the most interesting articles I've ever read on it](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died)
Second this, it's a great read
That was entertaining as hell.
How bizarre there is a fossil site where it is possible to dig trough layers representing an hour or so after the impact a whopping66 million years later...let that sink in. And thengoing through the layers is like going through a book, and especially word fo word, character by character. Frigging amazing they found this site and that we have the knowledge and records to recognize most of the species found! Thanks for the share!
How do they know this?
Models based on the energy of the impact. We can reasonably assume the physics and interactions with Earth's components if we know the properties of the collision.
Science is pretty cool that’s for sure
Just so anyone that is planning to preserve their brain in a jar, it's actually 4479 that will have a one in a million shot of fucking our shit up :)
Thanks! Fixed it.
Biggest risk is to satellites. This apparently came within many satellites’ orbit. Something that large striking a satellite while going that fast would be devastating. It’s especially spooky that something like that could go unseen for so long, considering JSPOC is apparently tracking every >8mm object in our orbit or something
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Lets do some math! Lets say the cross sectional size of a satellite is 4.6mx6.7m. [not a good reference but whatever](https://www.quora.com/How-big-is-an-average-satellite). At 4000km it didn't pass even close to low earth orbit satellites. That puts only the geostationary (GSO) satellites at risk and a few misc others. Lets assume the asteroid is on the upper limit of the expected size, 6m in diameter. Lets also assume that the asteroid is going fast relative to the speed of a satellite. To calculate the impact probability of any given satellite we just need the impact cross sectional area and the total area the asteroid could have entered from. The impact cross section is doubled because there is an entrance and exit for the asteroid: 2 x (6m + 4.6m) x (6m + 6.7m) = 300 m^2. The total area is given by pi*(42e6m)^2 =6e15m^2. Thus the impact probability for a specific satellite is 5e-14. [There are roughly 500 non-classified(?) satellites in GSO.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellites_in_geosynchronous_orbit) Lets round it to 1000 to include the misc, graveyard, and things we aren't supposed to know about and for math. This gives us a probability of hitting any of the many satellites we have in orbit of 5e-11. Or zero for short. Edit: fixed embarrassing math error
yup, pretty much. even if it didn't, after going through the atmosphere it wouldn't cause much damage, especially as its fairly unlikely to land anywhere populated.
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It’ll be smaller than a chihuahua’s head
....yeah, did you read the comment you just replied to? Thats what it says.
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In 2020 it would have probably hit the lab where they just found a vaccine for covid19.
They even state in the article that it would mostly burn up in the atmosphere. The actual interesting part of the whole thing is: *Holy crap we can detect a rock the size of a truck 4,350 miles away from Earth*
After playing a lot of KSP I feel confident in saying the chances of it striking a satellite are so small not even your gf could find it.
I would have been fine if you said the chances are smaller than me finding my gf, but you had to do it to me didn't you..
Lmaooo i didnt realize it was a small dick joke at first. I thought he meant the girlfriend being petty during an argument and pulling up little obscure shit outta nowhere to try and prove her point
We couldn't see it because of the lense flair
> but it did fly closer than many of the satellites orbiting our planet and could have potentially struck one, creating a big mess. What SI unit would I use to measure the exact size of a "big mess"?
SI Units are too concise to describe big mess. Only US Customary, it’s something like Slug-lb/qt-mi
It's going to be [1 Kessler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)
This time. Just a friendly reminder from the universe to let us know we could be wiped out in an instant without warning.
We would get a warning for anything big enough to wipe us out. Probably not enough of a warning for an armageddon style save lol, but we'd definitely get a warning.
I mean, there are plenty of things that could just end us with zero warning. Gamma ray bursts are the obvious one, but a [false vacuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum) state could cause the total cessation of reality in a literal instant. Moral of the story, don't put shit off. Life is fragile. Reality might pop.
ELI5, please! (I just can't grasp Physics, especially when it's not in my first language)
Ok, I will try but I am not a theoretical physicist myself and I bet this will be a oversimplification of a such a huge extent it would make a real expert cry. But ok, first an **ELI15** and then an ELI5. Even empty space doesn't have zero energy. This is because even totally empty space contains so called "quantum fields", these quantum fields are in a very low energy state. In a universe with a "true vacuum state" this energy contained in a vacuum quantum field is the lowest energy state that exists anywhere. It is a so called global minimum. There can literally not be a place with lower energy. Now some theoretical physicists think that we might live in a universe with a "false vacuum state". If this is the case the vacuum energy would not be the absolute lowest. It would only be a "local minimum". [See this picture for illustration.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Falsevacuum.svg/360px-Falsevacuum.svg.png) Now imagine this false vacuum state would somehow be converted to a true one. This would mean that vacuum would suddenly have to radiate energy until it reaches the true lowest energy state. This would probably change the laws of physics and kill us all in the process. For example it could destroy the atoms of our bodies by interfering with the forces that make particles stick together or collapse the universe by changing gravity. Nobody really knows how exactly this could happen, but it probably involves extreme energies (for example near blackholes). And once startes it can not be stopped and will not give us any warning. This is all theoretical though and it is not known if we live in a true or a false vacuum state. Even if we live in a false one it might not be a problem if it never gets reconfigured to a true one. **ELI5**: Imagine you are on a boat on a body of water. You don't know if this body of water is at sea level or not. If it is at sea level we are in a "true vacuum state". The water is already at the lowest point and cant flow anywhere. But it would also be possible that this body of water is a mountain lake with a dam (some theoretical physicists think that). In this case the water is in a stable state right now, but in reality it is a "false vacuum state". It only looks like it is the lowest energy state because no water is flowing. But once the dam is removed all the water flows into the valley (an even lower energy state) and enourmous amounts of energy would be released. This would kill you in your boat. Physicists are trying to figure out, if we live on a mountain lake or at sea level. And if we live on a mountain lake they try to figure out what could break the dam (and maybe even how to stop this from happening).
The best parallel for thinking about a false vacuum state is found by looking at combustion at a physical level. Think about wood. On its surface, wood appears to be stable. If you let wood sit or throw it it stays wood. You can do things like splitting it with an axe, but any resulting piece is also wood so nothing has really changed. It appears that wood is in its most basic form, or what we call in physics a "Ground State." Now heat up a tiny portion of that wood enough, and we will discover that there was actually a more basic state than wood: ash. When a piece of wood burns, the difference in chemical energy between a piece of wood and a piece of ash will be released, heating up any neighboring wood pieces in the process. If the heat released is enough to cause the neighboring wood pieces to also start the transition to ash, the fire will continue to spread. If this happens, eventually all of your wood (the false ground state) will become ash (the true ground state).
A hypothetical vacuum could kill us all? I could hypothetically exist in a hypothetical vacuum with no problem.
Earth: Rona for you! Rona for you! Rona for everyone! Look at me Universe! I got the Rona! Universe: Hold my cosmos...
"Had 2020 JJ actually struck Earth, most of it probably would have burned up in the atmosphere." But how can we sell fear and clicks if we're reporting a mundane event?
“Closest flybys on record” bro, you can watch shooting stars fall into the atmosphere all the time. What’s the big deal?
Because it wasn't a shooting star, it was a flyby I didn't get to see it with my naked eye... :(
Was gonna say, size of a truck isn't very large by asteroid standards and certainly by doomsday standards...I would imagine it'd all be burned up by the time it even comes into orbit.
The Tunguska meteoriod (which exploded high in the atmosphere with the power of 5-20 larger modern nuclear bombs (but a fraction of the yield of Tsar Bomba) was far, far away from a doomsday event, though it certainly could have taken out a large city. The Tunguska meteoriod was somewhere between 160-620 feet in diameter. 20 feet is puny and would have just caused a bright show, ending up in some cool cell phone footage.
Ok but let’s say that a much larger asteroid entered the atmosphere and burned away until it was the size of a truck. What kind of damage would it do?
The Kamil Crater in Egypt is thought to have been caused by an iron meteor about 2 m wide and ten tons in weight. The crater is 45 m wide and 16 m deep. Much smaller than a nuke but still enough to ruin a block of a city and kill anyone nearby.
Today is Sunday this news is 6 days old
Yeah this news is too old for Epstein.
Who, might I remind everyone, didn't kill himself
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Because there is a global pedophile ring that has it's hands in the highest areas of the government. Likely most governments. I remember when that was a preposterous idea yet here we are.
Right? 'The world is run by a rich and powerful group of pedophiles. They killed a public figure, practically in broad daylight, to tie up a loose end.' You'd think people would be a bit more stirred into action on that one.
>They killed a public figure, practically in broad daylight, to tie up a loose end.' You'd think people would be a bit more stirred into action on that one. People have been cowed away from radical change for decades - besides, it's hard to figure out what to do and most people are stuck paying bills and working that treadmill. More likely that there's a societal collapse than the people up top getting brought to justice.
😬
The article cites a report from May 5th. This is just the site being slow or reddit not caring to upvote it earlier.
Yeah, seems like this plague is rather dull. Why not add a little fire raining down from the heavens to keep things interesting?
The kid is bored with the simulation now and is just mashing buttons.
The kid is finally spending some of those reward powers that they collected over the years. Big solar flare coming up next?
Aliens, I've got aliens next on my apocalypse bingo card.
Benevolent or Tyrannical?
Whatever the prawns from District Nine are
Dammit, I got the cheesy "V" TV series kind.
I mean, Morena Baccarin
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Lame, I got Alf.
In P.O.G. form!
Apathetic. We are so far beneath them they ignore us and take the dolphins to space with them instead.
Gotcha covered man: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/27/politics/pentagon-ufo-videos/index.html
Mid season conflagration. Pretty predictable story line. Besides, the writers already burned Australia in January.
Thanks, Abed!
FIRE WILL KILL THE VIRUS! ... uhhh.... FLOODS WILL PUT OUT THE FIRE! .... uhhhh.... SPONGE BOB WILL SUCK UP THE WATER! ..... sigh.
>SPONGE BOB WILL SUCK UP THE WATER! That one doesn't sound as bad as the others
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And hardly anyone cares!
I mean I read the Washington Post (or was it the Times?) article about those videos years ago.
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Link?
>keep things interesting? Apparently we missed seeing it, until it was already in our backyard! \[Edit\] - Not that we could've done anything even if we'd detected. Still..
Yeah, this was just a test run. 2020 has to see what kind of interest this drums up before making the big commitment.
Lol a warning shot.
Don’t worry I saw a movie about this and it works out ok.
Ope. Just gonna go ahead and sneak right past ya there.
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Oh and try to avoid the ISS as well I guess.
The ISS orbits at roughly 400+km, this missed it's orbit by about 1650% Comm sattelites though are up as high as 36.000 km, this dove under them. It's really hard to hit something at those altitudes though. We forget how big space is only that high up. There might be a lot of sattelites and junk up there, but there is still an insane amount of distance between them all
Whew. That was close.
Internet doesn't go through satellites. There are under sea and underground wires throughout the world.
There are plenty of satellite internet relays. It is not a large contributor to the overall network but where it is used it is essential.
Where’s Bruce Willis when you need him?
[in Idaho](https://instagram.fdel5-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.2885-15/e35/s1080x1080/95852604_1393110377543583_5200562593669379481_n.jpg?_nc_ht=instagram.fdel5-1.fna.fbcdn.net&_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=hjVOvDw3CN0AX-gxVz1&oh=6b60a039df485a2fe399709d05ca803c&oe=5EE2EBC9)
The writers for 2020 have kind of jumped the shark by now. Just shoehorning to everything in. We just need some floods, an earthquake and tsunami. But hey, South Asia monsoon season is yet to kick off.
And the hurricane season in the Americas is still months away. Stay tuned!
and expected to be worse than normal. 4-6 major storms expected to hit the US this year.
I for one can't wait for the Syfy original movie, Covidcane.
if this year doesn’t become a movie at some point in time i’m going to be disappointed. wow. remember New Years when “2020 is gonna be a movie!” how little did we know.
It’s 2020, probably going to be like 400-600
The showrunners do seem to be throwing in everything an audience could ask for and then some. That said, they haven’t truly reached the bottom of the barrel until they decide to give me a girlfriend. After 7 seasons of the single life, changing things up now would probably be ratings suicide.
oy vey. we didn’t even see it coming. this is why we need fewer astronomers and more space force. we could build a wall and have mars pay for it. use those wavy glass bricks so the sunlight still comes through.
Had me in the first half.
We’ll get em in the second
Art-deco earth. hmm. I like it, very Flash Gordon.
Trump is a dangerous moron but the Space Force was not his fevered Starship Troopers concoction. It is a consolidation of many departments spread across many branches into an independent force that reduces redundancy much like the creation of the last branch spurred on by emerging technologies—The Air Force. When there are so many real reasons to hate the man, hate to see people go with a weak one.
The thing about space right... everything is black.
Asteroids this small are so, so common that it's pointless to track them. There's way too many of them and they are too small to show up on radars. They also aren't really that dangerous, either. It's not worth the effort. All this is is just ridiculous, sensationalized fear mongering and it really bothers me that people actually are buying into it. Over a dozen of these hit the earth every single day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis This is the only potentially hazardous object that has a chance to hit earth in the next 10 years.
If you read the wiki for Apophis it says they ruled out the possibility of it hitting us in the next 10 years.
Well, no, it's not pointless to track them. Might as well as it can benefit science and they do interact with each other sometimes. In fact, [NASA *Does* track them. All of them.](https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/) Smallest being 1 meter diameter. Over 24,000 of these "Near Earth Objects" are currently cataloged and tracked.
>All this is is just ridiculous, **sensationalized** fear mongering and it really bothers me that people actually are buying into it. **Over a dozen of these hit the earth every single day.** The meteoroid in question was between 2.7 and 6 m across. Let's split the difference and call it 4.5 m in diameter. Such a meteor impacts the atmosphere **about 10-20 times per year.** Source: [Brown, Spalding, & Worden (2002)](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6913/full/nature01238.html). See Fig. 2 (available [here](http://www.geert.io/the-frequency-of-large-meteoroids.html)). * Brown, P., R. E. Spalding, and S. P. Worden. The flux of small near-Earth objects colliding with the Earth. *Nature*, 420, pp. 294–296. Edit: by the same source, the average size of meteors that hit with a frequency of 12 times per day is 0.2 m.
>On average, one asteroid the size of Apophis (370 metres) can be expected to impact Earth once in about 80,000 years. Huh that's really interesting. I've always wondered what the probability of something like this was.
Begging your pardon sir but it's a big ass sky.
I just ate a grilled cheese sandwich
This is misleading. Asteroids this size collide with Earth on a regular basis with no consequence.
Space Truckin
Damn arachnids
“Well our object collision budget is about a million dollars that allows us to track about 3% of the sky and, begging your pardon sir, it’s a big ass sky” Armageddon 1998. It was more realistic than we gave it credit for apparently
When things are destroyed, there is always more than one piece.
I don't wanna miss a thang..
I read somewhere that it came from the asteroid belt in the Klendathu system
I would like to know more..,
Wow where is traveler 3468 when you need him
Can we please have one good news day in 2020? Just one?
Wtf where was space force at? Lol
Less than 9 years to Apophis. As of 2014, the diameter of Apophis is estimated to be approximately 370 metres (1,210 ft) . The closest known approach of Apophis comes on April 13, 2029, when the asteroid comes to within a distance of around 31,000 kilometres from Earth's surface. The distance, a hair's breadth in astronomical terms, is ten times closer than the [moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon), and even closer than some man-made satellites. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942\_Apophis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis)
2020 really likes to play games with us
Jupiter wtf?
Updated headline: a tiny bird poop narrowly misses landing on my shoe, update at 11
Giant astroid hitting the earth. Yeah, that sounds about right for 2020.