Impact or miss TODAY?

[Rokcet Scientist]

2010 AL30, Asteroid Or Space Junk, To Pay a Close Visit

A near-Earth object that could be manmade has just been discovered hurtling toward us. On Wednesday (Jan. 13), an object called 2010 AL30 will fly by Earth at a distance of just 130,000 km (80,000 miles). That's only one-third of the way from here to the moon, i.e. very close. It will miss us, and if it did hit us, it wouldn't do any damage anyway, but I managed to pick up on some chatter between planetary scientists and found out that the 'asteroid,' or whatever it is, gives us a new standard: a 10-meter-wide asteroid can be detected two days before it potentially hits Earth. A pretty useless warning if you ask me....

http://news.discovery.com/space/the-201 ... bject.html

[dannan14]

Umm, why did you change "useful warning" to "useless warning"?

[Minimalist]

Two days would be enough time for people to shit a brick and not much else.

Now two weeks notice, coupled with a reasonably defined target area, might give some people time to get out of the way.

[dannan14]

Min, i just mean it appears he cut and pasted that excerpt, but the link shows that the author wrote "useful" not "useless". Personally, i think 2 days is plenty of time......for just me. But i do agree that it wouldn't make much difference to the masses if say the likely impact zone was SoCal or NYC.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Two days would be enough time for people to shit a brick and not much else.

Not for me. I'd have instant constipation.

Now two weeks notice, coupled with a reasonably defined target area, might give some people time to get out of the way.

Evacuate NYC or SoCal in 2 weeks? I doubt it.

Besides: where are we to run to hide from the ensuing 'nuclear' winter?