Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17

6 years 4 months ago #10765 by Todd

Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17 was created by Todd

echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/Phaethon/Phaethon_planning.2017.html

gizmodo.com/an-asteroid-will-pass-near-earth-next-month-but-no-you-1820764248

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6 years 4 months ago - 6 years 4 months ago #10767 by ??

Replied by ?? on topic Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17

Is there something that distinguishes 3200Phaeton or is this just another of those headlines that pretends that an asteroid that gets no closer than several million miles away is a “near Earth asteroid?" :blink:

Last edit: 6 years 4 months ago by ??. Reason: Corrected font. Reset font.

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6 years 4 months ago #10769 by Todd

Replied by Todd on topic Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17

A 3 mile wide asteroid at 6.4 million miles away is too close for me personally, it depends what their margin of error is I suppose. If it were to collide with a smaller unknown object on the way, it could be trouble, hopefully that's all worked out. It is confirmed to be a big chunk of the Geminids, so there's likely other smaller meteors close to and crossing its orbit. Initial appearance is, we're safe from 3200 Phaethon, at least for 400 years.

www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/3200-phaethon/

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6 years 4 months ago - 6 years 4 months ago #10772 by ??

Replied by ?? on topic Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17

Thank you. I was curious because it seems to me that every few days, once a week or so, I have been seeing articles talking about various asteroids coming close to Earth and yet they are hundreds of thousands and/or millions off miles away. To me this is isn't close enough to worry about.

Taking into account today's telescopes and other extraterrestrial observing and sensing devices, I expect to see quite a few more of these. If they can detect planets around other stars and visually analyze the surfaces of stars then I would expect them to be able to start visually locating and accurately tracking all sorts of hitherto untracked objects, particularly the asteroids.

While this in itself is newsworthy to me, the reason I have refrained from posting any of these articles is because they all seeem to me to play on fear, often in their titles.

What was once called a near miss has increased from thousands of miles to millions of miles. To make this appear like a near miss, instead of using the Earth-Moon system as a standard of measure for nearness, they now compare the much larger millions of miles away approaches to the vastness of the Cosmos itself and call this a "near miss." On a cosmic scale it is. On a local scale it is not, in my opinion anyway.

Anyway: Be it intended hype in the titles or zealous poetic license in the content, this increase of asteroid tracking raises the issue of asteroids impacting Earth into the public's mind...and keeps it there.

This dovetails with Dr. Carol Rosin's statement allegedly quoting Werner Von Braun that justification for defense expenditures would replace the Soviet Union with "nations of concern" and then "asteroids" and then "extraterrestrial space aliens."

These articles appear to me to be part of a fear and propaganda campaign to hype the public up for Phase 3 of the, alleged, Werner Von Braun-revealed plan. While the actual tracking of these asteroids is newsworthy to me, I consider all the accompanying hype to be part of an agenda similar to what Dr. Rosin said Dr. Von Braun said.

In the final analysis, "nearness" is a matter of personal opinion. It's all relative, I suppose .

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6 years 4 months ago #10774 by Todd

Replied by Todd on topic Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17

It is currently visible in the automated Tenagra III telescope. NASA calls it an asteroid but it's really more of a "Rock Comet." :huh:

www.virtualtelescope.eu/2017/11/21/unique-asteroid-3200-phaethon-bright-2017-apparition/

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6 years 4 months ago #10778 by Todd

Replied by Todd on topic Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17

I notice a lot of articles about these types of flybys show a graphic of a giant asteroid about to collide with the Earth just to leave a little doubt in your mind. It looks like a 3 mile wide baseball. Future generations will have to be concerned with this one. I think I'm more concerned with the one we don't know about. :unsure:

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6 years 4 months ago #10798 by Glitch_Neo

Replied by Glitch_Neo on topic Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to Pass Earth at 6.4 Million Miles on 12/16/17

No point being to concerned.... Nothing humanity will be able to do anyway Todd...

(I'd be more concerned with education of the next generation or 3..... By then humanity might have pulled it's head out of it's own arse, get off social "fakebook's" and the like and worked out how to socialize without coming across like rainman.... but that's another can of worms! lol )

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