Re: close approach

[Jeff Hecht <jeff@jeffhecht.com>]

At 4:52 PM -0700 7/24/02, James R. Cunningham wrote:
> To all:
> Have any of you heard any details about the small asteroid discovered
> last week that may make a fairly close approach on February 2, 2019?  If
> so, could you pass along any info you might have?

I just covered it for New Scientist's web site:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992591

As asteroid searches pick up more objects, we're going to see more of 
these stories. When they first spot them, they have only a few days 
of data -- 14 in this case -- and the large uncertainty in position 
at some times in the future can sometimes allow for a collision -- at 
odds of one in 100,000 or 1 in a million. Longer term observations 
make these possibilities go away.

The astronomers give proper qualifiers on their warnings, but some of 
the press sometimes loses those qualifiers. -- Jeff Hecht