Asteroid Passes Earth Closer Than The Moon (VIDEO)

An asteroid zoomed past Earth this morning, coming within 7,500 miles above Earth's surface over the southern Atlantic Ocean.

2011 MD, as the asteroid is named, did not come as close to Earth as a smaller asteroid, 2011 CQ1, which avoided an impact with the planet by just 3,405 miles in February, according to Geek.com.

Even so, 2011 MD flew closer to Earth than the moon.

The latest asteroid is 33 feet long and was discovered this week by telescopes in New Mexico, the AP reports.

According to the IBTimes, 2011 MD is the fifth-closest asteroid to zip past Earth.

Comments

[sqeakyhinge]

11:21 AM on 06/30/2011

What if that near miss Asteroid June 27 really hit? What would happen to the human race? http://may21project.blogspot.com/

[jwcmass]

01:48 PM on 06/30/2011

It would depend on the mass of the object, and where it impacted.Also the trajectory through the atmosphere. A head on strike passes through less of the atmosphere, so less of the object would be vaporized in the atmosphere.  We're talking about an object that is a little over 30 feet long. I don't know if we know the composition.

Had it struck the planet, its effects would be very localized. And most of the earth's surface is oceans. So the chances of it striking a city are low.

But it is too small an asteroid to produce a global effect.

[Cayce58]

11:02 AM on 06/29/2011

ok truefaith, if you want the end, here it is. Mary Summer Rain said she was sent to warn us. She relayed the psychic messsages of a native seer named No-eyes. It is known that every 100,000 years the magetism reverses. What isn't know is that it can be a catastrophy. When it occurs in the period 2012 to 15, the earth will wobble momentarily and then settle in with a N Pole 600 miles from the present one. The wobble and new Pole will result in earthquakes 12 on the Richtor and massive tidal waves. Fires, starvation and disease will follow with some areas untouched and others devestated. 60% of the earths population will die. Of course, this will only happen if it happens. Sylvia Brown says aliens will carry the last human off an earth that is 10 degrees hotter in 2100.

[seektruefaith]

10:29 AM on 06/28/2011

There is growing concern of the increasing changes on the planet. Since the recent axis shift that occurred, the earth is experiencing more earthquakes, flooding, droughts, tornadoes, volcano eruptions, tsunamis and very likely stronger hurricanes this summer.

We're expecting an alignment of planets with sun December 2012 occurs every 25,800. Also, Nibiru planet that enters our galaxy every 3500 years, as it gets closer the effects are increasing storms. It's due to come between the earth and sun early 2013 causing enormous disasters. MUST WATCH VIDEOS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_Nwk1_I3M&feature=player_embedded#at=227
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTLyli2ctZM&feature=related

Many countries including the USA have been busy these last few years building larger underground bunkers and they are stockpiling very large amounts of survival food. A newsletter, Off the Grid News from Solutions from Science, states: "Not long ago, FEMA put out a Request for Proposal, or RFP, for even more dehydrated food. The RFP called for a 10-day supply of meals - for 14 million people. That's 420 million meals. Typically, FEMA maintains a stockpile of about 6 million meals. Why the sudden need to increase the stockpile by 420 million more? It almost seems like they're trying to stock a modern day "Noah's Ark," doesn't it? By the way, just days after the RFP went online, it suddenly went "poof" ... vanished. Could it be that some high level official suddenly realized he was letting the cat out of the bag?"

[jwcmass]

08:14 PM on 06/28/2011

First of all, seek, planetary alignments occur all the time, and nothing happens. What you have to understand about gravity is that its effect greatly lessens with distance. And compared to the Sun, which is MUCH more massive than all the planets combined, the gravitational effect of the planets on Earth is miniscule.

The Moon's gravity affects Earth's more than all the other planets combined because it is so close.

That is why the moon has an even greater affect on the tides than does the Sun (despite the fact that the sun is MUCH more massive than the moon -- the moon is a mere 25,000 miles distant, the sun about 93 MILLION miles distant.

And what is this Nibiru planet? You realize that anything that massive would be noticed by the world's astronomical community long before it approached the inner solar system? It would certainly be easily spotted if amateur astronomers can, using a relatively small telescope can easily see asteroids and comets. 

A planet would be hard to miss. And it would be difficult to keep it a secret. What is your evidence to support this?

As I read it, the explanation for the increase in storms, and other changes in the weather fit the predictions of the models which show what happen as the planet warms.

[Netflyer]

10:51 PM on 06/28/2011

Another strange thing I hear bantered about is something about our solar system aligning with the 'galactic center'. I tell people we are constantly in a straight line to the center of our galaxy and as you said, the gravity from other objects is so minimal, it is of no consequence. I think if people think of it in terms of gravity wells they might understand it better. Based upon the object's size there is a region of gravity around the object that decreases by the square of its distance. The hard thing to get a good concept of is the distances between these objects. Saturn may be huge but it is around 850 million miles away. The amount of gravity we feel on Earth from Saturn is 0. The distance just dissipates any effect it might have on us....
By far the coolest thing is the size of the Sun's gravity well... the square of the distance is still not far enough to keep incredibly distant things from leaving orbit.
BTW, The moon is ~238,000 miles away, I'm sure you meant to add a zero after the 5 :-)

[seektruefaith]

11:42 AM on 06/29/2011

Could another culprit to global warming be found in space? We can't deny increase in of natural disasters from wildfires to solar flares hitting earth. We're told it's not a threat, however, there are over 30 no fly zones right now, which makes me wonder about those solar flares.
FOX NEWS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_TzIUlaQok

Did earth's axis tilt due to an earthquake? A few months ago the moon tilted 90 degrees. Notice it does not look the same? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDaFs6wMz9Y&feature=fvwrel

Apparently, Nibiru, a/k/a Tyche, Elenin, is a new planet in our solar system detected years ago but was too far away to get attention until some noticed it was moving closer to us. Many speculate on its presence and how it can effect the earth.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=elenin;orb=1;cov=1;log=0;cad=1#cad
CNN reports: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/15/scientists-telescope-hunt-massive-hidden-object-in-space/?hpt=C2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2010_X1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/14/tyche-hidden-planet_n_823028.html

As this planet approaches the sun, the gravitational pull will produce more solar flares to erupt from sun. If that's true, we can be in trouble because solar storms can cause a shut down of our electrical grid. It's not the end of the world. We don't need to panic we just need to be informed and take precautions like stock up with food and water.

[nmsidewinder]

10:06 AM on 06/28/2011

If there is a god he must look at us much as a child with a toy ant farm. Shake us up once in a while just to see how we will react. " Look what those idiots are doing now.. hahahahaha" !

[Darrion Dbecks Beckles]

10:03 AM on 06/28/2011

That's because Chuck Norris deflected the Asteroid with a ROUNDHOUSE.

[the5thhorseman]

07:20 AM on 06/28/2011

Where's Harry Stamper when we need him?

[nmsidewinder]

10:08 AM on 06/28/2011

He's out of work, remember Obama shut down oil drilling. lol

[BigSlick674]

02:52 PM on 06/28/2011

Hank Stamper was a lumberjack.

[Snarky McSnarkster]

07:18 AM on 06/28/2011

Surely God had a good reason for creating these giant, high speed, Earth threatening boulders?

[Steve Brian Davis]

01:56 PM on 06/28/2011

He sends them our way every billion years or so just to do some spring-cleaning....
God Bless America (and by inference, screw everyone else)...

[mamacat]

03:55 AM on 06/28/2011

Rather than stating that the object passed closer than the moon, which is a fairly common occurrence for asteroids, why not say that it passed about .03 lunar distance from the Earth?

[RattInnaCage]

02:53 PM on 06/28/2011

Probably because the general reply to .03 lunar distance would be "Huh? What?". I have a feeling that most of the folks reading this has no idea that the average distance from Earth to Moon is about 235,000 miles, give or take a couple thousand.

[Shrank]

03:42 AM on 06/28/2011

I was really hoping that the asteroid would hit Michele Bachmann. But then I read that the asteroid was much closer to the earth than to the moon, while Bachmann is much closer to the moon than to the earth.

[epenn012]

02:38 AM on 06/28/2011

Imperial College London/Purdue University has an "Earth Impact Effects Program" if you want to see what this 33 footer would have done.

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

[mamacat]

03:47 AM on 06/28/2011

Thanks for the link, but it does not seem to adequately handle the data for the Tunguska impactor. According to the link, the Tunguska object would have created a large crater, which it did not. The air blast destroyed a large are of forest, but the link does not recreate that effect after inputting the various options for asteroid type.

I don't have the info in front of me, but I have seen other programs which show a 10 meter iron object creating a large crater. The link provided above assumes that an iron object will break up, creating a series of impacts.

[LeftLeanWing]

12:54 AM on 06/28/2011

An asteroid the size of a bus exploded  Oct. 28 2010, as it entered Earth's atmosphere over an isolated part of Indonesia. The burst of the 33-foot-long (10 meters) rock packed the equivalent of roughly 50,000 tons of TNT, more than three times the strength of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

[jwcmass]

02:09 AM on 06/28/2011

This asteroid, however, never really entered the Earth's atmosphere. The closest it came was 7,000 miles away. That is well above the location of the ISS and far higher than our Shuttle can fly.

[StarGazer069]

12:35 AM on 06/28/2011

And This Is why I love Astronomy..Was out at the Lake Observing when this went past...And This is also why I also agree with Shain

[Shain Eighmey]

11:01 PM on 06/27/2011

Ahh the wonders and powers of the infinite universe.

[lambdin1]

10:49 PM on 06/27/2011

Whew!

[James Bridges]

10:49 PM on 06/27/2011

Ahmadinejad said we did it.

[BigSlick674]

02:54 PM on 06/28/2011

And we did.