News Travels Fast: Meteor the Size of a Smart Car to Hit Earth in Two Hours

I just had to share this so that those of you who are astronomers out there would have a chance to see this.

From Wired Science today:   a smart car sized meteor will hit the atmosphere above Sudan tonight at 10:46 pm EDT ( exactly 2 hours from the time of this blog post.)

This happens all of the time, so what is unique about this:

"Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement Monday. "The unique aspect of this event is that it is the first time we have observed an impacting object during its final approach.""

I would say that the other unique aspect of this is:  How quickly news can now travel.

Can you imagine that this discovery was made by scientists THIS MORNING and the world will know about it to observe it tonight!

So, the poor astronomer who doesn't follow this sort of thing online is going to miss out. Having an RSS reader lets us capitalize on opportunities we've never before had.

How did I find out about it?  Newsmap, how I LOVE to read the news.

meteor astronomy news web 2.0 environment