In message , Joseph Lazio
writes
"RX" == Rudolph X writes:

RX Steve Willner wrote:

In article 4aVWc.8723$VY.1244@trndny09, Rudolph_X
writes:

In the quote that I gave above, preceeding the link to the
artilce, the scientists says, "...the orbital change was quite
extraordinary. 2004 FU162 was deflected by about 20 degrees
because of the Earth's gravity. I've never seen anything like that
before."

Read carefully. The scientist said the encounter deflected the
orbit 20 degrees. He also said this change was unusually large.
However, he said nothing whatever about a predicted path.

RX Then why would he have said, "The orbital change was quite
RX extraordinary," and, "I've never seen anything like that before."
RX These words seem to indicate that something unexpected happened
RX regarding the orbital path.

"Extraordinary" means just that, out of the ordinary. The typical
deflection observed is small, less than 1 degree, probably much less.
A deflection of 20 degrees is large, so it is out of the ordinary or
extraordinary. As for never having seen anything like that, he didn't
say that it was unpredicted, just that he had never seen anything like
it. Given that most asteroids pass the Earth outside of the Moon's
orbit, it would be remarkable to see one so close.


Couple of points occur to me. First, we presumably have a fairly good
idea of how many objects of this size actually hit the earth every year,
and presumably this type of observation adds to our knowledge - and
conversely, the number of hits allows predictions of the number that
miss.
Second, I haven't looked up the orbit of this "asteroid", but given its
close approach, could it have been a man-made object like a booster,
making a return visit?