Comments on: 8 ball, corner pocket

8 ball, corner pocket

40 Watt — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 14:52:44 -0800

Is the Apocalypse set for April 13th, 2029? Good news, everyone! A collossal asteroid, poetically named 2004 MN4, is calculated to pass pretty damn close to the Earth on that date. How close? Well, the folks at NASA have given it an unprecedented Torino Impact Hazard rating of 4, with chances of impact currently at around 1 in 63, although this will no doubt change as calculations are made. Happy Holidays! (via Slashdot)

By: amberglow

amberglow — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 14:59:56 -0800

i hope it doesn't come close enough to hurt, but now that we know, can't they do a Bruce Willis or something and blast it away? (or a Futurama, with a giant ball of garbage?)

By: interrobang

interrobang — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:00:54 -0800

This is exactly what we deserve, the way we've been acting.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:01:26 -0800

not me! ; >

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:01:42 -0800

I'll be almost forty seven at that point (if I make it to that point). Things could have been worse.

By: hank

hank — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:02:51 -0800

As suggested at Slashdot, this seems a great opportunity for the Open Source community to come together and pony up a large prize purse for whoever can lassoo that thing and start nudging it into a usable location. And, it'd better be open source controlers, to be applied to something that could make that large a hole if misdirected.

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:03:06 -0800

On the bright side, I may finally have my fiendish desires satiated when America is immolated by a wall of fire. It's too bad about the animals though...

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:04:55 -0800

Hey, that's my birthday! What? Instead of a birthday party with cakes and presents, it's actually a gigantic asteroid set to destroy us all? This changes my mood on the matter. (FWIW, when I first saw this news, it had a Torino scale of 2, with a 1 in 300 chance of hitting us. I don't like these new calculations.)

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:05:39 -0800

Having turned 25 a few months ago, I had planned on making the next quarter-century my best. Guess this just makes sense. At least I won't have to face getting old. Heh. They claim in the first link there that odds are currently 1 in 300, which (it says) yields a Torino rating of 2. (Since that's less than a 1% chance, I mean.) Where do you get 1 in 63? And, relatedly: what are the chances that there be fallout or some climate change, even if there isn't impact? Does that kind of thing happen? I assume this thing isn't big enough to exert any destructive gravitational pull-- the second link says it's 440 meters in diameter, so I don't know.

By: yossarian1

yossarian1 — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:05:48 -0800

Yikes... God is trying to do a preemptive strike on us because we lied about our WMDs... help!

By: yossarian1

yossarian1 — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:06:57 -0800

2029.... The year I am supposed to retire. Guess I'll just spend my 401k now.

By: Salmonberry

Salmonberry — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:08:14 -0800

Hmm, I played with NASA's nifty impact toy and my 400m couldn't get the whole world to go KABOOM! I get a nice earthquake out of it, though.

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:08:20 -0800

Is the Apocalypse... So is jesus riding this asteroid?

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:09:10 -0800

hmm, i played with nasa's nifty impact toy and my 400m couldn't get the whole world to go kaboom! i get a nice earthquake out of it, though. Well, that's a ~~shame~~ relief.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:09:28 -0800

Today's other exciting space news is decidedly more benign.

By: yossarian1

yossarian1 — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:10:34 -0800

hank... I don't trust open-sourcers to take care of this thing. An open source solution will work for about 10 minutes, shifting the asteroid slightly, then all of a sudden we'll get the message that we need to download a new patch or recompile the kernel. That's one cool project for geeks, one giant f-up for the human race.

By: Salmonberry

Salmonberry — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:13:10 -0800

Well God Complex, I just switched it to iron and indeed, I get the energy value of the whole of the world's nuclear arsenal in the resulting impact. That sounds bad, doesn't it?

By: helvetica

helvetica — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:15:09 -0800

Sticherbeat; Hey, my birthday too. It's gonna be one hell of a party in 2029.

By: Dizzy Bint

Dizzy Bint — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:20:55 -0800

Hmm...that messes up my plans for 2012. I wonder if I can pre-book a decent hotel?

By: AstroGuy

AstroGuy — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:21:36 -0800

Doesn't the first link say it's only a 2 on the Torino scale and that the chances are only 1 in 300 of a collision? Way to get everybody worried there 40 watt. Oh crap. I just looked at the other link. There goes my weekend.

By: johnj

johnj — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:23:43 -0800

My tin foil hat will save me. Wait, where is that damn thing? Screw it! I'll use the suppository instead.

By: LouReedsSon

LouReedsSon — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:24:01 -0800

...so tonight I'm gonna party like it's twen-ty twenty nine! In my very best Prince, of course!

By: amberglow

amberglow — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:24:10 -0800

I got it! we build giant space flippers (like in pinball games) and just hit it away. how's that?

By: amberglow

amberglow — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:24:45 -0800

a giant baseball bat?

By: tomorama

tomorama — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:28:37 -0800

The brightness of 2004 MN4 suggests that its diameter is roughly 400 meters (1300 feet) and our current, but very uncertain, best estimate of the flyby distance in 2029 is about twice the distance of the moon, or about 780,000 km (480,000 miles). On average, an asteroid of this size would be expected to pass within 2 lunar distances of Earth every 5 years or so. I'm not packing my bags just yet.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:29:31 -0800

another giant asteroid?

By: LouReedsSon

LouReedsSon — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:30:32 -0800

btw, that's a Friday the 13th too (according to Microsoft Works calander)!

By: mstefan

mstefan — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:54:53 -0800

When the flyby distance is within the orbital distance of our moon, that's when you should grab your ankles and prepare for the Great Pucker-Up™

By: NewBornHippy

NewBornHippy — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:18:37 -0800

I'm starting my cult today -- I promise salvation in exchange for all your personal belongings. A PO box will be announced soon. Also -- Quick! What is Nostradamus saying about all that?

By: joelf

joelf — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:33:15 -0800

bah! The maians predicted 12-12-2012 (11:11 am GMT) to be the end of the world. So either they were wrong by a few years or we don't actually have to worry about this thing.

By: MarkO

MarkO — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:33:17 -0800

I'm having trouble understanding the possible threat this asteroid poses. Here are some calculations that might help: The bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were 15 and 20 kilotons. They were certainly the most destructive acts of war, ever. Current hydrogen bombs have the power of around 1 megaton, which is 1000 kilotons. The most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated by the United States, on the Bikini islands in 1954, was 15 megatons, or 63,000 TJ. A terajoule is 1 trillion joules. Now let us put this into perspective. A kWh, or kilowatt-hour, is 3,600,000 joules. According to this page, the United States generated 3,836 billion kilowatt-hours in 2002, or an average of about 10 billion kilowatt-hours per day. Therefore, a 15 megaton bomb produces energy equivalent to 17.5 billion kilowatt-hours, or the energy produced over 2 days by the United States. If the NASA page on this rock is correct, an impact by this asteroid in 2029 would have 2,210 megatons of energy. That is a lot of energy: 9.25 million terajoules, 2569 billion kilowatt-hours, or the energy produced by the US in 244 days.

By: NewBornHippy

NewBornHippy — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:38:23 -0800

In all likelihood, the possibility of impact will eventually be eliminated as the asteroid continues to be tracked by astronomers around the world. In other words, if a bunch of insomniacs keep on staring at it for a long enough time, the problem will just go away. We rule.

By: 40 Watt

40 Watt — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:39:06 -0800

oops, forgot a link for those "4" Torino ratings: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ip?1.6e-02 Linked from the new calculations on the 2004 MN4 impact risk page(http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html), if you look at the yellow section. Please forgive the sloppy post, I'm a little drunk on cheap Greek wine right now.

By: borkingchikapa

borkingchikapa — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:40:56 -0800

So how good would the odds have to be for somebody/some government/some company to do something about it? We can never be positive that anything would hit us, so how sure would we have to be? If it did hit Earth, what would the impact on humanity be? I'm sure millions would die in the initial blast, but what would the rest of us do?

By: 40 Watt

40 Watt — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:45:07 -0800

die slowly?

By: Plinko

Plinko — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:51:45 -0800

I hope to be on Mars by that point. Screw all you earthlings!

By: darkstar

darkstar — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:58:10 -0800

In other words, if a bunch of insomniacs keep on staring at it for a long enough time, the problem will just go away. We rule. LOL! :-D Waitaminnit! I'll be 62 in 2029. I knew Bush would come up with a way to keep me from collecting my Social Security benefits!

By: zardoz

zardoz — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:11:26 -0800

If it did hit Earth, what would the impact on humanity be? I'm sure millions would die in the initial blast, but what would the rest of us do? IANAS, but methinks it would be similar to a nuclear holocaust, in that populations not affected by the blast itself would be screwed when all that dust kicked up by said come asteroid t would choke the atmosphere, preventing sunlight, making it impossible to grow, you know, plants, and being damn cold to boot. Maybe if it lands in the deepest part of an ocean it wouldn't be so bad, but the tidal waves would be nasty--they wouldn't just wipe out cities, but entire small countries. /wild speculation Someone get Michael Bay and Bruce Willis on the phone. They'll know what to do.

By: abcde

abcde — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:18:37 -0800

It's only up to 4 because the area it is currently possible for it to pass through has shrunk, and stil encompasses Earth. As it continues to shrink, Earth will very likely fall out of that cloud. We'll more or less know way before 2029 - the coming days and weeks, is my understanding.

By: gimonca

gimonca — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:32:45 -0800

Press release at NeoDYS in Europe If I recall my asteroid death and destruction scenarios correctly.... The angle of entry can make a big difference in the degree of destruction (although I can't remember if coming straight down is worse, or coming in at a shallow angle). We don't know what the object is made of: rock? iron? big bag of gravel? We only know how bright it is, which gives us a rough idea of how large it is. Its consistency could make a difference as to whether it breaks up at some point, or splats in as one lump. The only other object that currently has a positive Palermo Scale rating (meaning that the chance of it striking is greater than background) is 1950 DA -- which is an unusual case, because it was first observed in 1950 and then rediscovered just a couple of years ago. Having two sets of observations fifty years apart allows its orbit to be calculated much further into the future. There is a possibility of it striking in March 2880. It's between two and three times larger than 2004 MN4. The NASA page (linked above) includes links to simulations of what could happen if 1950 DA makes an impact, including 400-foot tsunamis hitting the east coast of the U.S. if it strikes in the mid-Atlantic. Presumably, effects of 2004 MN4 would be smaller, but not trivial. NASA guesses than the Tunguska object of 1908 would have been 200-300 feet across, in the ballpark of about 1/4 the size of 2004 MN4. At Tunguska, where the object exploded high in the air, trees were incinerated out to a 9-mile radius. Speculation is that a Tunguska-style event might actually happen as often as once a century on average, but that the chances of such a thing happening over the relatively small areas of the earth's surface that are densely populated are much, much smaller. Some people think that similar events may have happened in remote parts of South America in 1930 and 1935. The ability to monitor for such events globally only came online with the Cold War, and then such activities would have been classified. There is still speculation that a 1979 flash seen off of South Africa, rumored to have been a clandestine test by South Africa, Israel, or both working together, might actually have been a large space rock exploding in the atmosphere over the ocean. Chicxulub, the "dinosaur killer", is thought to have been about 10 km across, in the range of 20 times the size of 2004 MN4. A lot of the searching and researching is done by people like this, which is inspiring, in a way. It would be a nice ending to find out that a successful project to save a city from destruction started out with some dude building telescopes in his garden shed....

By: gimonca

gimonca — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:36:45 -0800

clandestine atomic test...sorry

By: hojoki

hojoki — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:48:01 -0800

Alrighty, I am now sufficiently horrified. Time for alcohol!

By: gimonca

gimonca — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:48:18 -0800

Beside the one-out-of-63 probability right now, worth keeping in mind that even if it did hit, the "impact on humanity" would vary a lot depending on what and where it hit. Antarctica, the Sahara, the Amazon basin, chunks of Central Asia or Siberia......little or no impact on human societies (except for some very excited scientists). A strike in the open ocean (which does cover most of the earth)....probably destructive tsunamis in that part of the world, but not as large as in the movie "Deep Impact", maybe comparable to a very major earthquake. A strike in a populated area....major property damage in that area. Loss of life would depend on how accurate our predictions are. My hunch is that we'd be able to predict a band of latitude first, which would probably freak out people across a stripe of land across the globe, most of whom wouldn't actually be in danger. Panic could be as destructive as the actual impact. My hunch (again) is that it would be like a large but not unprecedented volcanic event. Mount Saint Helens? Krakatoa? Tambora? Could be things we haven't thought of, as well. I'm reminded of the opening of Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendevous with Rama", where an impacting asteroid explodes over Central Europe, leaving thousands deaf from the percussion....

By: gimonca

gimonca — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 18:42:35 -0800

Impact Effects Calculator at LPL/U. of Arizona (and linked from Slashdot as well). Fun for all! Remember, your diameter is 440 meters. NASA appears to be working with an impact velocity at the low end, around 12-13 km/sec. Otherwise, play with the parameters all you like. One thing I forget about is "ejecta" from the crater -- even if you're several miles away, you may have chunks of stuff, possibly molten, landing on you within a few seconds. Not pleasant.

By: hank

hank — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 19:11:46 -0800

It's not a hammer! Or, even if it is a hammer, it's also a cheap toy, if not a free lunch --can we but reach for these whenever there's a chance, with any tool we can find or make, we'll get good enough to catch them and use them. Someone will. I swear, it's just a matter of looking at things straight. The X-prize was to do what governments already have done; catching one of these things, I'd like to see bunches of people try to do it, and, yeah, I'd like to see the methods be open-source and the math as well. Nudging something, anything massive, within the solar system, since we know it's a chaotic system over time, is going to be amusing at best. Heck, just planting an instrument package on anything like this as it comes 'round -- knowing years ahead that it'll be reachable, it can be done with low-energy devices, ion engines perhaps -- ought to be imagineable/doable a handful of different ways. Let it take a few decades slowly lining itself up to go out along with the asteroid on that Friday 13th encounter (happy birthdays in advance, those of you..) Hook it, net it, go along with it -- and maybe have the chance to use the same low-power ion engine to push after figuring out how and where to try pushing. Too bad we didn't have a chance to get something onto that latest Delta launch, the one that put two dummy satellites not high enough last week on its first test -- the first step is the expensive one. But thanks to the X-Prize people that's getting worked out, there will be private launchers, or almost-launchers, fairly soon.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 19:23:41 -0800

well, it's not the end of the world, folks ... i've been playing around with the impact calculators and i think at worst, we'd have some global cooling way short of a nuclear winter ... except of course for anyone unlucky enough to be around it when it lands they are certainly screwed

By: grateful

grateful — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 20:13:25 -0800

Hey darkstar - don't worry about Bush and the social security. Isn't 2029 when SS is supposed to be insolvent, anyway?

By: Netzapper

Netzapper — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 20:33:02 -0800

I'm not trolling, and I'm not kidding. We need to blow it up. A lot. A 1/63 chance is way, way too high to chance it.

By: kamus

kamus — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 20:37:01 -0800

So is jesus riding this asteroid? UPI...Astronomers were puzzled by close up images from the rogue asteroid from the Hubble telescope that seem to suggest some type of Slim Pickens shaped rock outcropping. Yay- it's my birthday too! I'll be 74 -just about when the actuarial tables have me croaking anyway. Kinda nice to know that I'll be going out in a blaze of satisfyingly symmetrical glory. It also plays into my deep sense of solipsism. I just knew that the world was created solely for my benefit and this just proves it

By: absalom

absalom — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:03:46 -0800

I'll be in my mid-fifties, and I guess I'll have had a good run by then. Besides, I've always wanted to be around for the end of the world. I mean, if I've got to die, I think I'd like to watch everyone else go with me.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:10:08 -0800

Make a gigantic solar fresnel reflective lens out of mylar and struts to heat it and shift it. Or a gigantic solar sail. Or both, if you're clever. Given the timespan you'd only need to nudge it a little.

By: Netzapper

Netzapper — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:22:20 -0800

Actually, I have a better idea! If it's coming that close, let's grab the damn thing and build the space elevator. I'm running some very rough numbers, and assuming I haven't made a mistake, it's about 3*10^9 kg, assuming a density of 1g / cc (that of water) That's plenty with which to create a space elevator. Seriously, let's stop trying to kill Arabs, get our heads out of our ass, and unite a few nations together to build this thing.

By: jimjam

jimjam — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 23:22:58 -0800

man why can't one of these things hit the moon, ideally on a night when there's a full moon out over my crib. that would be a pretty sweet show.

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 00:34:36 -0800

There simply hasn't been enough emphasis: 1/2mv^2

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 00:47:47 -0800

That should be "emphasized enough", of course... ARGH! (on a brighter note, it gives me a chance to emphasize it again) 1/2mv^2

By: bwg

bwg — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 01:28:54 -0800

We don't know what the object is made of: rock? iron? big bag of gravel? Stay-Puft Marshmallow.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 02:20:12 -0800

The most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated by the United States, on the Bikini islands in 1954, was 15 megatons Interestingly enough, the most powerful bomb ever detonated was by the Soviet Union in 1961 (thanks, /.). It was a 50 megaton bomb (some argue 57 MT) but it was designed to be 100 MT. The initial blast explosion was about 8 miles in diameter. It could be seen 1000 km away through cloudy skies (about the distance from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina). If the Russians had not changed the design the last minute (cutting the payload in half) the amount of fallout it would have produced would have increased the overal global amount of radiation since the detonation of the first atomic bomb by 25%. A 1900 megaton explosion in the water would generate 700 ft. tidal waves moving hundreds of miles an hour. If it hit land, it would turn New York City and the surrounding suburbs into glass, and likely make a killing field out of all of New England. We need to blow it up. A lot. ...and instead of one giant problem, we'll have several hundred smaller problems. No dice.

By: squeak

squeak — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 02:21:36 -0800

I say we cryogenically freeze Bruce Willis now! Never know, we may need to send him up in space to save the planet. I'll be nearing retirement age when this this passes, question is should I continue to invest in RRSP's? Afterr reading some of those links I'm apt to think it is not as bad as it seems. Thanks for the collision calculator gimonca.

By: substrate

substrate — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 03:19:34 -0800

I'm filing my 2029 taxes late, just in case. It'll also be time to stock up on any young, wholesome and usually undesirable celebrities for celebrity deathlist in 2028.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 03:20:57 -0800

C_D - One thing to keep in mind is that we'll have an almost certain idea of whether the thing will actually hit well before 2019. So while an ocean strike in the Atlantic would scour the Eastern Seaboard down to bedrock, it wouldn't necessarily be a killing field. We'd evacuate everybody a few hundred miles in from either coast. It would be the largest mass migration in the history of the planet, but it would be possible given the kind of warning we will have. This might have the effect of evacuating milllions of people *into* the danger zone rather than out of it, but it would be worth the gamble. Western Europe would be pretty much screwed by an Atlantic impact. So long, England. A strike in the Indian Ocean would be much better for the USA , Europe, China, and Japan... but the death toll in Africa, India, and SE Asia would be catastrophic. I'm not sure I even want to consider a Pacific impact. Sayonara, Japan.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 04:41:44 -0800

So while an ocean strike in the Atlantic would scour the Eastern Seaboard down to bedrock, it wouldn't necessarily be a killing field. No, what I meant to say was: if it hits the ocean, you'll have a 700 ft. tall, 500 mph. tidal wave to contend with. On the other hand, if it hits land, you'll have a swath of new real estate available about the size of New England. Theoretically, of course.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 05:53:10 -0800

That sounds bad, doesn't it? Not really. Does someone have handy the energy release represented by the Mt. St. Helen's eruption? Just as an example. The "entire world's arsenal of nuclear weapons" is enough to cause a great deal of havoc, but not global devastation. Even widespread, with the type of smoke envisioned by the "nuclear winter" scenario would almost certainly not be as severe as the nuclear winter group thought it would (their research has been repuidated). Don't get me wrong: this is enough to kill lots of people and possibly deeply harm the global economy. Kill all the humans or some other such nonsense? Nope. I say this because there's people that think that somehow all the world's nuclear weapons could actually blow up the Earth or something. Also, the most vulnerable areas are the coastal cities and they're vulnerable to tsunamies and hurricanes and other disasters that are, cumulatively, much more likely than a space object strike. One way or another, within the next hundred years some large coastal city (or many, from global warming) is going to get devastated somehow. I'd bet on that, but not that it would be from an asteroid strike. There's also a pandemic possibility, or just some collapse of the global economy and related food production and distribution creating mass stavation. Lots of things are more probable than an asteroid strike. Nuclear war.

By: dreish

dreish — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 06:08:07 -0800

I'm not trolling, and I'm not kidding. We need to blow it up. A lot. From what I've read, it seems we'll know with certainty whether it is going to hit or not long before we need to start preparing. I've always thought the best response to something like this would be a bunch of nukes set off on one side of the rock. That would presumably push it into a different orbit, wouldn't it? I think a 10 megaton blast would alter its speed by something on the order of 100 m/s, so surely this would be within the realm of possibility for an asteroid of this size.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 06:44:09 -0800

Does someone have handy the energy release represented by the Mt. St. Helen's eruption? Well, to put things in perspective (I love putting things in perspective), the Krakatoa eruption of 1883 was about the equivalent of a 150 megaton detonation. Dust from that eruption wound up in New York City (Krakatoa is/was in Indonesia). It was heard 3000 miles away. It created a tsunami that was about 120 feet high. So, 1900 megatons would be significantly worse.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 06:44:44 -0800

Oh, and in case it's not clear -- Mt. St. Helen was a pussycat compared to Krakatoa.

By: batou_

batou_ — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 06:50:31 -0800

I just hope it does not hurtle between the earth and the moon ripping away the Van Allen belt, breaking the moon in half and plunging the Earth into a 2000 year long dark ages.

By: Megafly

Megafly — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 06:59:15 -0800

dreish- consider carefully what you are advocating. Do you move your car around the parking lot by strapping pipe bombs to it? You can't reposition a tv by hitting it with a hammer. it is entirely possible that you would just rain us with poisonous radioactive asteroid pieces. so now instead of a shotgun slug to the face we would have buckshot across your entire body.

By: Vulpyne

Vulpyne — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 07:14:19 -0800

I'm pretty sure you'd be more likely to survive buckshot across your body than a shotgun slug to the face. :) (Yeah, I know it's just an analogy.)

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 08:01:36 -0800

"So, 1900 megatons would be significantly worse." Well, okay. I was wrong, my intuition misled me about the relative magnitudes of this sort of geologic event and a large nuclear weapon. Still, though, in terms of the tsunami and, especially, the dust, these things aren't directly comparable. A volcano like that is pretty ideal for injecting a large amount of dust into the upper atmosphere.

By: dreish

dreish — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 08:19:49 -0800

dreish- consider carefully what you are advocating. I was talking about pushing rather than breaking the asteroid, but that depends on its composition, which we don't know yet. If you break apart an asteroid two or three orbits before it hits, the residual pieces would have different orbits that would likely not intersect Earth's, you could track them with a followup probe, and if any large pieces remained on a dangerous course, you could break them up further until nothing was left but the sort of boulders that routinely fall into the atmosphere without incident. There's a good article about asteroid defense on Space.com. The real danger from asteroids is the ones we don't discover until a few months before impact. Being 25 years away gives us plenty of time to prepare.

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 09:50:55 -0800

NetZapper, there's an interesting (and apparently decently funded) group called The Spaceward Foundation spearheading an effort to build a space elevator. Their leadership recently spoke at an organization to which I belong and their proposition seems reasonable to me.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 10:09:14 -0800

dreish, you seem to believe way too much in our space-age technology, which is currently at the level of dropping washing-machine-size objects on distant planets, relying mainly on gravity to do our work for us. You say "you could break them up further until nothing was left..." after "tracking them with a followup probe," as if that kind of technology even exists. We are -not- this advanced. We can't even coordinate using one missile to blow up another missile that we launched with a known trajectory over territory we control, very near by. You overestimate humans.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 10:14:28 -0800

Seems to me that if we humans haven't collectively got our shit together by the time this asteroid is a going concern, we probably ought to be wiped off the face of the planet anyways.

By: dreish

dreish — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 13:09:23 -0800

dreish, you seem to believe way too much in our space-age technology Well, I'm just repeating what the aerospace engineers say. Go read the article and argue with them. Do you know how to read, or do you just bicker?

By: the cuban

the cuban — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 13:28:24 -0800

ah, the xmas spirit isn't dead...

By: Four Flavors

Four Flavors — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 13:48:24 -0800

"I just hope it does not hurtle between the earth and the moon ripping away the Van Allen belt, breaking the moon in half and plunging the Earth into a 2000 year long dark ages." posted by batou_ Lords of Light! Anyway, isn't technology great? Even a mere hundred years ago we wouldn't have known to start worrying (or not) about this even that may be coming in 25 years.

By: dreish

dreish — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 14:04:27 -0800

Yes, sorry I forgot to add "Merry Christmas". To be fair, odinsdream raises an interesting point by bringing up the failure of missle defense tests. But as the article I linked to points out, we've already blasted away a big chunk of a comet, and that was a little science project nowhere near the magnitude of the Apollo program. A missile is small and moves very quickly through the atmosphere. An asteroid is big and speeds along on a predictable course through empty space. I think if we needed to do it to preserve millions of homes worth hundreds of billions of dollars, it would be a piece of cake to set off a few nuclear bombs near this asteroid. The science involved is not at all new. Also, the probability of impact is up to 1 in 45 now. Merry Christmas indeed.

By: gimonca

gimonca — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 15:38:49 -0800

Mt. St. Helen[s] was a pussycat compared to Krakatoa And Krakatoa was a little brother to Tambora. (more) Either of those starts to give you a handle on what could be "regional destruction".

By: gimonca

gimonca — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 15:52:37 -0800

More reference: 1960 Tsunami at U. of Washington.

By: andreaazure

andreaazure — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 17:13:05 -0800

Quick update: We now have a greater than a 2% chance of getting hit. w00t.

By: The Great Big Mulp

The Great Big Mulp — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 17:36:59 -0800

I like them odds.

By: camworld

camworld — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 09:33:44 -0800

Good to know that I will die on my 56th birthday. I'm gonna start spending my retirement money now. Anyone wanna go to Vegas?

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 09:50:04 -0800

Cool. I wonder if this kind of threat will be enough to get the world to pull together and deal with one another fairly and rationally. Or if we'll continue to fight with one another while death comes closer to the planet. Ah, interesting times, interesting times.

By: reflecked

reflecked — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 11:24:45 -0800

This sounds like a VERY good reason for the development of a space-based missile defense system, don't you think? No tinfoil hat here, but i am wondering.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 12:30:51 -0800

reflecked, considering the large differences between shooting down earth-based missiles and blowing up/diverting incoming asteroids, the chances that such a specialized system developed for one purpose would be well-suited for the other is slim, at best. Of course, that won't stop some legislators from claiming otherwise to get the funding for a new cold war.

By: dammitjim

dammitjim — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 19:54:07 -0800

I just recently began reading Lucifer's Hammer (this book will scare the pants off you if you haven't read it), and then the cover of this week's Economist has a picture of a large mass (garnished with holly) hitting the Earth. Then this. What the hell?

By: Justinian

Justinian — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 01:45:44 -0800

Looks to me like the odds of an impact have been raised yet again, from 2.2% to 2.7%.

By: abcde

abcde — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 06:33:26 -0800

Which is to say, 1 in 37. *trembles*

By: dreish

dreish — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 09:00:58 -0800

About the same as the odds of rolling snake eyes. From the diagrams NASA has put out, it looks like the asteroid would hit somewhere on the dark side of the planet. They're forecasting an impact at about 21:20 UCT (on April 13, 2029). It doesn't look like there's as much uncertainty in the time of impact as in whether it will happen at all, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway, getting to the point, the dark side of the planet would be centered on a point somewhere between the horn of Africa and Madagascar, and would extend to all of Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and Europe; the majority of Asia stretching out to most of China and all of southeast Asia (but not Korea or Japan), the western edge of Australia, the eastern edge of South America, and most of Antarctica. North America would be in broad daylight at the time, but the South Atlantic and almost half the North Atlantic oceans would be within range, which could still create problems for the east coast of the U.S. If, hypothetically, the asteroid were projected to impact somewhere in central Africa, I wonder whether there would be any urgent call for action (or even research) to mitigate the impact by moving or breaking up the asteroid. What would be the political ramifications of an impact projected for Saudi Arabia? Certainly, if it were projected to hit the middle of Western Europe, Europe would respond in whatever way possible, and I'm sure the U.S. would help. And let's assume for the sake of argument that if it were certain to hit in the middle of the Sahara, far from any permanent settlements, such that the only impact to cities 1000 km away would be a light dusting of ash, nothing would need to be done but evacuate the area. So where would the line be drawn? Would first-world governments spend billions to try to save ramshackle settlements of third-world residents, or would they just suggest relocation?

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 10:41:53 -0800

It would be all too ironic if in 2029, the same damn year the USA finally wrests control of Iraq from the insurgents and can start to lay claim to that much-desired oil, the asteroid smoked right into the oil wells.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 10:50:24 -0800

will there still be oil in 2029?

By: truex

truex — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 15:13:02 -0800

NASA's site is getting hammered, but it looks like the Torino rating has dropped to 0, with odds of impact now only at 1 in 56,000.

By: vomitous

vomitous — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 21:10:03 -0800

Okay, so NOW, not only are the odds even LESS than before, about 1 in 71,000, but in addition, the whole event is not going to happen until May 13th of 2044 as well. AND good ol' May 13th of 2029 isn't even on the charts anymore. It's hard to believe we're talking about the same colossal asteroid. So much has changed in three days. I don't get it, I thought astronomy was a slightly more exact science. I'm guessing the changes are all related to a greater knowledge of the asteroid's trajectory... but the first observation was made on Mar. 15 2004.. I would figure a better tracing of it's course would have been made between Mar. 15 and Dec. 24 than between Dec. 24 and Dec. 27. Why so much change over the last few days? Anyone who knows more than an amateur care to explain?

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 21:23:11 -0800

maybe it got too much press, and they decide to calm down everyone?

By: Freen

Freen — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 21:51:29 -0800

I think because it went behind the sun. But I could be very wrong. Also, I would imagine you would need two observations for any sort of calculation of trajectory, one observation would just tell you that something was there. Two would tell you were it was going. I'm quite sure that there are a number of asteroids that have been seen and identified, but that we won't know where they are going until someone decides to take a second peek. There is a fairly good explanation of trajectory calculations over at Slashdot

By: abcde

abcde — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:30:06 -0800

vomitous: It's very exact. Basically, there was an area of ambiguity where it could possibly go, and that area intersected the Earth. At its worst the area was only 37 times bigger than earth; then as soon as it shrunk just a little bit more Earth was left out of the area, and hence the probability of hitting on that date went down to zero.

By: yupislyr

yupislyr — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:36:29 -0800

The orbit was corrected using pre-discovery images. All the increased interest gave the astronomers extra reason to go back looking through older star images to see if an image had been captured before. This turned out to be the case and that data was used in refining the orbit. This is not unusual at all as sometimes it can take years of observations to refine an asteroid's orbit.