NASA confirms the 60-meter asteroid has a good chance of colliding with Earth

Source via Reddit

A comment by Reddit user McCactus says:

A comment further down by caitlinreid reads:

Moar comments, this one by Junkenpo77:

Nothing apocalyptic, but interesting nonetheless.

 

That's pretty damn big. It won't be world-altering, so a .022% chance is really nothing to worry about. If it would destroy the planet, then I guess you could get worked up about a 1 in 4500 chance we'd all die.

 

The bit about potentially painting the asteroid is interesting. I think I smell an Armageddon sequel.

 

It won't destroy the world but an asteroid that size could take out a significant area of land. Or worse if it landed in water it would create probably the biggest tidal wave on record which would pretty much wipe out any nearby coasts.

 

Yikes, did not think of that. Ive saw videos of this disastrous and nefarious natural disasters and it scares the shit out of me!

Not too mention that would kill millions of people. I hope to god not.

 

Who's got Bruce Willis's number?!

 

We talked about possibilities of this in my astronomy class, scary stuff. What my professor was saying is that you need to change how you feel about the importance of percentages when it comes to these kinds of things. Apparently a 0.022% chance still makes this all very possible. I'll be praying for Earth's safety.

 

But still, .022% is still .022%, right?

 

Maybe in science 0.022% is like 99%.

 

Can we just have a MONTH without some apocalypse BS cropping up?

 

Never.

 

So the Mayans were off by about two months. So what.

 

The fact that NASA has actually acknowledged that there is a possibility of this happening is pretty unprecedented. If it does end up impacting the planet, best case scenario would be that it would come down in a remote area over land (ocean impact = tsunami). And for anybody who hasn't looked up the Tunguska asteroid impact from 1908, I'd suggest you do so, it's pretty fascinating/crazy stuff. It essentially looked like a nuclear bomb went off in the middle of nowhere.

 

Yep and the scary thing is that they reckon the one that hit in 1908 was smaller than this one. If the one that took out 830 sq miles of forest land was smaller then what the hell will a bigger asteroid do?

 

I feel like we should've been prepared for this kinda thing but we procrastinated until, oh Shit that meteor is kind headed our way. Idk, I'm sure the history channel makes solving this issue sound simpler than it actually is

 

Why don't we ask Steven Tyler to open his mouth when the asteroid hits? Problem solved.

I kid, I kid. On a more serious note though, it's pretty dumb for NASA to say: "Hey guys uhm.. Yeah, this biga$$ rock is coming our way and yeah, we don't have enough time anymore to actually build something that could stop it so uhm... Forgive us and hope it doesn't collide with our dear planet?"

I mean, these people are funded so they can keep an eye on these things and when necessary they can say (on time): "Houston, we have a problem, something big is coming our way, better prepare ourselves while we still can."

Or maybe I'm not getting the concept behind NASA at all.

 

True enough. I may have sounded like I was accusing NASA only (only talked about them because they're mentioned in the article) but I mean, just because it's a global problem, they should've seen this coming (they as in all agencies from all over the world concerning aerospace research etc.).

I mean, they know these things are possible so why didn't they prepare for something like this?

Anyways, there's not that much we can do now. The chances it collides with planet Earth are slim but when it does, well, let's hope for a miracle in that case.