Page 14 - Earth Objects News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

To a million out there that we have not yet identified all of which the focus of nasa's near he earth objects program. >> it is not coming unusually close to the earth but going to be about 15 times the distance from the earth to the moon. the interesting part about it is it is so large for an asteroid, it is huge. >> a lot being done publicly and privately to prepare for the direct impact asteroid of the future. some plans call for sending a rocket or space craft into space to collide with it or blow it up. other plans call for sending a satellite or craft to use the gravity to change the tra...

Earth objects, large, large asteroids that are out there that they are watching and they've been able to basically see about 95% of those. they know where they are. the scientists here did calculations years in advance. this particular one, the 1998 qe-2 as it is called was discovered 15 years ago and they knew then because of their calculations, calculus by the way, that it would not hit earth. they've known it for a very long time. what they are excited about is it is coming very close in scientific terms and they will be able to see it using radar, which means they'll be able to see the pro...

Discovered nine days ago, that's the unsettling aspect. and you can see, we did talk about how close it was, not that close, 2 1/2 times the distance between the earth and the moon. but it was recently discovered. and that's the interesting point we'll talk to lawrence about. >> yeah, and that's really the concern, lawrence. because there's this -- you wonder, what do you call them? near earth objects? there are a number of them that are actually potentially hazardous. if you only find out on sunday that there is one like this, might we not know about one of these potentially hazardous ones in...

And i'm assuming you're going to tell me it's not some sort of intervention that involves bruce willis and ben affleck. >> it's not that different. the point is -- it's true, we didn't see this one until sunday. this one, even though it would cause a significant amount of devastation is not large enough to be planet threatening. the ones large enough to be planet threatening 10 kilometers across or something like that, those we could see a few years in advance, probably. and there are various ways, including just sending a rocket ship landing on it and running your rocket engine just a little ...

Years before. these two objects have put a new spotlight on objects that pose a risk to earth on any given day. most burns up or is so small we don't know it. nasa is aware of some 20,000 pieces of debris that are currently orbiting the earth that are the size of a softball or large. but the real concern is around neos or near earth objects or asteroids that could conceivably enter our atmosphere. 863 are asteroids with a diameter roughly half a mile or larger, which if they struck earth, could produce a major global catastrophe. a study from m.i.t. found that these kind of asteroids only hit ...