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120,000 km Is Still Too Close
texchanchan writes: "BBC report: '...on 14 June, an asteroid (maybe as big as 120 meters in diameter)... made one of the closest-ever recorded approaches to the Earth.
..' but was only discovered three days later. This is well within the moon's orbit. 'If 2002MN had hit the Earth, it would have caused local devastation similar to that which occurred in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908...'"
Without Tunguska, what would we compare these things to? Krakatoa?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
but was only discovered three days later.
Id like to thank the United States government for CUTTING BACK funds to search for stuff like this. I think currently we map 5% of the skies? No wonder it was discovered 3 days later, it was in the other 95% of the skies we dont have enough money to look at.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Every time we hear about one of these it's closer than the last time.
Is somebody aiming these things?
"that the space object was only detected on 17 June"
I didnt really want to know that.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
... to reach this point, when we understand our odds were so crappy. Oddly, we managed to live through a lot of these events before, and have survived a few thousands of years of recorded history without a problem.
Something tells me that the people pushing this fear either have an interest in investments in related science or in (gasp) selling newspapers or advertising space!
If we get hit by a big rock, we'll dust ourselves off. If there is an ELE, we'll have a challenge. Maybe the best thing for the human race, all things considered. At least it could give us a unified rallying point....
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
How can you determine where it would have landed? Too many factors play into that, and since it wasn't headed AT the Earth, you can't play around with the numbers and say where it would have hit the Earth. The best you could do is if it cross our orbit, you could say "well, if the earth was in that spot at the time it hit it might have been around the equator. And that's about it. Someone asks this every time. That's like saying where the baseball would have hit the batter if it had hit him instead of the catcher's mit. Impossible to know.
What?
If it happens very infrequently,
and you cant do anything about,
and cant really see it,
you just waste a lot of mental energy.
wasn't there a speculation that the terrible devestation in siberia was caused by a small piece of anti-matter?
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Every time we hear about one of these it's closer than the last time.
Is somebody aiming these things?
Analysis shows that they are originating from a far-away planet. An ugly planet. A bug planet.
GMD
watch this
Why, the surface, of course.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
We'll see any real asteroid threats about 3 days sooner.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
C'mon, we all know that, no matter how close an asteroid comes, the governments of Earth aren't going to change a single thing about trying to detect them. It's kind of like (srry for this, but it's all I could think of) terrorist attacks...we don't actually do anything about terrorism until we take a gigantic hit.
Until an asteroid actually smacks into Earth, the governments (specificly U.S) will continue to cut back funding for searching for these things. Hopefully, when an asteriod finally DOES hit us, it'll be one of the smaller ones, and only knock out a few thousand/million people.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Yeah, right! The author has no idea how carefully STScI checks the HST pointing to make sure you don't look anywhere near the Sun...
The only way to detect these suckers coming in from the Sun side is radar or spacecraft telescopes at the Lagrange points, not earth-orbiting scopes. Those are just a handful of objects, though: for the vast majority, I expect robotic camera surveys are quite sufficient, if someone coughs up the money.
Alas, if one of these hits the earth, then "the terrorists will already have won"(TM) - or rather, they won't need to win.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
These guys have obviously not tried my three alarm chilli and some of my homebrew. Talk about destruction... thank god there were no open flames near by last time.
They say that we couldn't see this one because it came from the direction of the sun- but it also wasn't big enough to cause any global damage, just to mess up about 2000 square km.
See, I figure, anything big enough to do some real hurt coming from the direction of the sun, we should be able to notice by the eclipse...
"Gee, I didn't hear anything in the news about an eclipse- and since when did the moon get that shape?"
Run for your lives if you ever see an unscheduled eclipse, folks. Though I don't know where you'd run to, only that running would surely get your mind off of your impending doom.
Have a nice day!
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
"2002MN"
Does that stand for "Near Miss 2002" (in reverse, of course, so as to not sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt)?
If you lived in Tunguska in 1908 you probably wouldn't be so glib.
But I agree, worrying about it is useless... All the indignation seems to ignore the following two facts:
1) If the gub'ment did know about it, they would tell us.
2) There is anything they could do about it if they knew about it. Morgan Freeman ain't President and Bruce Willis ain't going to save you folks!
As an astronomer friend of mine used to say -- "If there was an asteroid heading for the earth why would they tell us?".
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Personally, I'd rather us detect it at least several years in advance so we *might* have a chance of doing something about it. Detecting it the day it impacts doesn't leave a lot of options, except stick your head between you legs and kiss your @ss goodbye!
120,000 km sounds close, but consider this:
The Earth is about 7,926 miles (12,756 km) in diameter. Roughly 12,000 km, or about a tenth of the flyby distance. The chance of any object that comes within 120,000km of actually hitting the earth is about (0.1)^2, or roughly 1%. This is still unsettlingly likely, but it's not exactly doomsday.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
And it appears to have crashed into the BBC's web server...
2,000 square kilometres is a lot of destroyed real estate if one of these things ever hits a populated or coastal area. Give the Defense Department the responsibility for defending us against these things. They are the only ones that might get the budget to do it.
Then it's getting close to what a rogue Forrest Ranger can do in Colorado!
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
No politician will spend the money on this until it's already too late. No amount of lobbying is going to change this, and the amount of money isn't even that large. IIRC some of the projects were only looking for a few million dollars. You don't need hordes of astronomers - you just need the automated equipment to locate and track asteroids in the sky. Much of the technology already exists, projects like NEAT and others have been very successful.
Until there is a major loss of life due to an impact, there isn't going to be an research. Just hope that you're not under it, that it's not mistaken for an "act of terrorism", triggering a thermonuclear war, and that it's not much bigger than a hundred meters or so, like this one. Unless, of course, you're willing to live like a pauper and do the work yourself. I'm not.
There really is little you can do. So don't worry about it. The odds aren't really that high, but you don't know when your number is going to come up, either. Hopefully China will put a base on the moon and play "mine's bigger than yours" to everyone's benefit.
Makes you wonder if all the hoopla surrounding SETI; all that computing power; and all that money might be better spent scanning the night sky for dark blobs that might end life HERE as opposed to looking for little green men on hopelessly far away stars.
..don't panic
Couldnt we build something similar to SETI that would distribute the load among thousands of cpus to compute the chances of these near earth objects trying to knock us out of existance ?
:(
I understand SETI being useful and all that, but its gonna be a sad day if those Aliens reach us a couple of days after our extinction.
They might just think that cockroaches ruled the planet
Rapid Nirvana
This is why the US government needs to get Bruce Willis under contract.
That a rock in space detected as an asteroid is part of a bigger cluster?
The earth is 12,000km in diameter (approximately). The asteriod is 120m in diameter and passed within 120,000km of earth. Working in just two dimensions because that's how the earth will appear as a target to the passing asteroid, then:
1) "surface area" of the earth is:
A = pi * r^2 = 3.14 * 6,000^2 = 110,000,000 square kilometers
2) The area within the 120,000km radius is:
A = pi * r^2 = 3.14 * 60,000^2 = 11,000,000,000 square kilometers
3) The area of the asteroid is in practice infinitesimal compared with either of these measurements.
So to some approximation, the chances of the asteroid hitting earth if it travels within 120,000 km of the planet is:
110,000,000/11,000,000,000 = 0.01 = 1%
This is certainly not a zero probability, but it is still pretty small.
Of course this ignores a lot of factors, including the Earth's gravity well and the relative vectors of the two objects. A real calculation would reveal different probabilities.
But even when one of these asteroids passes this close - which is only known to have happened 6 times since we've been able to record these events (about 50 years?) - there is still only about a 1 in 100 chance it will hit the planet.
I'm going to be worrying a lot more about travelling on the highway than I am about asteroid collisions.
Sailing over the event horizon
You could calculate which hemisphere of Earth was facing the asteroids approach, and then figure out how much land/water was exposed on that hemisphere.
There's a conspiracy theory for everything. I wouldn't be surprised if someone out there thinks Slashdot is secretly run Microsoft and is building up everyone's trust before they start posting "WINDOWS XP ROCKS" on the home page. Doesn't make it true...
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
France's solution to unemployment is to make it so you can't work more than 35 hours a week.
...
That actually makes sense.
Fifty years ago, half the population of the U.S. was employed in agriculture. Today, it's less than 2%, and they grow more food than the country can eat. And many of them are paid not to farm. If you suddenly put nearly half the working population out of work, then add in all the women entering the work force who didn't used to be there
I think we're starting to approach the kinds of problems that have until now only been considered in speculative sci-fi. When we only need about 10% of the population to work to provide for everyone, what will the other 90% do for a living? And how do we pick which 10% it's going to be?
Nope, no sig
So we haven't had anything really nasty happen for five thousand years? Big deal. The last big round of extinctions occurred maybe 40,000 years ago. Maybe it'll be another 40,000 years, but I wouldn't bet the future of my species on that assumption! These are regular events. If you believe some theories of evolution, such disasters helped create our own species.
Check out British lives lost, as a percentage of population, in the World Wars, vs. American lives lost as a percentage of population. And then come back and tell me about the British "high horse." The sacrifices Britain made in 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 (note that the Americans weren't even involved until 1917 and 1941, respectively) are really mind-boggling.
(If you want to talk absolute loss of life, of course, the Russians have the UK, the US, and everyone else put together beat.)
And yes, I'm an American. And a veteran. I'm proud of my service (including Desert Storm) and I certainly don't want to minimize the American contribution to winning the World Wars. But to imply that we were the sole factor in "saving Europe" is ahistorical nonsense.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I agree. One quick beer run, get the grill and a lawn chair and I'm good.
Carpe Canem - Seize the Dog
Preperation A: Shrinks Asteroids. As well as relieves the burning associated with Astroid impacts.
Assuming this was made of rock, hit land, and only moving at 10Km/sec, It would have been accelerated by gravity during the fall to somewhere around 11.2Km/sec and yielded a crater something on the order of 1Km diameter and 0.2Km deep. (a bit smaller than the crater in arizona) It would have also caused a magnitude 6.6 earthquake.
for other possibilities, see: this page
Now we notice that there are lots of rocks whizzing by the planet, because we're bothering to look. But just like the microbes, it's always been so. We're only upset because we're noticing it.
This is the way the universe is. Get used to it. It is not headline news.
Maybe these things should hit the space agencies doorstep, lets see them wriggle their way out of this one :D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
I tend to agree with the poster that said that governments will only take notice when one of these actually does hit the earth. I imagine it will happen sooner or later, it being more a question of when than if? A 500 meter asteroid would make quite a mess if it impacted near to an inabited area. It would make GW's anti-terror plans to naught in seconds. Perhaps that would be a good thing.
roughly, i'd say naught. Being the size of a football pitch(field), it probably had very little, if any...
Check out my sysadmin blog!
OK, I think we've all seen/read/heard the theories of what would happen if a large asteroid hit Earth, but what if a giant asteroid hit the moon?
How big would it have to be to knock the moon from its orbit? Or even alter the moon's orbit at all? And if so, what impact on our environment here would it have? If we had no moon, no tides, etc., what would that do to earth life?
If this is not a problem, how big of an asteroid would we need (roughly, of course,) to cause a problem?
A problem in terms of destroying the moon? Check out http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/impact.html and play around with numbers.
The numbers for this one (~100 meters at 10 km/sec) hitting the moon are a 15 megaton explosion, a quake of magnitude 6.4, and a new crater. This wouldn't have any impact on the earth.
Now, if you're talking destruction of the moon, that could be a problem. According to the site, it would take a rock 400km in diameter, travelling at 55km/s, to destroy the moon. A pretty unlikely occurence, in other words.
I'm sorry sandwich! --Brak
But an asteroid this size will only affect the size of a large city. There is plenty of time to evacuate the area, assuming you have a day's notice or more. If it hit the middle of the ocean, it wouldn't be a big deal.
The other major concern. If this asteroid hit a nuclear capable country (and there are quite a few of them), if there was no prior knowledge of the hit it would be very easy to confuse a meteor stike with a nuclear attack. You would have the miles of devastation and the mushroom cloud. Imagine if it were to hit india or pakistan right now. The other side might retalliate from the perceived attack before they ever figured out it was just a meteor. The only difference would be the lack of radioactive fallout.
Even in the US, where we have suffienent technology to quickly detect and determine what is going on, it still took us half a day to get a grip on what was happening on September 11. All day long there were car bombs going off that didn't exist. The Vice President ordered a plane shot down that didn't exist. And 9/11, as tragic as it was, would be insignificant compared to the type of disaster that a 120 meter rock would cause, especially if it hit a populated area.
Knowing that Washington DC was going to get wiped off the face of the planet by a meteor (literally) 6 hours before it happened would cause a lot of panic, but it would save a lot of after the fact confusion. We would be mounting rescue efforts instead of mounting for a nuclear response against an unknown enemy.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
yea, he was supposedly sending a message to Admiral Perry(maybe) who was exploring the North Pole at the time, but supposedly he overshot.
Other than some far-fetched ideas, Tesla's life was really interesting. I'd recommend reading a biography if you can find the time...
Check out my sysadmin blog!
8:03 P.M. EST
Bush declares a "War on Asteroids".
Bush: Our nation faces a threat to our freedoms, and the stakes could not be higher. We are the target of enemies who boast they want to kill -- kill all Americans, kill all Jews, kill all Christians, kill all Muslims, and kill all mankind. We've seen that type of hate before -- although they're near misses, the only possible response is to confront it, and to defeat it.
This enemy tries to hide behind a peaceful cosmos, yet its murderous intent is obvious.
We will, no doubt, face new challenges. Make no mistake. Although we have absolutely no idea where you are, when you'll come, or even how big you are - wherever you are, whether in our solar system, in our galaxy, and outside the galaxy, we WILL track you down, and we'll defeat you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
I went to France as a high school junior (with the French Club) and several times I had people thank me for saving them in the world wars. I wish that I had thought to thank them for Lafayette, but it was very touching that they felt the need to do so.
Of course, I also ran into a lot of the stereotypical sneering frogs, but I expected that.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Someone already did that. They built imaging software and used readily available hardware. Then they published the results showing readbale resolution of the text painted on the space shuttle.
Shortly thereafter, a government representative made this individual an offer he couldn't refuse (e.g. work for the government and turn over all your plans.. or else ).
Subsequently, the imaging software and related information "disappeared" from the public domain. Try to find any info on Ron Dantowitz's space shuttle pictures.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
Yeah, that part never made any semblance of sense to me. How can a species with no technology whatsoever hurl a rock across the galaxy and hit a tiny planet? And wouldn't it take centuries at least? Probably more like hundreds of thousands of years, and that would be from a close star.
Is this discussed in better detail in the novel?
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Did they ever say how those bugs were shooting the asteroids?
I have never read the book -- I only saw the movie. I, too, was a bit baffled at this. However, I remember reading a very interesting letter to the editor in the LA Times when this movie came out. His claim was that all the critics who were blasting the movie as a violent fantasy were missing the "real point" of the movie -- that it was an anti-war film. In the movie, there never was any explanation for how these bugs were supposedly launching and steering these asteroids towards Earth. In fact when you first see Klendathu you see the bugs possess no technology. Yet, all that was needed was for the leaders to claim the bugs did it and everyone was willing to go to war with them. The author of this letter was pointing out that this same kind of mindless acceptance of a convienient scapegoat was the same stuff that the director (a German) saw first-hand growing up in Nazi Germany. To further hammer the point home, director Verhoeven peppered the film full of rediculous propaganda commericals.
That letter made me look at that movie from a different perspective. It is chilling that in the film, no one questions whether the bugs were even capable, let alone willing, to commit such an act of aggression against Earth. I'm sure we can all think of examples here on Earth of peoples being too eager to go to war without a good reason.
GMD
watch this
And the largest thermonuclear device ever exploded in the atmosphere period was done by the Soviets in 1961 [hiroshima.jp] and was ~50MT.
What's even spookier is that the Russians detonated this Largest Nuclear Weapon Ever while there was a no-nuke-test treaty in place with the US! Needless to say, the Russian's action was a dramatic end to the treaty. Here's one example in history where a treaty meant absolutely nothing.
GMD
watch this
Do yourself a favor and think about it. Scary stuff this may be, but how is it news?? Enlighten me.
What's in a Sig?
Well, if the flight path was altered, I would say that their would be a %70 chance it would hit a body of water considering that earth is %70 ocean. That would be truly disastrous. Sure the asteroid could kill a small town but if it hit an ocean you could probably suspect a killer tusumia that would level anything within 10-20 miles of coastline. I am not a scientist so I do not know exactly how big the wave would be or the speed of it coming in but I am sure it would be devastating. If the incoming wave travels for example over a few hundred miles an hour and is several hundred to a few thousand feet high it could easily crush whole mountains into sand. It would also destroy the majority of the human race considering %90 of us live 20 miles from the coast line. Pretty scary shit.
http://saveie6.com/
By your logic, we can ignore red lights and pass through them without slowing down since we never actually get hit.
Until we do.
Astronomers know that these objects have missed us, but that's not what interests them. The guy running the red light probably has a good idea how many near misses he has had, but astronomers really don't because there's never been more than a very poorly funded effort to find these objects. So they track the near misses, especially the very near misses. From the orbital mechanics, we know that anything that gets within 100x the distance between the earth and moon *can* hit us, and something as close as this object *will* eventually hit us even if we got lucky this time.
As an aside, this is similar to the QA technique where you deliberately introduce 10 or 20 bugs into the source code and track how many are caught by the testers. If they only found 3 of 20 bugs, but they reported finding 30 bugs in total, you can be fairly confident that there are 170 other bugs in your code including the 17 you introduced.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I concur that there is "some probability" (though I disagree with another reply who suggests the probability is not miniscule... I believe it is and since there is no hard data on these events nor is miniscule a terribly meaningful hard classification, it is utterly pointless to use that classification) that something will occur as a consequence of some random bit of interstellar flotsam or jetsam slamming into the planet.
On the other hand, what consequences? The worst that we are aware of was an ice age that screwed the dinos. (possibly)
And it seems our unevolved ancestors survived. If we can't survive the same (as a species, I don't mean as individuals), then we sure haven't evolved in the right direction.
The second worst I can think of is Tunguska. Did the world stop when that happened? Did even the nation state it occured in collapse? No and No. Would it suck to see Ottawa, Toronto (well maybe not so much), Washington, Chicago, or Paris blown off the map? Yes, yes it would. But would it bring the world to an end? Probably not. Would it kill off mankind? Probably not.
Would there be consequences? Hard to see how extensive. Tunguska didn't cause a war. And anyplace that got smoked by a rock would get a huge rescue effort from the rest of the globe. Not much consolation if you live there, but still helpful in rebuilding and saving those that could be saved around the edges.
Then, step a step further out and say: What can we do to stop it? If something the size of Texas comes for us, I doubt we can shoot it down, or that it would do that much good. If something smaller comes, odds go up. But we are not even accurately tracking all this debris!
And once you pass a certain low-end threshold, it isn't worth addressing - it'll either burn up or the hole it will punch into the planet isn't large enough to (globally) be concerned about.
OTOH, what will it cost us to address rocks the size of Texas? Answer: a big damn checkbook and very damn deep pockets. We're staggering even trying to get a not-so-useful, scaled-back, quickly-probably-obsolescent space station up and that's an effort (of a sort) of the international community!.
OTOH, we've got a war on drugs, a war on terrorism, the refief of Africa, peacekeeping and peacemaking all over the globe, a global aids crisis, the funding of new biotech that could save many many lives, etc.
All of things can make valid claims on our time and effort. Should we spend the money where we're pretty sure it can be immediately beneficial and life saving, or throw it at something we're a long way from being able to handle? We've laboured in ignorance for thousands of years, another hundred probably won't matter a lot. And maybe by then, with other tech advancements, the cost of attacking the problem will drop.
I'm not entirely saying there is no risk. I'm saying the cost of addressing it EFFECTUALLY is very high. That same money can far more beneficially be expended dealing with other terrestrial crises. At some point down the road, the problem will be more cost effective to deal with, and hopefully a few more key crises will have been put to rest on Earth allowing us to focus more of our attention on these external potential problems.
Of course, a rock could drop on me tonight. If so, unless it was the size of Texas, most of the universe would just keep on ticking. And I wouldn't be around to care.
Then again, once you hit karma cap, what's the point in living anymore? *grin*
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Incoming asteriod is a point particle.
Diameter of the Earth is 12,000km.
Asteroid will pass within 120,000km of Earth's center (possibly less).
The question then becomes:
Choose a random point within a circle of radius 120,000km.
What is the probability that this point lies within a circle of radius 6000km?
In other words, what are the relative sizes of the two circles?
(pi * 6000^2)/(pi * 120000^2) = 0.0025 = 0.25%
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Wouldn't the "closest" approach title belong to one of the asteroids that actually struck us?
A bit more seriously, I thought that there was actually at least one near-impact in Colorado in the 1970s where an object passed through the upper atmosphere, producing a fireball visible in daylight, before escaping back into space.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I mean, the Law of Averages would dictate that sooner or later, something has to crash into Redmond to compensate for all the things that crash coming *out*, right?
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Yup, in the novel the bugs had big nasty spaceships, along with missiles, individual personel beam weapons, an organised social and diplomatic structure and were generally very technologically advanced.
The movie is a piece of rubbish that's sole benefit is that a big chunk of cash got sent Ginny Heinlein's way.
I don't think you realise just how different the book is compared to that mess that got hurled at the screen by Verhoven.
Anyone remember this FUD from CNN three months and one day ago? That asteroid came from the direction of the sun as well.
At any rate, our scientists are getting better. Last time they didn't know about the asteroid until four days after it missed us. This time they learned of the asteroid three days after the fact. At this rate, they should be able to tell us when we've been hit by a killer asteroid on the same day it hits us.
You know what would be ironic? If a good size asteroid hit the Earth, enough to kill millions of people but not billions, say, and that explosion mistakenly triggered a Russian nuclear attack on the U.S., and then the U.S. responded, and all the combined nuclear weapons and asteroid damage wiped everything out. In addition to being ironic, it would suck.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
The closest asteroid ever recorded to approach the Earth, passed within 0 meters of the Earth when it actually struck the ground. What's up with this closested recorded stuff?
What Verhoeven and his cronies did with the movie was turn the Federation into an actual fascist state. As the linked webpage states, Verhoeven's statement that...
"The philosophy of Heinlein is certainly in the movie. Whether I adhere to that society myself is something else, but it is the philosophy of the world he described, and we took that from his book."
...is total bullshit. Purposely or not, Verhoeven et al got Heinlein's philosophy all fucked up. So the movie ends being a pretty good action flick, with a kinda anti-war message from its over-the-top portrayal of a fascist state, if you really try to analyze it. Of course, there's really no point in doing that, because Heinlein's novel discusses a lot more stuff a lot better, and Verhoeven didn't pick up any of it in the 5-minute read he gave it before directing the movie.
No, we're not doing enough to track down Earth-killer asteroids, but we're probably going to choke on our own Union Carbide/Dow/pollutant noxious gasses, nuke each other, or otherwise make the planet uninhabitable (to us anyway) long before we get the cosmic smackdown.
Yeah, that would be wild. But what would be even crazier is if it wasn't an asteroid but in fact a particle-beam weapon fired from a spaceship in American airspace to strike Russia, triggering a nuclear war all in an attempt to prevent Lord John Worphin and the red lectroids from crossing over into the 8th dimension!
Now that would REALLY suck!
GMD
watch this
This object did come kinda close. If you make the analogy of the average height of a human equals the size of the earth (5 to 6 feet), then the moon is roughly 200 feet away. In this scenario, the asteroid is roughly like a very high speed BB Pellet (or smaller) wizzing by at a distance of 30 ft or so.
If 5-6 feet equals 13000 km, then 10 km/s is 4 or 5 m/s. The 100 m size of the object scales to around 0.01 mm. Think piece of dust in a light wind, not high speed BB pellet.
It would depend on the mass and trajectory. Even an 1/2 earth sized object could pass through the atmosphere and not strike, if it was not coming directly at us. Of course that would mess up our orbit if it was that large, and we might capture it if it were going slowly enough.
We'd still be fucked.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Perhaps. But if the asteroid were large enough and the location was bad, the tsunami generated would be devastating.
OK, that's a good point. But your previous post seemed to say that all cataclysmic natural events are in the imagination of doomsayers. I would certainly not put Asteroid Watching ahead of important health, environment, or defense concerns. But I would certainly give it more priority than it has. Certainly more than, say, a "missle shield" which has never been demonstrated as workable, and would be easily circumvented even if it were. I'm not even going to talk about that damned superhowitzer.
all this discussioin centering around funding for programs to search the skies is a little rediculous. the only thing that would change is this: it would not be a surprise when we get slaughtered.
personally, i think i would rather not know, than sit through all the looting, riots, and general chaos that news of this magnitude would create.
Maybe if the asteroid was on a collision course the Earth would have bent over backwards like Neo in the Matrix, and the asteroid would have whizzed by us in slow motion.
Or maybe it would be like:
Earth: Are you telling me I can dodge asteroids ?
Universe: I'm saying you might not have to...
Anyway, if a so-called ponced-up "ELE" destroys the Earth before I get to see Star Wars Episode III I'm personally going to beat it up with a big stick.
graspee
Let's place bets on how many people have to die from an asteriod impact before NASA gets funding to look out for and do something about them. I say 5,000 people or one Hollywood celebrity.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
yeah that was my guess too.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Large city evacuations happen periodically with hurricanes and such. Its not pretty, people don't like it, some stay behind because they're too stubborn to leave, worry about looters, etc. But it's been done before, and it can be done again if there is a crisis sufficient enough to warrant it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
What a bunch of useless answers. What the person obviously wanted to know is, what point on the earth was facing the asteroid when it passed a point where it could have hit us?
Based on this article, i'd make a rough estimate that it would have crossed earth's orbit path at about 0200h GMT on June 14th. So, all we need to know is what local time zone was at 1200h (sun at highest point, approximately) when it was 0200h GMT.
1200h would be 10 hours east of GMT. My handy-dandy clock tells me that GMT+10h is Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, etc. So it sounds like Australia was facing the asteroid at the time it passed...
Hope this answers the original poster's question...
we should cut the entire funding! it's the biggest waste of time to "search the skies" for things that we will never reach in this lifetime. start worrying about problems on this planet before we go polluting others.
Yeah! why bother, when the things that we are looking for are coming to us anyway!
And when a few cubic km of rock drops into the pacific at 30km/s, we can deal with the problem at home, just like we should.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Some even argue that Heinlein's book was itself a parody of those political attitudes, but if so it was way too subtle for most people to get.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This is yet another reason why we need to build a huge array of orbiting mirrors! Imagine the advantages of orbiting mirrors!
1) Control weather patterns by reflecting/deflecting light from various parts of the planet, causing the atmosphere and water to heat up or cool down.
2) Control global warming by deflecting some light away from the earth. Also handy for preventing future ice ages by reflecting more light onto the earth.
3) Use in conjunction with solar sails to deflect asteroids away from the earth. Simply attach solar sail to asteroid and point all of your orbiting mirrors(!) at the solar sail. Should be way more effective than sending Bruce Willis up there to deal with the matter.
This message paid for by the commision for orbiting mirrors!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unfortunately, Gaia is not scheduled to launch until 2010. Until then, I wonder if a spacecraft like SOHO, (particularly the LASCO instrument) could look for asteroids? I've asked one of the project scientists (via email) about it. I'll post again if I find out anything good.
In the meantime, maybe one of YOU would like to search back in the archive of LASCO images and find the asteroid? You'll be famous if you find it!
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
"What will the other 90% do for a living? And how do we pick which 10% it's going to be?"
The other 90% will just time-share work. Think about it. If you're paid more, you can work less. Assuming owners would cut their margins a bit (every owner), then every worker would have more consumer surplus to re-invest. This would accelerate the economy nicely.
The picking would be those willing to work. Do you assume everyone doesn't want to work? I want to work. Maybe not 60-80 hours a week like some crazies, but I enjoy spending 3-5 days of a week away from home, working with a team of trained people to solve problems.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You mean a year or two after the Swiss? Spain? Portugal? Sweden? All of these European counties at least initially claimed neutrality.
Oh I see. You were expecting the Swiss to get involved in a major conflict? Fat chance.
For centuries the Swiss have always maintained neutrality. It's been their method of retaining their sovreignty throughout the ages whilst the rest of continental Europe was in flux - Empires and nations came and went but the Swiss kept out of it all and, amazingly, they survived intact.
Even today, the Swiss are paranoid about maintaining their traditional position. In recent years the subject has been a matter of national debate, and topics as radical as whether or not the Swiss military should carry guns(!) have taken place.
Most impressively, Switzerland has now (finally) become a full member of the United Nations. For years, the country held "UN Observer Status", which basically meant that it had its beady eye on the UN but was not a member of the club and never got involved. God knows what harm just joining up like the rest of the world would do - they could always have abstained from every vote.
But that's the Swiss for you - a truly strange nation.
This, of course, doesn't change the fact that, throughout history, the United States has traditionally sat on its butt and done jack shit unless its hand was forced.
The US only got involved in World War One in 1917, three years after the conflict started, and even then it only sent a token force into combat. In World War Two, it took a direct smack in the face (Pearl Harbour) to wake the US up from the dream that it could isolate itself from world affairs. Even then the US only declared war on Japan - it took Germany's declaration of war on the US for America to get involved in the war in Europe.
So, next time you (or one of the hundreds of other Stars-and-Stripes-loving revisionists on Slashdot) feel like talking about how nobody else apart from America does anything, please have at least a passing knowledge of history.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Would have solved a lot of problems. Not to mention maybe convince those religious nutbags that they were wrong.
Well, the ones that wern't dead anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"If 2002MN had hit the Earth, it would have caused local devastation similar to that which occurred in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, when 2,000 square kilometres of forest were flattened."
r e&AD2=&AD3=new+york%2C+ny&AD4=U.S.&x=0&y=0
in case you haven't done the math yourself (and you likely haven't), 2,000 sq km is something like 1200 sq. mi., which is about a radius of 20 miles from the point of impact.
http://pbs.vicinity.com/pbs/blast.hm?SEC=25pressu
just to draw a(n) (in)comprehensible comparison, check out this map of a 25 megaon bomb being detonated over ny (or any other city)...
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
yes there is and i am a big proponent of it.
there has been no asteroid debree or a crater found in tunguska.
This was a small one, the size of the one that hit Tunguska. Even if it hit the Earth, the chances of a high death toll would be extremely small.
The cake is a pie
It has been thought of here. I recall a year or so back a story on the BBC about an experiment done and the results registering at earthquake monitoring sites but I can't seem to find it right now...
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
I should do all my research before replying. Now Jump!
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Considering that, after they saved our butts in the Revolutionary War, we almost immediately ignored and abbrogated our treaty to aid France in its own time of need?
Yeah, info on this thing is popping up everywhere.
Especially those of us with relatives who lost their lives saving Europe.
Perhaps you should stop living off the backs of others.
Or, maybe the Brits can get off their high horses and act POLITELY towards Americans. Considering how we saved them, it's not that much to ask.
And perhaps you should open your eyes while you're at it - who the hell do you think is standing shoulder to shoulder with the US on its new-found war on "global" terrorism? Yes, Britain. The same Britain that was politely told to take a hike by George Bush Sr. during his term in office when it asked for the help of the US government in stopping the flow of funds from US citizens to the IRA, which was busy blowing up British politicians, soldiers, policemen and civilians. why? Because denying US citizens the right to fund terrorist groups murdering innocent men, women and children was considered "a violation of their first amendment rights".
Brits act politely towards Americans? Perhaps Americans could start doing the same towards Brits (and everyone else).
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
'Course, none of this has any bearing at all on recent events. It's pure fantasy. Oh yes.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I haven't read the book either; does it have the same concept that you only become a full citizen (with the right to vote) if you join the military? See, over here in euro-weenie land, that's what we call "fascism". Vorhoeven's Dutch isn't he?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Others have suggested that Heinlein was, in fact, a fascist.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
The movie that is of course.
I remember first watching this when I was out of town on a contract. I thought I'd watch some mindless SF carnage that was just fun and that I didn't have to think about. After all everyone I knew who had seen it said it was just mindless fun.
Right. So what did I get. A VERY disturbing movie based on segments from WW2 propaganda movies, in particular Nazi. Remember the guy who went into Military Intelligence, who always knew what was right for you ? Well he turns up in a Gestapo uniform and in one scene executes a prisoner of war on live television as an educational exercise.
All the uniforms and the flags and insignia are so Nazi-like it made my skin crawl.
The creepiest part though was that so many who saw the movie cheered it and believed the bit at the end that goes "and you just know they will win" ... so rousing all we'd need is a round of "Uber alles".
Sure it's not Heinlein's version. But so what ... it could have been worse, it could have been totally Hollywoodised into pablum.
Pete
Bitter and proud of it.
From Merriam-Webster:
"a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition"
Nothing about means of production. "Means of production" is an obsession of the Communists. But somehow I don't think you are a Marxist. :) And in Nazi Germany big business did very well indeed thank you.
Bitter and proud of it.
And if I remember right (10 years ago...) That gigaton weapon required expensive monthly maintenance, was designed to be assembled in space and to be used as a "Doomsday" device. It weighed about 15 tons fully assembled and was never put in space. I don't think it could ever be put back together from original parts so the likelihood of it being used is close to zero.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Thanks to everyone who pointed out my error. There was no official treaty in place at the time. I had my facts wrong.
GMD
watch this
Assuming I magically knew that no matter which I chose, I would suffer the same effects, there would be no reason to choose one over the other. Although there would be at least one reason to choose the children: help with overpopulation a tiny bit. :)
On the other hand, my conscience would probably get the better of me, and I'd choose a) instead of b). Plus, realistically, if I chose the latter, I might end up getting tortured for weeks and weeks before getting killed, instead of just getting killed, and I wouldn't want that. (On the other hand, maybe those extra weeks of torture would give me a chance to escape, get revenge on my captors, etc.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
You know what would be ironic? If a good size asteroid hit the Earth, enough to kill millions of people but not billions, say, and that explosion mistakenly triggered a Russian nuclear attack on the U.S., and then the U.S. responded...
Nope. Not gonna happen. Why? Two-Phase burst. Nuclear detonations have a characteristic visual signature:
1) Initial EM burst (Mostly hard gammas and X-Rays, but also visual)
2.) Air burned opaque by X-Rays, shockwave causes air compression and ignition.
An asteroid impact would lack this signature and
not be registered by the satellites that watch for this type of event. As asteroid airbursts of kiloton and greater size occur with regular frequency, they would certainly know the difference.
Simplistic summary by non-Physics major. Feel free to poke holes in it.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I'm sure of it! My tinfoil hat supplier overheard one of their conversations on his new tooth-telephone.