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Quote by: Nathan Struth  Hey all there's a meteor headed to Earth. It's going to have a near-miss hit in 7 years perhaps. Saw it in a popular Mechanics. What's everyone thinking?:) |
Is that going to be a near miss or a hit? You don't give enough information to make even the most useless speculation. Let's see. There are 829 to 831 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) that pass within 0.05 AU of the earth (that's about 46.5 million miles). Between now and 2178 there will be 1485 close approaches to earth. However, 7 years from now will be 2013. In that year there will be 12 close approaches, the closest of which will be a bit more than 1.6 million miles. On Oct 30 of this year a 10m asteroid passed within 0.7 LD (that's 0.7 Lunar Distance, about 167.2 thousand miles) of earth. This information is current as of today, Nov 17, 2006.
By the way, the average distance to the moon is 238,857 mi (384,400 km). It is not a mere 125,000 mi.