2012 TC4 impact risk

On October 12, 2017 asteroid 2012 TC4 will pass about 8000 km above the Earth. The fear porn mongers will undoubtedly pick up on this close approach. This post is intended to preemptively debunk their inevitably silly claims.

2012 TC4 is about 15 meters in diameter and if it were to hit it would explode with the energy of 97 kilotons of TNT. But it is too small to survive atmospheric entry intact. It would explode in the atmosphere tens of kilometers above the surface. This link is to the Earth Impact Effects Program which calculates the effects of this asteroid entering our atmosphere : http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=1&distanceUnits=1&diam=15&diameterUnits=1&pdens=&pdens_select=3000&vel=12.91&velocityUnits=1&theta=45&wdepth=&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2500

JPL's Small-Body Database Browser for this asteroid: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=3609693

This link is to archive.is of the above link showing close approaches as of 06 Jan, 2017. Use this link to show people claiming that NASA changed the close approach data that they are lying: https://archive.is/Xhjql

JPL's Impact Risk for this asteroid: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2012tc4.html

 Archive.is of the above link: https://archive.is/PpbQD

The Goldstone Deep Space Network plans on observing this asteroid in October: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/goldstone_asteroid_schedule.html?hc_location=ufi

Archive.is of the above link: https://archive.is/bKhXb

2003 EB50 is the next big asteroid that will not hit us

On the heels of the recent asteroid non-event that was blown all out of proportion by the alternative media, I am starting this blog in the hopes people searching for the name of the next asteroid that the alternative media will claim to be a threat to the Earth and that NASA concealed from the public will find this blog and understand NASA did not conceal it from the public and that this asteroid's existence, orbital parameters, and close approaches to the Earth has been publicly available since this asteroid's discovery.

Here are the details of this upcoming close approach. One AU is ~150 million kilometers. This asteroid will pass 18.8 million kilometers from us on this pass. To put that into scale, that distance is equal to about 1470 Earth diameters.

JPL Small-Body Database Browser for 2003 EB50

History of observations of 2003 EB50 archived by the Minor Planet Center

In the inevitable case where someone claims NASA retroactively added this asteroid after accusing them of concealing it from the public, here is an archived copy of the Small-Body Database Browser for this asteroid from archive.is. Note the date the webpage was archived in the upper right corner.

Here is an archived list of all known asteroids (as of 12 Oct 2015) estimated to be 20 meters or larger that will pass within 15 million kilometers of the Earth in the next 5 years.