Another close enconter with an asteroid.

Yeah and also notice the date these new Asteroids are discovered. The 2004 is the year of discovery.

Three years ago we never knew a 600 Meter asteroid would scream past at 1.1 lunar distances away.

The time between discovery and their miss distance seems to be converging. Which indicates a cloud of the suckers are entering the solar system.!!!

Pet rocks are cool.

"Three years ago we never knew a 600 Meter asteroid would scream past at 1.1 lunar distances away."

205 years ago we had no idea there were any asteroids as all. 230 years ago we had no idea Uranus existed. The reason we know about them now is that telescope technology and people with the desire to look for such things came along.

100 years ago we had no idea such things as neutrinos existed. Now we find that ther are billions of them passing through us every second.

Get the idea? We don't know what's there until we start taking a look. Systematic attempts to look for such small near-Earth objects only started in earnest a very few years ago. Spaceguard, for example, only started in 1992.

"The time between discovery and their miss distance seems to be converging."

For a start, you can't compare a date with a linear quantity like 'miss distance' (by which I assume you mean distance at closest approach). If what you meant is the period between the date of discovery and the date of closest approach, then for a start such small objects can only be seen when they are fairly close. The smaller the object, the closer it must be for us to see it. I would also like to see any definitive figures you have that prove your assertion that the period is getting smaller, taking into consideration the limits on detection I just outlined.

"Which indicates a cloud of the suckers are entering the solar system.!!!"

Things that are on highly elongated orbits coming in from such a long distance away do not suddenly brake into the sort of orbits displayed by almost all NEOs, which have orbits which seldom reach further out than the main asteroid belt. Orbital mechanics just doesn't work that way. If they come in from the outer solar system (or beyond), they swing around the sun and then disapear back to where they cam from.

Sorry to spoil the doom.

I went to the Java applet for this asteroid and it looks to me like it will be closer next week than on July 3rd. I moved the arrow one day at a time, and on June 29th the distance to earth is .042

[link to neo.jpl.nasa.gov]

anyone know how to calculate this stuff?

100 years ago no one knew ur-anus
was goin to be asteroid wiped in the future ...

July 3rd, .0029 AU's. Fairly close by any standards.

[link to neo.jpl.nasa.gov]

"100 years ago no one knew ur-anus
was goin to be asteroid wiped in the future "

Just a futile King Canute style attempt to forestall some future iterations of this joke:

The planet was named after the Greek god of the sky, father of the Titans. Uranus is its Latinised spelling. Transliterated from the Greek alphabet it would be spelled Ouranos and more properly pronounced OO-rah-nos instead of yoo-RAY-nus. Even if you put a "y" sound in front and turn the last o into a u to make it YOO-rah-nus, or keep the stress on the second syllable and say yoo-RAH-nus, you can still desphincterise the pronunciation. I actually favour stressing the second syllable in an attempt to forestall the replacement of arse jokes with ones about bodily fluids. Sigh.

Remember: the a is "ah" as in barn or farm, not "ay" as in date or plane.

Thank you for your attention. We now return you to your double entendre.