Good grief, reporters, please learn the difference between “size” and “length”.
Asteroid 2000 QW7 is set to pass Earth on September 14 according to research from Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). Asteroid 2000 QW7 is rather large, estimated to be 290 and 650 meters…making it the size of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world…Luckily, Asteroid 2000 QW7 is keeping its distance, only coming within 0.03564 astronomical units of Earth, which is approximately 3.3 million miles…
Burj Khalifa is very narrow in comparison to its height; an asteroid is not. And while Burj Khalifa is mostly empty space, an asteroid is solid rock and/or metal. Burj Khalifa masses a mere half a million tons; the asteroid mentioned in this story has a (very approximate) mass of 340 million tons. In other words, O deeply scientifically-illiterate reporter, 2000 QW7 is not “the size of Burj Khalifa”; it is in fact well over 600 times its size. For those who need a more concrete visualization: The statement “2000 QW7 is the size of Burj Khalifa” is not-dissimilar in accuracy to the statement “A 2019 Honda Accord is the size of the bag of sugar in my cupboard.”
And yet I wonder how these same people can believe in 100,000 “sex trafficked children” being raped dozens of times a day.
Addendum, for those who care about such things: I approximated the asteroid as a chondrite spheroid 600 m in diameter, small enough to be solid (unlike some small chondrite moons, which appear to have sizeable internal cavities); I approximated its density as 3 grams/cc. I asked my astronomer friend Mike Siegel to check my numbers, and he came up with very similar ones (though he felt the official estimate of Burj Khalifa’s mass to be a bit high).
While I fully agree that this is exceptionally stupid, it seems quite in line with the utter lack of understanding the press displays toady. The age of enlightenment is obviously over and “stupid” is the name of the game again. As it was throughout most of human history. People like you and me can only stand at the sidelines and marvel at the sheer lack of the least bit of clue.
I’m surprised they didn’t go with the old standby of equivalents in elephants or blue whales. Instead, they chose something new, but equally meaningless. Generally, the quality of science reporting in the main stream media is abysmal. Sensational headlines completely misrepresent the conclusions of the ‘latest study’. There is no consideration of uncertainty, probabilities, quality, methodology, sample size, sample bias, or any other relevant aspect. Studies are simply presented as the new truth in a gee-whiz-isn’t-that-amazing sort of way.
[…] My friend Maggie McNeill goes off on media outlets that confused “size” with “length” when comparing […]
When I saw the link-title in today’s post, my first thought was something else entirely, on a very different scale.
Not disagreeing with your main point, but: for something that small we cannot assume a sphere! Perhaps an ellipsoid 290 × 434 × 650 (using the extreme estimates and their geometric mean).
I’ll ask astronomy.stackexchange.com what statistics exist about roundness vs size of asteroids.
My question got three upvotes but no answers.