Phew! Asteroid's passing was a cosmic near-miss

PASADENA, Calif. – An asteroid about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago just buzzed by Earth.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that the asteroid zoomed past Monday morning.

The asteroid named 2009 DD45 was about 48,800 miles from Earth. That is just twice the height of some telecommunications satellites and about a fifth of the distance to the Moon.

The space ball measured between 69 feet and 154 feet in diameter. The Planetary Society said that made it the same size as an asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest.

Most people probably didn't notice the cosmic close call. The asteroid was only spotted two days ago and at its closest point passed over the Pacific Ocean near Tahiti.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090304/ap_on_re_us/asteroid_close_call
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I wonder if one were to target Earth if our military would be ready to maybe blow it up before hand??????

they were saying that if this one had impacted it would have been like the tunguska event in siberia back more than a hundred years ago..

if it had hit a city, I guarantee you no one would be thinking 'giant meteor impact'.

if it had hit in the middle of the pacific, good bye pacific rim and south east asia! Think of the tsunami that sucker would set off! the billions and billions of tons of vaporised water and the impact on global weather, but think of the tectonic implications. Massive impacts have been known to open new spreading centers and ocean ridges, like the carlsberg ridge in the indian ocean and the deccan traps. wow.. think of it.. there's never been a reorganization of plates in historic times.. that would be freaking cool!! assuming I survive, it'd be awesome to study the fall out from that.

How's it feel to know we're constantly playing cosmic roulette?

I think it's sort of fantastic!

It makes you appreciate every day!

Whoever is throwing those rocks at us is getting their aim down