Word: asteroid
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...imminent strike of an asteroid 100 feet in diameter, slamming into the atmosphere with enough force to generate the effects of a nuclear weapon? Well, just maybe...
...steroid asterisk? Call it an asteroid...
...BLUE: An asteroid appears and triggers a scare...
...when Steve Chesley, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, checked Spahr's calculations, he came up with a 1-in-4 probability of a strike. "It was a responsible analysis," says Chapman. "It wasn't mistaken in any obvious way." There was one hitch: the asteroid's projected trajectory was based on only four observations over a one-hour period, hardly enough to be definitive. It would take another look to nail down its path for sure...
Usually a threatening asteroid is spotted years in advance. This time, with just days to spare, astronomers had to get their second look right away. So Chesley did some more calculations to find what's called the keyhole--the tiny region of sky where 2004 AS1 should be if the orbit was correct--and put those coordinates out on the Internet. "It clearly wasn't time to make an announcement," says Chapman, who emphatically denies a BBC report that he was on the verge of telephoning the White House that night. "But if we still didn't know the next...