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Monday, March 25, 2013

 

Asteroid DA2013cl2 Does Not Exist, it Won't Hit Earth on the 25th (it's a Hoax)

Just reposting this article as there is is STILL a story circulating, allegedly from a Professor Herbert Raymond Brown, that a 300 meter diameter asteroid called DA2013cl2 will impact the Atlantic Ocean (or Canada or Mexico) on 25 March. This impact will allegedly kill millions first off, then exterminate the rest of humanity later on.

This is a hoax. There are a number of ways you can tell it is a hoax.

1) The story is illustrated with a picture of comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS, not an asteroid.
2) It does not have a real asteroid name, asteroids that do not have proper names (like 4 Vesta), are named year, alphabetical identifier, numerical identifier (eg 2012 DA14). There's a 2013 CL2, but that comes nowhere near us, there's a 2013 CL22, which has a 1/10,000,000 chance of hitting us in 2064, but nothing that fits the hoax description.
3) A 300 meter asteroid impact would be serious, with an impact energy of 1110 Mt or TNT, creating a crater 4.6 Km in diameter, but it's no civilisation killer. The Cretaceous/Tertiary impactor that did in the dinosaurs (at least in part) was around 10 Km in diameter.
4) Outside of the various posts promulgating this story, there is no astronomy Professor Herbert Raymond Brown. Yes, there is a Ryamond Brown who works in science communication and outreach at NASA, but he is not Professor Herbert Raymond Brown
5) There is no high risk asteroid of any sort in the asteroid hazard lists.

Comments:
Do you know where the story came from originally? I've never seen a picture, but just seen it on the trollforum Godlikeproductions.com.

Thanks for a great blog!
 
Thank You My Friend! I have tried and tried to tell show, explain and tell people this is not real , but they will not listen. Peace and Love..J
 
As far as I can tell, all the reports I have seen trace back to the original Godlike productions post (although there may have been one on the Abovetopsecret forum).
 
You never cease to spark my interest in astronomy. Keep up the great work!
 
Asteroids and meteors and comets... I just read THE MYOSHI EFFECT, a funny novel, kind of Douglas Adams like, about an asteroid headed toward earth and what's happening now is straight out of it. Fiction and fact are getting mixed together...
 
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