Toutatis (Asteroid)

[asian1]

From Space.com:

The rumors are likely rooted in a real event, however. On Sept. 29, 2004 an asteroid the size of a small city will make the closest known pass of such a very large space rock anytime this century.

While not dangerous for now, asteroid Toutatis is incredibly strange. And scientists are quite familiar with it, having bounced radar off the tumbling stone on previous flybys to generate computer renderings of its weird shape and movement.

Toutatis looks something like a dumbbell hurtling awkwardly through space. It has a crazy rotation that makes normal days impossible. Scientists can't explain the shape or the spin, but they're eager to learn more in September when, during the close pass, even backyard skywatchers will be able to spot the asteroid.

The orbit of Toutatis is pinned down with better precision than any other large asteroid known to cross Earth's orbit. Toutatis' 4-year trek around the Sun ranges from just inside the Earth's path out to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid visits us every four years.

This fall, it will zoom by our planet within a million miles, or about four times the distance to the Moon.

That's close by cosmic standards for an object that could cause global devastation. Toutatis hasn't been so near since the year 1353 and won't be that close again until 2562, NASA scientists have calculated. No other asteroid so large is known to have come so close in the past, though accurate tracking of space rocks is a fairly recent, high-tech skill that still leaves wide margins of error for many objects.

Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (4.6 by 2.4 kilometers).

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Is there any chance of this asteroid breaking up near the earth? What happen if parts of asteroid strike Earth?

[Dandy]

asian1 wrote:
...
Is there any chance of this asteroid breaking up near the earth?

Theoretically - yes.

Practically I would say that depends on the asteroids consistence, it's mass and velocity as well as it's distance to earth/moon when it crosses earth's path.

If earth's/moon's gravitation forces the asteroid to change it's path, the hereby generated centrifugal force might tear the asteroid apart...

asian1 wrote:
What happened if parts of asteroid striked Earth?

More or less heavy impacts on earth, perhaps?
 :roll:  ;-)
From 3d maps I have I'm convinced that our planet already had to suffer from a similar event - at least one time.

One of these maps shows the North Pole, Atlantic Oceean with Iceland, Scandinavia, Russia, Europe, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Sinai and North Africa as a 3d relief and you can as well see the underwater structures of the Atlantic Ocean and of the Mediterranian Sea in 3d, and the other one shows in a similar manner Noth America, the Mexican Gulf with Yucatan Peninsula and the northern part of South America.

Between Iceland and Norway you can see an underwater structure that obviously must be a huge underwater crater and is called "the Norwegian Bassain".

It looks like a huge clod had been torn out from the earth's crust, flung up into the space, then pulled down again by the gravity and crashed back to the ground with it's downside up.
That's what's known today as the Faroyer Islands.

After the impact there must have been a "lake" consisting of fluid magma with about the size of Germany, where the water masses of the Atlantic Ocean poured upon, evaporating explosively...

But if I read this map properly this was not the only impact.

As there are as well places in Czechia, Hungary and Turkey which remind me of impacts, I think our planet had to suffer from a similar event as we all could watch it a few years ago, when Shoemaker-Levy-9 hit planet Jove.

All these "possible impact locations" lie on a virtual curve (which makes me believe that the (North?)Pole must have been located somwhere in Siberia in the days of the impacts) - as if the first part impacted in Turkey, then a few minutes later (the surface of earth rotated a little bit further) the next part hit the area where Hungary is located nowadays, the next part crashed onto what we know today as Czechia and the last one penetrated the earth crust and so formed the "Norwegin Bassain".

And *THIS ALL* could have been the *REAL* reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs - rather than a single impact on the peninsula Yucatan forming the (hard to find) Chicxulub Crater, which is only best 2/3 of the size the "Norwegian Bassain" crater...

[blobrana]

By Toutatis!
It's a bit too far away for any chance of this asteroid breaking up due to the earth's gravity, imho...


But i suppose that it's worth checking out yourself...

Unfortunately, it turns out the Harvest Moon perfectly coincides with Toutatis's passage. That doesn't mean it will be impossible to observe, just a bit harder.
The only feasible date is the 27th Sept.