# Get out your binoculars Euro & southern hemi dopers. Super close asteriod flyby today

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-out-your-binoculars-euro-southern-hemi-dopers-super-close-asteriod-flyby-today/235015>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 18, 2004, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-out-your-binoculars-euro-southern-hemi-dopers-super-close-asteriod-flyby-today/235015 "2004-03-18T12:53:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-out-your-binoculars-euro-southern-hemi-dopers-super-close-asteriod-flyby-today/235015/1 "2004-03-18T12:53:30Z")

</div>

[Recently Discovered Near-Earth Asteroid Makes Record-breaking Approach to Earth](http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news142.html)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![legion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/838e76/32.png) [@legion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/legion)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-out-your-binoculars-euro-southern-hemi-dopers-super-close-asteriod-flyby-today/235015/2 "2004-03-19T12:27:33Z")

</div>

Discovered on Monday and missed us by a whisker on Thursday…gulp!

I wonder, if this thing _was_ going to hit us, would 3 or 4 days notice have been long enough to get Bruce Willis and his shambolic crew of oil men trained up, suited up and sent up in time?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2004, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-out-your-binoculars-euro-southern-hemi-dopers-super-close-asteriod-flyby-today/235015/3 "2004-03-19T14:03:40Z")

</div>

> [@legion](#):
>
> Discovered on Monday and missed us by a whisker on Thursday…gulp!
> 
> I wonder, if this thing _was_ going to hit us, would 3 or 4 days notice have been long enough to get Bruce Willis and his shambolic crew of oil men trained up, suited up and sent up in time?

😃  
This time we make sure Affleck stays up there, too…

But seriously, folks… with 4 days’ warning we’d be up you know what creek. Fortunately, from what I read this one was small (a mere 100-footer) and it was estimated that had it been a head-on it would have just set off some heavy firework, maybe even airbursted and not even made a small crater – but that would depend on composition. It kind of figures that for short-period inner-system bodies like this one, the really big mothers have been mostly swept up in the preceeding 4.5 billion years of orbital bumper pool. It’s those long-period suckers coming in from the outer system that can really git ya…