The April Fools Day Asteroid Is No Joke

The April Fools Day Asteroid Is No Joke


Be happy. You have survived another close call with asteroid destruction: the April Fools Day asteroid — technically called 2012 EG5 — passed today at half the distance between the Earth and the moon: 230,000km.

The 46m object was labelled as condition 9 back on March 15, 2012. This means that is orbit prediction was “highly uncertain”. The condition level goes from 0 — good prediction — to 9. Today, it was labelled as condition 5 soon before passing Earth at 5.32am Eastern Time (8.30pm AEST).

I’m getting tired of all this uncertainty with these small rocks that can destroy a city like Sydney. They keep passing near us all the time. In fact, two more passed on Monday, one of them at 58,000km. That’s nothing in astronomical terms. [NASA JPL]


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