Another asteroid zooms past earth

>> by planet earth this hour. this one about the size of a football field . it was named 2013 e.t. we didn't name it. coming just days after the asteroid named 2013 ec flew within 230,000 miles of the united states . today's space rocket is predicted to have passed 600,000 miles away from earth. these latest fly-bies are not as close a call of the as troud last month that passed just about 17,000 miles away . to find out about what's going on with these recent close calls is the curator at the museum of natural history here in new york. good to see you.

>> thanks for coming in.

>> what do we have here?

>> i brought a rock. this is a meteorite. this fell in kansas in 1905 , but it's ordinary, a lot like the rock that exploded over russia on february 15th .

>> last month we saw a meteor explode over russia .

>> not this one. this is not, unfortunately.

>> but we saw one explode over russia . another one over northern california . why are there so many asteroids and meteors lately?

>> we are better at seeing them and the catalina sky survey discovered this rock, the one coming as we speak coming as close to the earth as it's going to be. two and a half earth moon distances, far away and no danger and at 100 meter, it's a big rock .

>> at what point should we earthlings start to become nervous?

>> we should become nervous in the long term because in the long term something has our name on it, but we found the bilge o big ones and we know they have our name on it.

>> you made your life's work to study@asteroids and meteorites, really cool rocks. what can we learn about our place in the universe by studying things like this?

>> we learn about the history of the solar system . this rock if you were to cool a bit of the sun, and they differentiated to make the iron core. this is one reason to mind the asteroid. so that sets of interest, too. but these rocks tell us about the history of the solar system and frankly, we haven't got samples of mars except the meteorites that come from mars so they tell us about other planets. want to touch it?

>> i would like to. this is pretty cool.

>> denton able, thank you very much for swinging by.

>> there is the fusion crust and it's the molten layer, that's the last bit of melted rock that part there when it comes in and on the inside you can see it looks like an ordinary stone. only about less than 5% of all meteorites are actually iron meteorites.

>> i've enjoyed geeking out with you, good sir. thank you so much.

>> great to be you.

>> welcome here any time.