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