Swing and a miss

[Cyberman]

[NoMoreFaith]

Wooooeeeeee. That is a bit close, cosmologically speaking.

How long until the first claims science is wrong and rapture is incoming after all. He just hit snooze on his salvation alarm clock when he realised nobody was coming.

Very interesting, It didn't mention how long until it passes again, just that its next past is too hard to predict at the moment.

[Cyberman]

[NoMoreFaith]

I missed it as well, which was intensely frustrating. Would have been an interesting phenomena to see.

One thing I never quite understood, and if you're an astronomer, maybe you could explain it.
The course of this asteroid will be seriously affected by the earths gravitational pull, however, considering the distances involved in its "orbit", surely even a small pull would send it in a vastly different distance, rather than a mere 22,000 miles that would make it dangerous on another pass.

Does its course get readjusted somehow during its orbit by other gravitational forces, or is the gravitational effect far lower than the graphics would indicate?

[KichigaiNeko]

meh we get these ALL the time.

[NoMoreFaith]

meh we get these ALL the time.

Its still interesting thou. I love this kind of thing I wish I'd dedicated myself to astrophysics instead of computer science as a teenager.

[Cyberman]

One thing I never quite understood, and if you're an astronomer, maybe you could explain it.
The course of this asteroid will be seriously affected by the earths gravitational pull, however, considering the distances involved in its "orbit", surely even a small pull would send it in a vastly different distance, rather than a mere 22,000 miles that would make it dangerous on another pass.

Does its course get readjusted somehow during its orbit by other gravitational forces, or is the gravitational effect far lower than the graphics would indicate?

Everything you said is correct. DA 14's orbit is going to get quite a kick next year and it will be interesting to see where it goes. It will certainly get a huge speed boost, altering its trajectory even more (it's basically a natural version of the slingshot encounter trajectories that NASA uses to boost their spacecraft, though they know beforehand what the result will be - there'd be no point otherwise). Basically orbital mechanics is a tangled mass of competing gravities.

The graphics in the simulation are quite accurate up until the moment of the close encounter. From that point on, the game changes in unpredictable ways based on DA 14's speed, mass and angle of encounter. Imagine a weird kind of golf course with the hole (Earth) down in a gentle crater-like hollow (Earth's gravity well). By hitting the ball towards the rim, it's possible to slingshot around the hollow and alter its course. Varying how hard you hit it and the angle you aim it, the ball can be sent in any direction and speed. Worst case, you hit the Earth; best case, the ball whizzes off out of the course altogether.

Now imagine our golf course has other hollows of varying size, further out from the Earth one. That'll be the other planets, most notably Jupiter. As long as they are in the right place at the right time, they muddy the picture even more, bearing in mind that gravity falls off proportional to the distance between two objects such that the asteroid will be affected more by a closer planet than one further out.

This golf course analogy is not a totally perfect one but hopefully it illustrates the basics of orbital mechanics. I'm not a professional astronomer and I look at a board filled with calculations with almost the same level of comprehension that a dog would. But I do have something of a grasp of what happens even if I make it sound really confusing.

meh we get these ALL the time.

But rarely as close as this. It's like having a car missing your foot by the width of a gnat's cock.