Recommended Posts

Russian Meteor Might Have Siblings in Tow

Orbital estimates have pinpointed 20 asteroids on similar paths to the space rock that exploded near Chelyabinsk in February

 

russian-meteor-might-have-siblings-in-to

 

The house-sized rock that exploded spectacularly in the skies near Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February may have been a member of a gang of asteroids that still poses a threat to Earth, a new study says. The evidence is circumstantial, but future observations could help to settle the question.

On 15 February, an 11,000-ton space rock slammed into the atmosphere above Russia, producing the most powerful impact since the Tunguska explosion in 1908 ? which may also have been caused by an asteroid ? and generating a shock wave that damaged buildings and injured more than 1,000 people. The 18-meter-wide object could not be seen as it approached the planet because it was obscured by the Sun's glare, but observations made while it was in the atmosphere have enabled several groups of researchers to estimate its orbit.

However, the estimates varied so much that there was no clear orbit that researchers could use to hunt for sibling asteroids on a similar path, say Carlos and Ra?l de la Fuente Marcos, orbital dynamicist brothers at the Complutense University of Madrid.

They decided to tackle the problem with brute computational force, running simulations of billions of possible orbits to find the ones most likely to have led to a collision. They then used the average of the ten best orbits to search a NASA asteroid catalogue for known objects on similar paths. They found about 20, ranging in size from 5 to 200 meters across, they report in an article to be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

 

Source and more

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • I hear you on browser password manager, in my case I have two Google profiles, one was created when Google decided to grandfather us out of Workspace for Domains (with the replacement being too expensive for 25 users) resulting in my domain email address no longer being able to be registered to a new Workspace I created (for myself and another co-owner) so I could use Takeout and sync over some stuff to the new Workspace. Then I have my personal Google profile which I could be logged into on my desktop or Mobile, so I am saving passwords on one or the other, and when an URL changes another password for the same service gets added, it basically ends up being a giant mess. Unless I missed something is there a local decent password manager that can override the browser password managers for Chrome, Edge, Firefox (profiles) so that there is only one vault, and does that also support Passkeys (which to me are still confusing because sometimes it will ask for a Passkey on a phone I am no longer using!) Microsofts implementation of Passkeys is the worst!
    • It's utterly baffling that we have no idea when we'll get new features even well after they've been released. Why Microsoft thinks this is a good rollout strategy is beyond me.
    • If it makes anybody happy, others will need to be bitter about it. (apologies to Yogi Berra)
    • I owned a lot of Soundblaster cards over the years all the way back to the ISA slot era. I use a Soundblaster X3 external now because I'm able to run it through a KVM and have it follow the machine I happen to be using. It drives a set of JBL 305 powered monitors wonderfully. I'm not gaming or doing home theater through it, so rear channels aren't a consideration for me, though it does have side / rear / sub outputs.
    • I disagree that using browser based password managers is a bad idea, your passwords are encrypted by the OS password, but they also be synchronized to make them helpful. I would also use a password manager extension that supports MFA TOTP and Passkeys to manage the account that synchronizes the data. Ente is 100% free and allows you to vault important information, has password vault support, and supports 2FA TOTP support, I just don’t believe, it has a browser extension.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      DrWankel earned a badge
      First Post
    • Reacting Well
      DrWankel earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      Supreme Spray LV earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Genuinetonerink- Dubai earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Genuinetonerink- Dubai earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      503
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      163
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      91
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      72
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!