Asteroid Apophis Could Hit Earth. Here's How We Could Get to It First
December 5, 2020 1:04 PM Subscribe
99942 Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid with a diameter of 370 metres that will pass within 31,000km/19,000 miles (lower than geosynchronous satellites) of Earth on April 13 2029. In 2062, it could get a bit too close to Earth. In advance of the 2029 event, the Lunar and Planetary Institute recently held a virtual workshop called “Apophis T-9 Years: Knowledge Opportunities for the Science of Planetary Defense” with discussions on how best to observe Apophis's characteristics from Earth and from spacecraft. Gizmodo's George Dvorsky gives the details of the workshop in Asteroid Apophis Could One Day Hit Earth. Here's How We Could Get to It First.
Neat fact: the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft—currently in orbit around asteroid Bennu—could reach Apophis by 2029.
Neat fact: the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft—currently in orbit around asteroid Bennu—could reach Apophis by 2029.
Hmm, if it were coming in January 2029 it could show up just in time for an inauguration after victory as a dark horse candidate in the 2028 us presidential election.
Going to go read the articles, but it would be cool to land a small craft on it in 2029, wait a couple years, and then push with a tiiiiiny bit of force to send it into a friendlier orbit.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:15 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
Going to go read the articles, but it would be cool to land a small craft on it in 2029, wait a couple years, and then push with a tiiiiiny bit of force to send it into a friendlier orbit.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:15 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
From Wikipedia, before you have a mild panic attack like I did:
The highest probability of impact is on April 12, 2068 and the odds of an impact on that date, as calculated by the JPL Sentry risk table using a March 2016 solution, are 1 in 150,000, but the nominal trajectory has the asteroid more than 1 AU (150 million km) from Earth on that date.posted by Going To Maine at 1:17 PM on December 5, 2020 [6 favorites]
This orbit would be easy to nudge into collision as well. Coming in 2029: Elon Musk holds the Earth ransom.
posted by Pyry at 1:35 PM on December 5, 2020 [19 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 1:35 PM on December 5, 2020 [19 favorites]
I've been party to a couple of government exercises on the deflection of an asteroid (hypothetical scenario). And that has come up--that if you do nothing and it hits, it's an Act of God/Nature; if you do deflect and it hits, you're probably on the legal hook now.
You don't get a lot of data except on relatively near passes to refine orbits either, so you get updates in bursts on a period of years. (They're just too small to observe clearly.)
(Another result that fascinated me was the general conclusion that, if you had a Chelyabinsk-sized impactor and you were sure it was going to hit, say, the rural U.S. plains, it's likely far more economical to evacuate and compensate ~10,000 people and take the hit vs. staging a deflection mission. That was more like a ~20m rock, for reference.)
posted by stevis23 at 2:00 PM on December 5, 2020 [11 favorites]
You don't get a lot of data except on relatively near passes to refine orbits either, so you get updates in bursts on a period of years. (They're just too small to observe clearly.)
(Another result that fascinated me was the general conclusion that, if you had a Chelyabinsk-sized impactor and you were sure it was going to hit, say, the rural U.S. plains, it's likely far more economical to evacuate and compensate ~10,000 people and take the hit vs. staging a deflection mission. That was more like a ~20m rock, for reference.)
posted by stevis23 at 2:00 PM on December 5, 2020 [11 favorites]
13th April 2029 is a Friday.
It's going to hit.
posted by Wordshore at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2020 [23 favorites]
It's going to hit.
posted by Wordshore at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2020 [23 favorites]
The highest probability of impact is on April 12, 2068 and the odds of an impact on that date, as calculated by the JPL Sentry risk table using a March 2016 solution, are 1 in 150,000, but the nominal trajectory has the asteroid more than 1 AU (150 million km) from Earth on that date.
The odds of winning $1 million in the McDonald’s Monopoly game have been calculated as 1 in 451,822,158.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:35 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
The odds of winning $1 million in the McDonald’s Monopoly game have been calculated as 1 in 451,822,158.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:35 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
Coming in 2029: Elon Musk holds the Earth ransom.
For what!? All of the bitcoin? A hit off of every DMT vape pen in the world? Open access to Area 51? The Arecibo site for a lair? A fresh new pair of khakis and the newest collector Yeezys?
posted by loquacious at 2:43 PM on December 5, 2020 [12 favorites]
For what!? All of the bitcoin? A hit off of every DMT vape pen in the world? Open access to Area 51? The Arecibo site for a lair? A fresh new pair of khakis and the newest collector Yeezys?
posted by loquacious at 2:43 PM on December 5, 2020 [12 favorites]
The odds of winning $1 million in the McDonald’s Monopoly game have been calculated as 1 in 451,822,158.
This orbit would be easy to nudge into collision as well.
OK, nobody put Jerome P. Jacobson in charge of planetary defense.
posted by zamboni at 2:44 PM on December 5, 2020 [1 favorite]
This orbit would be easy to nudge into collision as well.
OK, nobody put Jerome P. Jacobson in charge of planetary defense.
posted by zamboni at 2:44 PM on December 5, 2020 [1 favorite]
Does this come with an Aerosmith song
posted by yueliang at 2:51 PM on December 5, 2020 [22 favorites]
posted by yueliang at 2:51 PM on December 5, 2020 [22 favorites]
"Chip Away the Stone"
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:59 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:59 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
Don't worry, the priests of Egypt have been preparing for this for thousands of years. (Note: if a cat shows up at your door asking to borrow a knife, give them one.)
posted by heatherlogan at 3:06 PM on December 5, 2020 [10 favorites]
posted by heatherlogan at 3:06 PM on December 5, 2020 [10 favorites]
Thanks to a lot of hard work, we can be pretty damn certain neither this or any other known large impactor is going to actually hit us in the next 25 or so years. It's the stuff we haven't seen that is likely to present a problem. Sadly, losing Aricebo makes the task of getting sufficiently accurate orbital data much harder. Also unfortunate is that there is so much shit out there tugging on each other that it's essentially impossible to be certain what's going to happen to these relatively small objects more than a couple of decades out, no matter how well defined the orbit.
posted by wierdo at 3:10 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by wierdo at 3:10 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
Sadly, losing Aricebo makes the task of getting sufficiently accurate orbital data much harder.
I’m genuinely interested in how an unorientable (or barely orientable) radio telescope could be of use in detecting rogue near-earth objects, but Wikipedia says, without elaboration, that it has been. There are other telescopes at the facility, so it could be that those are involved instead?
posted by sjswitzer at 4:16 PM on December 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
I’m genuinely interested in how an unorientable (or barely orientable) radio telescope could be of use in detecting rogue near-earth objects, but Wikipedia says, without elaboration, that it has been. There are other telescopes at the facility, so it could be that those are involved instead?
posted by sjswitzer at 4:16 PM on December 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
So I can't be the only one thinking of this guy right now? (And they want to name one of the possible probe missions after his brother?)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:21 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:21 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
arecibo detecc
arecibo protecc
but most of all
arecibo also ginormous radar transmitter
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [31 favorites]
arecibo protecc
but most of all
arecibo also ginormous radar transmitter
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [31 favorites]
radio telescope
It could also transmit for radar astronomy
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 4:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
It could also transmit for radar astronomy
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 4:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
Everybody chill. Jerry Bruckheimer's got this.
posted by Morpeth at 4:25 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Morpeth at 4:25 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
I’m genuinely interested in how an unorientable (or barely orientable) radio telescope could be of use in detecting rogue near-earth objects, but Wikipedia says, without elaboration, that it has been
Radar. Arecibo was a pretty capable transmitter.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:26 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
Radar. Arecibo was a pretty capable transmitter.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:26 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
(Insert Clever Name Here - gotcha covered)I have viewed the historical documents many times and Apophis died crashing into the planet Delmak. There is no need to worry (unless Elon Musk is a Goa'uld system lord). Indeed.
posted by Ber at 4:54 PM on December 5, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by Ber at 4:54 PM on December 5, 2020 [15 favorites]
(@Ber: In all honesty, I bailed before end of S02. But do feel safer now, so thanks!)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:09 PM on December 5, 2020
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:09 PM on December 5, 2020
Coming in 2029: Elon Musk holds the Earth ransom.
For what!? All of the bitcoin? A hit off of every DMT vape pen in the world? Open access to Area 51? The Arecibo site for a lair? A fresh new pair of khakis and the newest collector Yeezys?
Newest Wu-Tang album obvsly
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:25 PM on December 5, 2020 [8 favorites]
For what!? All of the bitcoin? A hit off of every DMT vape pen in the world? Open access to Area 51? The Arecibo site for a lair? A fresh new pair of khakis and the newest collector Yeezys?
Newest Wu-Tang album obvsly
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:25 PM on December 5, 2020 [8 favorites]
Radar. Arecibo was a pretty capable transmitter.
Just to clarify this a bit: as far as I know, Arecibo wasn't used to search for asteroids. When you're trying to detect a radar echo from millions of miles away, your only hope of getting a strong enough signal is to use a very tightly focused beam, so you have to already have a particular target in mind. But the radar signal allows you to take an approximately known orbit and measure it much more precisely, allowing for better long-term predictions.
Also, even though Arecibo's dish itself was fixed, the receiving equipment could be moved around the focal plane, allowing the telescope to be effectively steered by about 20 degrees in any direction away from vertical. Taking into account the Earth's rotation and axial tilt, and given Puerto Rico's closeness to the equator, anything reasonably close to the ecliptic was guaranteed to be observable at least some of the time.
posted by teraflop at 5:29 PM on December 5, 2020 [31 favorites]
Just to clarify this a bit: as far as I know, Arecibo wasn't used to search for asteroids. When you're trying to detect a radar echo from millions of miles away, your only hope of getting a strong enough signal is to use a very tightly focused beam, so you have to already have a particular target in mind. But the radar signal allows you to take an approximately known orbit and measure it much more precisely, allowing for better long-term predictions.
Also, even though Arecibo's dish itself was fixed, the receiving equipment could be moved around the focal plane, allowing the telescope to be effectively steered by about 20 degrees in any direction away from vertical. Taking into account the Earth's rotation and axial tilt, and given Puerto Rico's closeness to the equator, anything reasonably close to the ecliptic was guaranteed to be observable at least some of the time.
posted by teraflop at 5:29 PM on December 5, 2020 [31 favorites]
Jesus, Elon Musk may be the most likely human ever to go Bond villain.
posted by condour75 at 6:41 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 6:41 PM on December 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
🎶 I’m banking on it coming before / my end of year exams 🎶
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:42 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:42 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
I have viewed the historical documents many times
Surely, you don't think Gilligan's Island is a...
posted by stevis23 at 7:05 PM on December 5, 2020 [6 favorites]
Surely, you don't think Gilligan's Island is a...
posted by stevis23 at 7:05 PM on December 5, 2020 [6 favorites]
I say we nuke it near orbit.
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
posted by clavdivs at 7:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [12 favorites]
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
posted by clavdivs at 7:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [12 favorites]
I feel like this spoiled the 2020s season finale. Start with a pandemic, end with a massive asteroid hit.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:42 PM on December 5, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by warriorqueen at 7:42 PM on December 5, 2020 [1 favorite]
Mi pensa im fong da belte.
posted by clavdivs at 7:47 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 7:47 PM on December 5, 2020 [4 favorites]
Note: if a cat shows up at your door asking to borrow a knife, give them one.
I feel like this is always true though
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:54 PM on December 5, 2020 [17 favorites]
I feel like this is always true though
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:54 PM on December 5, 2020 [17 favorites]
Surely, you don't think Gilligan's Island is a...
Those poor, poor people...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [16 favorites]
Those poor, poor people...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 PM on December 5, 2020 [16 favorites]
The odds of winning $1 million in the McDonald’s Monopoly game have been calculated as 1 in 451,822,158.
So you're saying there's a chance?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:25 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
So you're saying there's a chance?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:25 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
2068? I'll be long since in the dirt by then. You young folks figure it out. It would seem to be in your interest...
posted by jim in austin at 8:30 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 8:30 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
Rarely visit the site recently, but when come around, reminded why it's so great.
posted by skepticallypleased at 8:30 PM on December 5, 2020
posted by skepticallypleased at 8:30 PM on December 5, 2020
Ah, thanks everyone! It was more orientable than I realized and I hadn’t known it was a radar as well as a telescope.
posted by sjswitzer at 8:42 PM on December 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by sjswitzer at 8:42 PM on December 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
I hadn’t known it was a radar as well as a telescope.
It may help to reflect upon the difference between a telescope and a transmitter.
posted by pwnguin at 9:07 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
It may help to reflect upon the difference between a telescope and a transmitter.
posted by pwnguin at 9:07 PM on December 5, 2020 [3 favorites]
Don't worry, the priests of Egypt have been preparing for this for thousands of years.
Don't I know it...
Aziz, LIGHT!
posted by kaibutsu at 10:56 PM on December 5, 2020 [12 favorites]
Don't I know it...
Aziz, LIGHT!
posted by kaibutsu at 10:56 PM on December 5, 2020 [12 favorites]
I had kind a fugitive memory that Arecibo had taken some amazing radar pictures of the surface of Venus right through that thick opaque atmosphere, our thinner one, and tens of millions of miles of space, and so it had:
This image shows a comparison between a Magellan image (right) and the highest resolution Earth-based radar image of Venus, obtained by the U.S. National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The small white box in the Arecibo image on the left corresponds to the Magellan image. This portion of a Magellan radar image strip shows a small region on the east flank of a major volcanic upland called Beta Regio. The image is centered at 23 degrees north latitude and 286.7 degrees east longitude. The ridge and valley network in the middle part of the image is formed by intersecting faults which have broken the Venusian crust into a complex deformed type of surface called tessera, the Latin word for tile. The parallel mountains and valleys resemble the Basin and Range Province in the western United States. The irregular dark patch near the top of the image is a smooth surface, probably formed by lava flows in a region about 10 km (6 miles) across. Similar dark surfaces within the valleys indicate lava flows that are younger than the tessera. The Arecibo image contains probable impact craters, many faults, volcanic flows and tessera regions that will be mapped in detail by Magellan. The Magellan image has a resolution of 120 meters, (400 feet). The image segment is 20 km (12.4 miles) wide and 150 km (90 miles) long. The Arecibo image has a resolution of 1 3 km (0.6 1.8 miles) and is approximately 900 km (550 miles) across.posted by jamjam at 12:16 AM on December 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
Arecibo *was* a ginormous radar transmitter. *Now* it's a monument to hubris.
Though 'giant rock from space may kill us all by surprise' might be reason enough to get it rebuilt, but with the general US attitude to science these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:05 AM on December 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
Though 'giant rock from space may kill us all by surprise' might be reason enough to get it rebuilt, but with the general US attitude to science these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:05 AM on December 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
2068? I'll be long since in the dirt by then. You young folks figure it out. It would seem to be in your interest...
Ah. What many people feel about climate change. Ho hum I guess, the extinction of everything. Thanks for sharing!
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:57 AM on December 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
Ah. What many people feel about climate change. Ho hum I guess, the extinction of everything. Thanks for sharing!
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:57 AM on December 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
I also meant to mention that last week I saw a meteor fireball that was so bright and lasted so long that I went from gasping "Holy shit!" to "Ohhh shit!" and I was no foolin' waiting for visual signs of either a massive bolide explosion or impact.
It was seriously the brightest, longest fireball streak I've ever personally witnessed, streaking across a major fraction of the visible night sky. It also seemed to be going slower than the usual meteor streaks I see, so I'm curious if I witnessed LEO space debris burning up or something.
Ever since the all of the video of the Chelyabinsk bolide it's been etched into my brain that if I suddenly see new and very bright light with fast moving shadows I'm probably going to want to find shelter in a matter of seconds.
posted by loquacious at 9:09 AM on December 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
It was seriously the brightest, longest fireball streak I've ever personally witnessed, streaking across a major fraction of the visible night sky. It also seemed to be going slower than the usual meteor streaks I see, so I'm curious if I witnessed LEO space debris burning up or something.
Ever since the all of the video of the Chelyabinsk bolide it's been etched into my brain that if I suddenly see new and very bright light with fast moving shadows I'm probably going to want to find shelter in a matter of seconds.
posted by loquacious at 9:09 AM on December 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
*slides 20 bucks across the table* make it now
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 9:47 AM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 9:47 AM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Ah. What many people feel about climate change.
I can discern between a low probability event well beyond my lifespan and currently being one of the frogs in a pot that is slowly coming to a simmer...
posted by jim in austin at 10:09 AM on December 6, 2020 [7 favorites]
I can discern between a low probability event well beyond my lifespan and currently being one of the frogs in a pot that is slowly coming to a simmer...
posted by jim in austin at 10:09 AM on December 6, 2020 [7 favorites]
Ho hum I guess, the extinction of everything.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and most life on earth was 10 km (6 miles) across. This one is 370 m (1/5 mi), which is not nothing — if there is a collision, it would wipe out an area the size of Paris and kick up a fair bit of dust globally, I think — but it isn't quite the same, either.
This app from Purdue and Imperial College may help with calculating future travel plans.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:26 AM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and most life on earth was 10 km (6 miles) across. This one is 370 m (1/5 mi), which is not nothing — if there is a collision, it would wipe out an area the size of Paris and kick up a fair bit of dust globally, I think — but it isn't quite the same, either.
This app from Purdue and Imperial College may help with calculating future travel plans.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:26 AM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
To na fred johnson.
posted by clavdivs at 12:10 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 12:10 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
A meteor big enough to produce a mid-day flash and a boom was seen from New York to Michigan last Wednesday.
posted by jamjam at 12:29 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by jamjam at 12:29 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I don't think this one would make all life go extinct, but can it least get rid of McRib once and for all?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:32 PM on December 6, 2020
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:32 PM on December 6, 2020
My new life goal is to make it to 2062 and see what happens.
posted by invincible summer at 12:35 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by invincible summer at 12:35 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Ironically, so did Dr. Floyd.
posted by clavdivs at 12:54 PM on December 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 12:54 PM on December 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
Found this cool page that seems to show its current position relative to earth in the solar system.
Could we try to smash it into Mars, Venus or the Moo ? That would generate some useful scientific data and be extremely entertaining. Hitting Mars would seem to be more difficult or the two but we would probably get more data from a Martian impact. The moon would be even more observable but might be too risky. Still imagine the watch party for the great lunar collision.
posted by interogative mood at 3:01 PM on December 6, 2020
Could we try to smash it into Mars, Venus or the Moo ? That would generate some useful scientific data and be extremely entertaining. Hitting Mars would seem to be more difficult or the two but we would probably get more data from a Martian impact. The moon would be even more observable but might be too risky. Still imagine the watch party for the great lunar collision.
posted by interogative mood at 3:01 PM on December 6, 2020
I feel like moon impact would be pretty risky. Seveneves?
posted by supermedusa at 4:37 PM on December 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 4:37 PM on December 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I heard that when Apophis passes in 2029 its brightness will be magnitude 3ish, about that of a middling star. That passing will be in the nighttime as it crosses Australia east-to-west, then parts of Africa and Europe before the Atlantic and daytime in the US. I haven't been able to find a map of this path but it seems like western Australia is probably going to be the best place to observe, given the probability of cloudless skies and sociopolitical factors.
posted by neuron at 5:05 PM on December 6, 2020
posted by neuron at 5:05 PM on December 6, 2020
I feel like moon impact would be pretty risky. Seveneves?
It has no where near the mass required to break the moon. The bigger risk is they you miss and it attempts to lilthobreak on Earth instead.
posted by jmauro at 10:39 PM on December 6, 2020
It has no where near the mass required to break the moon. The bigger risk is they you miss and it attempts to lilthobreak on Earth instead.
posted by jmauro at 10:39 PM on December 6, 2020
You come at the moon, you best not miss
posted by boogieboy at 11:05 PM on December 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
posted by boogieboy at 11:05 PM on December 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
I don't think this one would make all life go extinct, but can it least get rid of McRib once and for all?
Not a chance. McRib finds a way.
posted by srboisvert at 6:01 AM on December 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
Not a chance. McRib finds a way.
posted by srboisvert at 6:01 AM on December 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
Everybody chill. Jerry Bruckheimer's got this.I dunno. An asteroid, Apophis, and the imminent end of the world? This is a Richard Dean Anderson problem.
"It's 'O'Neill', with two L's. There's another Colonel O'Neil with only one L, and he has no sense of humor at all."
posted by TheHuntForBlueMonday at 7:21 AM on December 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
So a question I've been wondering about.
It's possible to design a nuke so it produces more radiation in a particular range, thus the famous neutron bomb.
Shouldn't it be possible to build four really big nukes tuned to release as much radar frequency radiation as possible? Send two up orbit by 30 degrees and the other two down orbit 30 degrees. Set one off at each location, wait 48 hours and set off the final one at each location.
Basically using nukes as giant radar flash bulbs to build a stereo Doppler picture of the solar system.
Would that produce anything really useful, or do we already have all the data it might give us without, you know, sending four big nukes into space?
posted by sotonohito at 10:55 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's possible to design a nuke so it produces more radiation in a particular range, thus the famous neutron bomb.
Shouldn't it be possible to build four really big nukes tuned to release as much radar frequency radiation as possible? Send two up orbit by 30 degrees and the other two down orbit 30 degrees. Set one off at each location, wait 48 hours and set off the final one at each location.
Basically using nukes as giant radar flash bulbs to build a stereo Doppler picture of the solar system.
Would that produce anything really useful, or do we already have all the data it might give us without, you know, sending four big nukes into space?
posted by sotonohito at 10:55 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
I don't think this one would make all life go extinct, but can it least get rid of McRib once and for all?
A civilization-threatening asteroid would just make the spot and future prices for pork plummet, ensuring that the McRib would be the only thing that McDonald's served right up until the moment of impact.
posted by loquacious at 11:06 AM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
A civilization-threatening asteroid would just make the spot and future prices for pork plummet, ensuring that the McRib would be the only thing that McDonald's served right up until the moment of impact.
posted by loquacious at 11:06 AM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
Would that produce anything really useful, or do we already have all the data it might give us without, you know, sending four big nukes into space?
Let's pretend that we can do this for a moment. So we have our tuned nukes or nuclear powered or chemical microwave lasers (err, MASERs) or whatever, and we're able to flashbulb our solar system and irradiate the entire solar system in some way that isn't drowned out by the sun and also doesn't irradiate the earth with, say, harmful amounts of gamma, x-rays or neutrinos.
Now, how do we detect, collect and image all of that massive amount of data all at the same time?
Even if we mined or seeded the solar system with millions of detectors and a massive deep space relay network, how do we record, collate and process all of that data all coming in basically at once, or in whatever staggered relativistic time frames that would equate to - at maximum about a one or two light-days?
Ok, lets assume we've collected all of that data, or enough of it. It's now one of the largest single aggregates of data in the history of humanity.
We now know where everything was at the moment of the blasts and illumination. We have now have one historical picture of where everything was at that moment.
Where are those objects now?
Ok, so we do a second blast and data capture. Now we know roughly where all of the objects were in two places and a general idea of their trajectory and where they were going. We're crunching all of those numbers.
How much math and computer time is that? How do we store and process that much data in time for it to be useful without consuming every available joule of electrical energy? How do we even build data and computing centers that big without rapidly accelerating global warming or simply co-existing as a species with a project this big?
But wait, it gets even worse! Now our data is out of date and inaccurate, and orbital mechanics and physics being what it is, lots of our projections are now wrong and we can clearly see individual objects are not where they're projected to be!
So we do a third shot, and a fourth, and a fifth, and so on, but now we have so much data we can't really handle it. Projecting interactions between solar objects is getting more and more complicated, so we add even more processing power and power consumption, most of our planet and infrastructure and available power is running full tilt and projecting orbital mechanics and things are getting really toasty down here on Earth.
We've automated our basic needs and something like 99% of humanity is dedicated to the science of looking at space rocks and trying to figure out if they're going to hit us or not, yet our planet now resembles a mix between the global city-state of Star Wars' Coruscant and the nightmare hellscape of Dune's Geidi Prime with a touch of Ix.
And we still can't accurately model or project all of these objects. Because physics are chaotic and Newton is only mostly right at a certain macro scale.
But we plod onward and upwards, achieving a Type 1 or Type 2 civilization. We have most of the energy available in the solar system being harvested and utilized for computing. The core of our planet has been entirely replaced by quantum-optical computing. Our temperature is relatively stable. Waste heat is harvested and recycled with 99.99999% efficiency.
We know where a majority of the orbital bodies larger than a boulder in our solar system are all the way out to the Kuiper Belt and heliosphere, where they're going, where they interact with each other down to a level of detail we can predict when very small rocks will collide with other very small rocks, and we can model where they will be after they collide. We're now playing solar chess like a Grandmaster, thinking and projecting dozens and dozens of moves ahead on the solar system or galaxy's largest, most complicated chess board.
Except the models still don't match reality. Our calculations and projections are still being thrown into disarray with details as small as a grain of sand, the texture or density of a colliding set of objects and even the details of the shape of each orbital object - because none of these objects are "perfectly spherical cows" or whatever.
Very small details keep wrecking our projections and we're now continuously trying to measure the length of England's coastline over and over again as the tides change and waves keep splashing over our proverbial yardsticks.
At some point in this timeline we keep pushing. We simply must know where everything is. Our observational, detection and projection technology is so advanced that we're now counting trillions of trillions of pebbles and grains of sand. There's so many computational photons and electrons bouncing around our global circuits that they now represent a fractional mass of our dear planet.
And seriously weird, spooky shit starts happening, like physics is laughing at us - because it is. Our intense levels of observation seem to be warping what we know and consider to be reality. Even our attempts at illuminating, detecting and observing our solar system are now pushing grains of sand and dust around and altering their trajectories, which then wreck the accuracy of our predictions more and more.
But we strive on, and on.
At some point in this projected future suddenly the Earth and likely a massive part of the solar system starts to implode under its own informational and photonic weight, and a few very smart people realize just a few moments too late that we've accidentally created a kugelblitz or the orthogonal opposite of a black hole - a white hole, composed entirely of too much energy or information in too small of a space.
And just like that we cross a threshold of energy and information density and we simply vanish in a puff of logic.
This is our universe. Newtonian physics don't really exist. There isn't really any such thing as a straight line.
Our precision in measurement is now so fine and accurate that even the endless ripples of gravity waves sourced from all over our observable universe are now observably, minutely distorting measurement standards. A meter is more or less of a meter depending on when and where we measure it. A second is sometimes more or less than a second. A kilogram is more or less than a kilogram.
Go outside and look at the night sky and think about our little dust mote of a planet spinning and wobbling through a nearly empty sea of chaotic nothingness. Point a laser pointer up at the stars and wave it around, and try to imagine that it's not an impossibly straight beam, but a garden hose spraying curves of water with every tremble of your hand, the beam sweeping with the spin of the Earth, sliding along on it's orbital track around the sun as your trembling hand tries to hold the laser perfectly still from your frame of view.
Even the 25,000-ish year wobble of the Earth's precession is recorded in that beam. Even your own heartbeat and breath is there in that wobbling, spraying stream of photons. Every atmospheric distortion, every bit of Brownian motion of the molecules and atoms in our atmosphere. Every gravitational pull of the sun itself down to every grain of sand and dust is bending and distorting that stream of photons.
And yet... we still can't measure it accurately, not without changing the measurements themselves.
Feel free to go at least a little bit gibbering mad at this point. I know I do when I try to ponder these things. Space isn't just really big, it's totally stark raving bonkers.
At some point far back at the beginning of this thought exercise it becomes apparent we should have just built a bunch of lasers or missiles to shoot down any threatening objects as we detect them approaching us. Or even better, gone out and harvested this matter to make an orbital ring. Or a Dyson sphere or swarm.
At least that way we'd have an idea of where it is if we go out and nail it all down and build spacecraft out of it all.
Alternatively? Don't panic. Enjoy the ride.
posted by loquacious at 12:13 PM on December 7, 2020 [19 favorites]
Let's pretend that we can do this for a moment. So we have our tuned nukes or nuclear powered or chemical microwave lasers (err, MASERs) or whatever, and we're able to flashbulb our solar system and irradiate the entire solar system in some way that isn't drowned out by the sun and also doesn't irradiate the earth with, say, harmful amounts of gamma, x-rays or neutrinos.
Now, how do we detect, collect and image all of that massive amount of data all at the same time?
Even if we mined or seeded the solar system with millions of detectors and a massive deep space relay network, how do we record, collate and process all of that data all coming in basically at once, or in whatever staggered relativistic time frames that would equate to - at maximum about a one or two light-days?
Ok, lets assume we've collected all of that data, or enough of it. It's now one of the largest single aggregates of data in the history of humanity.
We now know where everything was at the moment of the blasts and illumination. We have now have one historical picture of where everything was at that moment.
Where are those objects now?
Ok, so we do a second blast and data capture. Now we know roughly where all of the objects were in two places and a general idea of their trajectory and where they were going. We're crunching all of those numbers.
How much math and computer time is that? How do we store and process that much data in time for it to be useful without consuming every available joule of electrical energy? How do we even build data and computing centers that big without rapidly accelerating global warming or simply co-existing as a species with a project this big?
But wait, it gets even worse! Now our data is out of date and inaccurate, and orbital mechanics and physics being what it is, lots of our projections are now wrong and we can clearly see individual objects are not where they're projected to be!
So we do a third shot, and a fourth, and a fifth, and so on, but now we have so much data we can't really handle it. Projecting interactions between solar objects is getting more and more complicated, so we add even more processing power and power consumption, most of our planet and infrastructure and available power is running full tilt and projecting orbital mechanics and things are getting really toasty down here on Earth.
We've automated our basic needs and something like 99% of humanity is dedicated to the science of looking at space rocks and trying to figure out if they're going to hit us or not, yet our planet now resembles a mix between the global city-state of Star Wars' Coruscant and the nightmare hellscape of Dune's Geidi Prime with a touch of Ix.
And we still can't accurately model or project all of these objects. Because physics are chaotic and Newton is only mostly right at a certain macro scale.
But we plod onward and upwards, achieving a Type 1 or Type 2 civilization. We have most of the energy available in the solar system being harvested and utilized for computing. The core of our planet has been entirely replaced by quantum-optical computing. Our temperature is relatively stable. Waste heat is harvested and recycled with 99.99999% efficiency.
We know where a majority of the orbital bodies larger than a boulder in our solar system are all the way out to the Kuiper Belt and heliosphere, where they're going, where they interact with each other down to a level of detail we can predict when very small rocks will collide with other very small rocks, and we can model where they will be after they collide. We're now playing solar chess like a Grandmaster, thinking and projecting dozens and dozens of moves ahead on the solar system or galaxy's largest, most complicated chess board.
Except the models still don't match reality. Our calculations and projections are still being thrown into disarray with details as small as a grain of sand, the texture or density of a colliding set of objects and even the details of the shape of each orbital object - because none of these objects are "perfectly spherical cows" or whatever.
Very small details keep wrecking our projections and we're now continuously trying to measure the length of England's coastline over and over again as the tides change and waves keep splashing over our proverbial yardsticks.
At some point in this timeline we keep pushing. We simply must know where everything is. Our observational, detection and projection technology is so advanced that we're now counting trillions of trillions of pebbles and grains of sand. There's so many computational photons and electrons bouncing around our global circuits that they now represent a fractional mass of our dear planet.
And seriously weird, spooky shit starts happening, like physics is laughing at us - because it is. Our intense levels of observation seem to be warping what we know and consider to be reality. Even our attempts at illuminating, detecting and observing our solar system are now pushing grains of sand and dust around and altering their trajectories, which then wreck the accuracy of our predictions more and more.
But we strive on, and on.
At some point in this projected future suddenly the Earth and likely a massive part of the solar system starts to implode under its own informational and photonic weight, and a few very smart people realize just a few moments too late that we've accidentally created a kugelblitz or the orthogonal opposite of a black hole - a white hole, composed entirely of too much energy or information in too small of a space.
And just like that we cross a threshold of energy and information density and we simply vanish in a puff of logic.
This is our universe. Newtonian physics don't really exist. There isn't really any such thing as a straight line.
Our precision in measurement is now so fine and accurate that even the endless ripples of gravity waves sourced from all over our observable universe are now observably, minutely distorting measurement standards. A meter is more or less of a meter depending on when and where we measure it. A second is sometimes more or less than a second. A kilogram is more or less than a kilogram.
Go outside and look at the night sky and think about our little dust mote of a planet spinning and wobbling through a nearly empty sea of chaotic nothingness. Point a laser pointer up at the stars and wave it around, and try to imagine that it's not an impossibly straight beam, but a garden hose spraying curves of water with every tremble of your hand, the beam sweeping with the spin of the Earth, sliding along on it's orbital track around the sun as your trembling hand tries to hold the laser perfectly still from your frame of view.
Even the 25,000-ish year wobble of the Earth's precession is recorded in that beam. Even your own heartbeat and breath is there in that wobbling, spraying stream of photons. Every atmospheric distortion, every bit of Brownian motion of the molecules and atoms in our atmosphere. Every gravitational pull of the sun itself down to every grain of sand and dust is bending and distorting that stream of photons.
And yet... we still can't measure it accurately, not without changing the measurements themselves.
Feel free to go at least a little bit gibbering mad at this point. I know I do when I try to ponder these things. Space isn't just really big, it's totally stark raving bonkers.
At some point far back at the beginning of this thought exercise it becomes apparent we should have just built a bunch of lasers or missiles to shoot down any threatening objects as we detect them approaching us. Or even better, gone out and harvested this matter to make an orbital ring. Or a Dyson sphere or swarm.
At least that way we'd have an idea of where it is if we go out and nail it all down and build spacecraft out of it all.
Alternatively? Don't panic. Enjoy the ride.
posted by loquacious at 12:13 PM on December 7, 2020 [19 favorites]
loquacious That may be the single greatest response I've ever gotten to any question so far in my entire 45 years of life. Thank you! Flagged as fantastic and you deserve a prize of some sort. Dang.
posted by sotonohito at 5:14 PM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by sotonohito at 5:14 PM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
Would that produce anything really useful, or do we already have all the data it might give us without, you know, sending four big nukes into space?
I think it's a great question! The principles of radar gives a lot of hints on where there might be real problems.
Energy decreases as an inverse-square both on the way out and the way back from hitting an object, and overall decreases as the /fourth power/ of the range. The usual way to deal with this is by using a directed beam. Which also helps cut down a lot of the information processing needed, but increases the number of pings needed to get a good overall picture. Still, that inverse-fourth-power is going to be a real problem: If you double the distance, you get 1/16th of the signal coming back.
The object is also going to absorb a lot of energy, especially if it's non-metallic (say, coated in lots of regolith, like an asteroid). It does look like there's a fair amount of iron in the lunar regolith (made of broken asteroids), but probably still rather less radar reflective than (say) an airplane hull. Again, this bumps up the energy needed.
But this all comes down to a concrete question of how much energy you get out of the nuke, and how far that lets you see. At some distance, the signal strength will drop to the level of the cosmic background noise in whatever frequency you're working with; that's your maximum observable distance. And as mentioned, less-reflective rocks will only be apparent at much shorter distances.
I think I'm a bit happier on the computational side than Loquacious: We already track everything bigger than Xmm in near earth orbit, and that's a LOT of space junk. You presumably just don't care about space rocks below a certain radius, which cuts down the compute needed by a large factor by ignoring all signals below a certain strength/time threshold. Presumably we're only looking for pretty big rocks we haven't been able to detect by other means already; getting a neighborhood and rough velocity may be enough to help find the objects via telescopes and ensure that they're not on a collision course, without requiring more floodlights.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:37 PM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
I think it's a great question! The principles of radar gives a lot of hints on where there might be real problems.
Energy decreases as an inverse-square both on the way out and the way back from hitting an object, and overall decreases as the /fourth power/ of the range. The usual way to deal with this is by using a directed beam. Which also helps cut down a lot of the information processing needed, but increases the number of pings needed to get a good overall picture. Still, that inverse-fourth-power is going to be a real problem: If you double the distance, you get 1/16th of the signal coming back.
The object is also going to absorb a lot of energy, especially if it's non-metallic (say, coated in lots of regolith, like an asteroid). It does look like there's a fair amount of iron in the lunar regolith (made of broken asteroids), but probably still rather less radar reflective than (say) an airplane hull. Again, this bumps up the energy needed.
But this all comes down to a concrete question of how much energy you get out of the nuke, and how far that lets you see. At some distance, the signal strength will drop to the level of the cosmic background noise in whatever frequency you're working with; that's your maximum observable distance. And as mentioned, less-reflective rocks will only be apparent at much shorter distances.
I think I'm a bit happier on the computational side than Loquacious: We already track everything bigger than Xmm in near earth orbit, and that's a LOT of space junk. You presumably just don't care about space rocks below a certain radius, which cuts down the compute needed by a large factor by ignoring all signals below a certain strength/time threshold. Presumably we're only looking for pretty big rocks we haven't been able to detect by other means already; getting a neighborhood and rough velocity may be enough to help find the objects via telescopes and ensure that they're not on a collision course, without requiring more floodlights.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:37 PM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
(And another jackass alternative answer: We already have an enormous wide-band continuous omnidirectional nuclear-powered emitter about eight lightminutes away, and a whole bunch of specially-tuned detectors that pick up reflections of its emissions.)
posted by kaibutsu at 5:47 PM on December 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by kaibutsu at 5:47 PM on December 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
Also, on a practical level, while it'd be kinda nice to know where every rock bigger than, say, 10 meters, is going to be a thousand years from now, mostly what I'm worried about are where rocks big enough to do serious damage will be in 10ish years.
Presumably if we know a rock will hit us in 10 years we can send out a robot with a booster, have it hook on and nudge the rock a bit, and then it won't hit us. I mean, with a 10 year timeframe even adding a tenth of a millimeter per second on any random vector will move it 30,000km out of the way.
Doesn't make as good a movie as Bruckheimer's, but it'd work.
posted by sotonohito at 4:10 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Presumably if we know a rock will hit us in 10 years we can send out a robot with a booster, have it hook on and nudge the rock a bit, and then it won't hit us. I mean, with a 10 year timeframe even adding a tenth of a millimeter per second on any random vector will move it 30,000km out of the way.
Doesn't make as good a movie as Bruckheimer's, but it'd work.
posted by sotonohito at 4:10 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Presumably, yes, but it will be difficult to know with certainty what the impact percentage (or even point on the planet) would be that far out. That's going to make it difficult to muster the will to spend interplanetary booster money on such a project.
The Office of Planetary Defense at NASA has their exercise reports up under "Supporting Documents" (The 2014 exercise was the one I participated in.) Go to Figure 3 to see a years-out "risk corridor"--it's halfway around the globe.
And don't forget there's uncertainty in the object's mass as well; that adds uncertainty to how much of a nudge you need. (If you really give yourself 10 years, you can probably design for 120% of maximum estimated displacement needed or something, but it factors in.)
posted by stevis23 at 5:12 AM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
The Office of Planetary Defense at NASA has their exercise reports up under "Supporting Documents" (The 2014 exercise was the one I participated in.) Go to Figure 3 to see a years-out "risk corridor"--it's halfway around the globe.
And don't forget there's uncertainty in the object's mass as well; that adds uncertainty to how much of a nudge you need. (If you really give yourself 10 years, you can probably design for 120% of maximum estimated displacement needed or something, but it factors in.)
posted by stevis23 at 5:12 AM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
I think I'm a bit happier on the computational side than Loquacious: We already track everything bigger than Xmm in near earth orbit, and that's a LOT of space junk.
And we still don't see all of it all the time. Small debris strikes on the ISS/Zarya and other orbital objects are very common.
We know where a lot of that stuff is because we either put it there and we knew where it was or it's been very recently seen, recorded and plotted via radar.
Even with the intense amount of space debris we do have, it's still much less numerous or massive than the rest of the solar system. A significant portion of the total mass in our solar system might actually be objects that are asteroid sized and much smaller. If we take into account the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud and everything else it may likely exceed the mass of all the known proper planets put together - perhaps even including the sun.
Detecting, plotting, tracking and updating the orbital ephemera for these LEO and NEO debris objects is orders of magnitude easier than doing the same thing for the whole solar system. This debris doesn't have a quantifiable gravity well like a large asteroid or planetoid, and the orbits are relatively simple.
I was mostly kind of joking about the totally hyberbolic computational loads - but this was a humorous response to the proposal trying to accomplish this with a series of "flashbulb" events and trying to describe how damn difficult and wobbly it is to get even basic LEO orbital calculations to accurately predict reality with so little data, much less the entire solar system.
Even right here on Earth we have to deal with gravitational anomalies with satellites and debris in LEO simply because the Earth is very lumpy, especially inside where it's kind of gooey and moving around, so projecting where a satellite or a given piece of debris should be in a month or a year is only so accurate.
And, yep, the real answer is just to build better detection and tracking equipment. It'd be cool if we had like a hundred or a thousand Arecibo style dishes all over the world. It sure would make finding any of these rocks a lot easier and give us a lot more warning time.
posted by loquacious at 9:48 PM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
And we still don't see all of it all the time. Small debris strikes on the ISS/Zarya and other orbital objects are very common.
We know where a lot of that stuff is because we either put it there and we knew where it was or it's been very recently seen, recorded and plotted via radar.
Even with the intense amount of space debris we do have, it's still much less numerous or massive than the rest of the solar system. A significant portion of the total mass in our solar system might actually be objects that are asteroid sized and much smaller. If we take into account the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud and everything else it may likely exceed the mass of all the known proper planets put together - perhaps even including the sun.
Detecting, plotting, tracking and updating the orbital ephemera for these LEO and NEO debris objects is orders of magnitude easier than doing the same thing for the whole solar system. This debris doesn't have a quantifiable gravity well like a large asteroid or planetoid, and the orbits are relatively simple.
I was mostly kind of joking about the totally hyberbolic computational loads - but this was a humorous response to the proposal trying to accomplish this with a series of "flashbulb" events and trying to describe how damn difficult and wobbly it is to get even basic LEO orbital calculations to accurately predict reality with so little data, much less the entire solar system.
Even right here on Earth we have to deal with gravitational anomalies with satellites and debris in LEO simply because the Earth is very lumpy, especially inside where it's kind of gooey and moving around, so projecting where a satellite or a given piece of debris should be in a month or a year is only so accurate.
And, yep, the real answer is just to build better detection and tracking equipment. It'd be cool if we had like a hundred or a thousand Arecibo style dishes all over the world. It sure would make finding any of these rocks a lot easier and give us a lot more warning time.
posted by loquacious at 9:48 PM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: My new life goal is to make it to 2062 and see what happens.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:12 PM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:12 PM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
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posted by Glomar response at 1:12 PM on December 5, 2020 [26 favorites]