Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Closest asteroid yet flies past Earth

Asteroid Capture

It is events like this that lead to capture of an asteroid into an Earth-crossing orbit (i.e. a regularly Earth-crossing orbit, rather than a random orbit that intersects the Earth).

Fortunately, there appears to be a timeframe of millions of years before the final intercept, otherwise, the Earth would have more dents in it than it does...

(All of the events discussed appear to be ~100m or smaller-scale bodies. For a rational discuassion of the effects of a close pass by a multi-km scale body, read the intro to "Rendezvous with Rama" by A.C. Clarke, as advertised elsewhere...)

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