{"id":15338,"date":"2018-04-15T20:40:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T01:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=15338"},"modified":"2018-04-15T20:40:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T01:40:03","slug":"a-high-hard-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/04\/15\/a-high-hard-one\/","title":{"rendered":"A High Hard One"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out a biggish asteroid came zooming near Earth, closer than the Moon is to us, just a few hours ago. Spaceweather<\/strong><\/em> has the update<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Based on the intensity of its reflected sunlight, 2018 GE3 must be 48 to 110 meters wide,\u00a0according to NASA-JPL<\/a>. This puts it into the same class as the 60-meterTunguska impactor<\/a>\u00a0that leveled a forest in Siberia in 1908.\u00a0A more recent point of comparison is the\u00a0Chelyabinsk meteor<\/a>–a ~20-meter asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere over Russia on Feb. 15, 2013, shattering windows and toppling onlookers as a fireball brighter than the sun blossomed in the blue morning Ural sky. 2018 GE3 could be 5 to 6 times wider than that object.<\/p>\n

If 2018 GE3 had hit Earth, it would have caused regional, not global, damage, and might have disintegrated in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Nevertheless, it is a significant asteroid, illustrating how even large space rocks can still take us by surprise. 2018 GE3 was found less than a day before before its closest approach.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Watts Up With That<\/strong><\/em> has a lovely graphic<\/a> illustrating the probable orbit of 2018 GE3:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wonder if that close of an approach to Earth is enough to alter its orbit significantly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out a biggish asteroid came zooming near Earth, closer than the Moon is to us, just a few hours ago. Spaceweather has the update: Based on the intensity of its reflected sunlight, 2018 GE3 must be 48 to 110 meters wide,\u00a0according to NASA-JPL. This puts it into the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15340,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15338\/revisions\/15340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}