Comments on: Comments on 18643

Post number 18643

tankboy — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 19:25:24 -0800

Gotterdammerung. It's big, it's bad, and it's due in 2019. Dammit, who's going to rock me to sleep tonight? [via /.]

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 19:28:51 -0800

I hope Bruce Willis is available, come 2019. If history has taught us anything, it's that only he can save us. (and no, Affleck, you can't help)

By: nprigoda

nprigoda — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 19:31:06 -0800

I love that picture. Just in case you couldn't imagine how horrible and devastating it would be, here is an image of the earth acting like a water droplet caught on high-speed film.

By: malphigian

malphigian — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 19:31:51 -0800

Just in case you wanted the full run down... The Twilight of the Gods and the end of the cosmos in Norse mythology, also called Gotterdammerung. Ragnarok will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters. Three such winters will follow each other with no summers in between. Conflicts and feuds will break out, even between families, and all moral will disappear. This is the beginning of the end...

By: whatnotever

whatnotever — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 19:40:03 -0800

First of all, it seems to have been recently downgraded. The article claims it's 0.06 on the Palermo Scale, while NASA says it's -0.14. Both of these numbers basically mean "it's worth keeping an eye on, but no big deal," but the negative sign is more comforting. (Watch out, it seems that server is currently being slashdotted.) Secondly, that illustration in the BBC article... the thing smashing into Earth looks to be close to the size of the Moon!

By: LuxFX

LuxFX — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 19:54:03 -0800

I wonder how long it will be before I see, "Lost Prophecies of Nostradamus Reveal World-Ending Catastrophe in 2019!!!" headlines in the grocery aisle....

By: machaus

machaus — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 19:59:06 -0800

that noise you hear? that's the buzzing noise of high-school boys everywhere contemplating how this potential catastrophe can get them laid before everyone forgets about the news story. "c'mon baby, lets live tonight like it's our last night on earth!"

By: donkeyschlong

donkeyschlong — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:08:15 -0800

Plan: let's unite around this and stop killing one another.

By: skallas

skallas — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:15:59 -0800

Related story here

By: liam

liam — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:27:23 -0800

As we speak, a script is being written for Bruce Willis by the Near Earth Object Dynamic Site. The wisecracks will be added later by another team.

By: whatnotever

whatnotever — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:28:06 -0800

skallas, I knew I recognized that graphic from somewhere!

By: GriffX

GriffX — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:30:37 -0800

January 1, 2019:

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY MY BOSS ...So, why don't we continue this at the staff meeting tomorrow morning! ME Heheheh... suckers.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:57:47 -0800

I like how the problem of "Near Earth Objects" is now supposedly being "properly addressed". Meaning: We're actually looking for them now. We can't do anything if we see one, but we'll at least be able to say one's coming.

By: TBoneMcCool

TBoneMcCool — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:15:05 -0800

Surely this giant rock will break up in the atmosphere and end up no bigger than a Chihuahua's head.

By: evanizer

evanizer — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:20:01 -0800

Why have we been relatively "near Earth object" free for the whole of human history, and now we have a near miss every month or so?

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:25:31 -0800

because now we know, and knowing is half the battle!

By: gyc

gyc — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:31:25 -0800

ignorance is bliss, no?

By: machaus

machaus — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:31:48 -0800

Why have we been relatively "near Earth object" free for the whole of human history, and now we have a near miss every month or so? shhhh, I trying to get laid!

By: folktrash

folktrash — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:43:27 -0800

in case it didn't come thru the snark, evanizer, it's because we weren't looking before. the objects were whizzing about like objects tend to do, we're just now noticing them. and it's no small feat. some of the most difficult things to see would be objects like these. now, maybe this is just cause i'm reading the stand right now (they're in boulder having just elected the committee) but... let's just say this was going to happen, there's nothing that could be done. nothing with a high chance of success anyway, so... would they (yes - they) just perpetuate the information that it was indeed a harmless object? object object object

By: billder

billder — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:52:21 -0800

INT. CUBICLE - DAY GRIFFX Oh, damn, the end of the world isn't until February 1. Now I have to do that presentation. Oh no! Powerpoint 2019 just melted my eyetop computer. Ouch. Woe is me.

By: mblandi

mblandi — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:52:59 -0800

Damn, I thought this was going to be some badass Wagner adaptation for Summer 2003.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 21:57:21 -0800

the thing smashing into Earth looks to be close to the size of the Moon! It's much bigger than the asteroid in the story, sure, but if you compare the relative sizes of the earth/asteroid in the NASA image with the earth/moon at the bottom of this page, you'll find the asteroid in the NASA image is nowhere near the size of the moon. We're actually looking for them now. We can't do anything if we see one, but we'll at least be able to say one's coming. Except for the ones that we can't see until they've already passed, of course. Darn that pesky blind spot in the direction of the sun! Sure is too bad the hunt for potentially deadly asteroids is underfunded and government officials so clueless, though. Oh well. At least some folks are on the case.

By: euphorb

euphorb — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 22:00:38 -0800

Why have we been relatively "near Earth object" free for the whole of human history, and now we have a near miss every month or so? Not quite. There was a pretty famous impact in 1908 near Tunguska in Siberia. Scroll down to the bottom of that page linked and you'll get you answer. Most impacts occur in the ocean or over unpopulated land and so would not have been noticed for the majority of human history unless they had been catastrophic.

By: folktrash

folktrash — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 22:05:33 -0800

oh, i get it. i can post links.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 22:19:53 -0800

What a great link, euphorb. "In 1972, a 1000-ton object skimmed tangentially through Earth's atmosphere over the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, and then skipped back out into space, like a stone skipping off water." Like his paintings, too (that was for you, folktrash. Mwa).

By: folktrash

folktrash — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 22:28:46 -0800

i've puzzled for a little while now...mwa? maybe a link would help me.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 22:40:01 -0800

Well, I just brushed my teeth and set the alarm, so this is the best I can do. Sure would love if it became the norm to include more than one link in front page posts, though.

By: skallas

skallas — Wed, 24 Jul 2002 00:34:18 -0800

mediareport: Darn that pesky blind spot in the direction of the sun Its path cannot always be behind the sun. There's no real blind spot as much as there is a 'blind time' for objects with paths like that.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Wed, 24 Jul 2002 01:05:03 -0800

mr: Or at least some context. MeFi Mystery Meat(Loaf), the nightly favorite. skallas: which is precisely why we need to find them before they come at us out of the blind spot. This one will whiz close by, but it wouldn't be the first one to pass inside the Moon's orbit. As I've said before, the thing isn't so much that the risk has increased, as that now we a) know they're out there; b) have the means to find them; and c) have the potential means to do something about it. Before the 1990s the assumption was that impacts were rare. The moon was still pockmarked because it didn't change; the era of asteroid impacts was over millennia ago, and theories like a comet killed the dinosaurs were still viewed as crank hysteria by many scientists. Then the evidence began to emerge for the KT event (although whether it actually killed the dinosaurs is still open to some argument); the Trans-Neptunian Objects -- the Kuyper Belt -- began to be discovered; and geologists looking into the impact catastrophe theory began finding craters all over the place, even very recently; and scientific access to Tunguska has removed much of the mystery that once surrounded this event shrouded by Cold War paranoia. So now, after 10-15 years of significantly related scientific discovery, we have concluded instead that the solar system is full of junk -- and that small junk hits the Earth all the time, and slightly larger junk certainly hits the Earth on an historical scale. With that in mind, the Spaceguard movement heated up, sparking two movies, but much more than just hype -- because they find new Potentially Hazardous Objects at an increasing pace.

By: donkeymon

donkeymon — Wed, 24 Jul 2002 08:57:07 -0800

My question regarding this is, has the orbit of this object been calculated out to 2019 independent of the influence of all the other hundreds of thousands of objects in space? Surely the gravitational influence of all the asteroids, planets, and other assorted crap whizzing around the solar system would serve at least to blur the sharpness of our projections, right? I can't imagine that these underfunded people have the resources at their disposal to track every object that may influence this asteroid over the next 17 years and calculate precisely how they all would affect it's trajectory.

By: MUD

MUD — Wed, 24 Jul 2002 12:13:52 -0800

Does a sci-fi short about people with ESP-type powers scanning alotted sections of space for objects on a collision course with Earth mean anything to anyone? Loneliness was important for some reason and... and... Curse you, sieve-like brain.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Wed, 24 Jul 2002 13:17:21 -0800

donkeymon, that's exactly why there's a probability attached to the calculation (which has now returned to a -0.06 as more observations come in, even while increasing from 4 to 6 earth radii). But unless an asteroid runs wide by Jupiter or really close to a planet, it may experience negligible change in its orbit. We can't be entirely certain until the final curve, so to speak, but right now it's not about certainty; it's about judging whether there's a reasonable risk to be worried about. Give this one about two weeks -- or better yet, months -- and we'll have sufficient data to really know if it's as dangerous as it appears right now. By then, somebody might have been able to run a simulation on a supercomputer using the known planets, at least, to get an approximation to a satisfactory level. Meanwhile, there are lots of close approaches that are much more mathematically certain; 2002 NT7, though new, probably will not appear on this list, which ends at around 0.05AU rather than the 0.09AU that object is presently slated to pass us by. Still, anything that comes between us and the Moon's orbit is just a little troubling.