Slashdot Mirror
A Rock Moves In Space
theBrownfury writes: "The BBC is reporting here that
a very large Earth collision course asteroid has been discovered. This asteroid, NT7,
was first observed on July 5th and current data suggests an impact date of
February 1st, 2019. NT7 is 2kms wide and on date of impact will be approaching
Earth at 28km/s. An asteroid of this size is large enough to cause continent
wide destruction. However astronomers are still cautious in reporting this
asteroid as the orbit of NT7 has not been fully verified. Current data on
NT7's orbit suggests it orbits the Sun every 837 days and travels in a tilted
orbit from about the distance of Mars to just within the Earth's orbit." The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again!
Hysteria!!!!
Let's evacuate the planet!
Or maybe *put random Bruce Willis joke here...*
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Maybe they are just doing this so we all get worried and start to horde gas, food, and other products so the economy comes back.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
"You have 19 years to do something about a 2km rock headed for Washington. Go!"
Nothing like a crisis to focus the mind, eh?
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
What's that? hm.
:))
I remember at one point in the distant past whenever they used a term in an article it was unlikely anyone would have heard of, like "Palmero Technical Scale", the slashdot editors would put a little [?] box with a link to the appropriate entry on the public collaborative encyclopedia everything2. (OK, so everything2 doesn't have an entry on palmero technical scale, but i'm sure it would pretty soon after slashdot linked it
Why did slashdot stop doing that? It would eliminate a lot of confused, unnecessary discussion. Did the everything2 people just ask slashdot to stop, or something, because they were sick of getting hordes of slashdotters who would start posting stuff without reading the FAQs directed to them?
Mother nature is a terrorist! First the thunderstorms and now the asteroids! What's next? Exploding stars? scary stuff
Got friends?
Quick, buy my asteroid insurance!!! HEHE
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
I've been run over by a llama twice this year! Does that mean I should worry?
A solution to global warming, over-population, osama bin-laden, iraq, isreal vs palestine, Microsoft,...etc. all in one small package.
What about the chances of the Asteroid landing on a Llama? I'm taking bets!
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
Well, if Win2k was NT5, and WinXP is NT6, then I suppose it's due time that the next generation NT7 makes it's "impact" on the world.
We need to hurry up and send a team of foul-mouthed perverted semi-illiterate oil miners into space! And for the love of all that's holy, somebody start having sex with Liv Tyler!
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
Great. Does anyone else think that this sensational journalism is going hurt funding for things like this when it misses us by 5 million km?
The Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. If 1. the projections are a bit off as far as the arrival date and 2. it does hit the Earth, I'd say this might be a good reason to end your calendar.
Those aliens are running NT7 already!
Leave it to British tabloits to sensationalize a non-story. Fortunately I never see biased or inacurate stories at this site.
Check out the 3d view here.
Just fast-forward to Feb-1 2019, set the center on earth, and zoom in.
I'm sick of watching the stock market sputter and sput. We need something big and beyond our little financial myopia. We need something to unite humanity in a common cause - our survival.
Really, best news I've heard all day!
Obviously we need to check the orbit before we conclude anything, but with this much time to spare we should be able to push it away from us. Even a miniscule change in angle would become a massive change in actual location by the time it came near us, and we only need about 4000 miles. While they don't give an exact number, it will have to travel well over 100 million to reach us.
Probably our best bet (if it is a risk) would be to land an unmanned craft on it the next time it nears earth, then have it burrow it's head into the ground and fire a rocket. It could do lots of scientific tests while it was there, of course. There should be no need for exotica like nuclear bombs.
So, as they said, we have more to fear from llamas (though exploiting irrational fear of the asteroid could get us some interesting scientific data).
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
WERE ALL GONNA DIE!
The most important words in the article (well maybe they weren't actually there, but I paraphrase): More data needed. There is still a huge margin of error in the calculation of the asteroid's orbit. It just might hit Earth at this point.
well i was caught in a llama stampede when i was younger, so anyone within a 1000 mile radius of me might wanna consider moving...
-f
www.blackant.net
For those wondering what they're talking about, NASA has a site about it here
It keeps getting worse and worse. NT5 had an estimated 65000 bugs, if I recall correctly, but at a few grams per bug (when they don't fly), nobody cared about such a tiny mass. But now NT7 would be large enough for continental scale devastation? Wow. That must be a serious number of bugs.
On the other hand, announcing a product 17 years before it hits, come on, that's not really serious, even by NT's standards.
You think you know about programming?
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
If this turns out to be a real threat,
I'll bet that the parts of the world
that hate us and our technology will change thier tune slightly.
Please save us oh great infidel!
Just wait till the local media gets ahold of this and runs with it. I can see the headlines now, "Giant Asteroid on Collision Course with Earth!" "2km Rock Headed for Earth" *sigh*
What if it could be captured in orbit about the Earth?
:)
More than enough material to make a really good space station!
getting it to land on the right continent...
You choose, I'm not that brave...
- Jim
2002 NT7 Impact Risk
It doesn't look so bad. -0.14 on the Palermo Scale (recently downgraded?).
I told my cow orkers not to worry about the unix signed 32-bit int date problem! Ha-hahahaha, I love being right! Oh, wait a minute...
I guess in about 17 years it'll be time to ask that girl if she'll sleep with me if the world was about to end...
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
for the latest information
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2002nt7.html
But you shouldn't end sentences with an ellipse...
Oh no, now I've done it! The stupidity is spreading!
"The error in our knowledge of where NT7 will be on 1 February 2019 is large, several tens of millions of kms,"
In other news, today there was 1 in 1 X 10^43 chance that you and your anti-matter self would meet. What a close call. Please be on the look out for your anti-matter self.
I find it strange that there is almost 1/2 million geeks on slashdot, yet none of them have ever brought this up on these Near earth orbit stories.
Has there ever been any contingouncy planning made in case something like this does happen? Or is it all being kept a secret from the general population (i.e. only 100 of those grey alien ufo's for escape)
A company that did real work into this issue could stand to make a killing. Anyone that figured out a real nice way to make these NEO rocks bounce, blow up, deflect, time phase shift, or tractor away from the earth could pull some mass patents on that and laugh all the way to the bank.
People used to say if man was meant to fly he would have wings. Well, if man was meant to blow up space rocks he would have nukes, and he does.
... then the asteroids will have won.
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
Can you imagine how much Preparation H it'll take to cool THAT asteroid down?
Yeah... except for the small fact that the economy comes to a dead halt until the idiots realize that we're not going to get hit by a giant rock (which, if they believed it in the first place, could be a very, very long time)
... the asteroid is full of guys with sneaked box cutters...
Time to break out _The Hammer of God_ by Arthur Clarke. For those of you living under a rock (heh heh) it's a novel about a large rocky mass headed on a collision course with earth and the world-wide pants-shitting that ensues after it's discovered.
Good book.
"The error in our knowledge of where NT7 will be on 1 February 2019 is large, several tens of millions of kms."
/. post.
Earth's diameter is 6000km, so that's still a small chance I guess. Luckily. I was already turning green when I read the
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
So, we think that this one has a 6% higher chance of hitting us than something that we never even get on our radars. OK. That makes sense. I think.
I think I'm going to go and put that date into my Evolution calendar!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
In the future, NT7 results in the destruction of life as we know it. _Surely_ all of Slashdot can't have missed the humour in that little tidbit.
in other news, crazy british people deemed crazy.
Did you see the picture at the top of the article? I am no scientician, but that looked bigger than 2km to me, something that big would almost liquefy the earth. I am glad they didn't get carried away and start to sound alarmist........
are they announcing this when the orbit hasn't been confirmed yet? I thought that after the embarrassing 1997 XF-11 false alarm, astronomers agreed to wait until they had enough data to confirm or rule out an impact, before releasing a press statement...
>;k
Just heard this on NPR this morning. Bruce Willis, the famous American thespian, was found dead in his home this morning. Even if you never met him in person you've probably enjoyed one of his movies. What a loss. Truly an American icon. And, of course, now we're all fucked because we don't have anybody to send up there to deal with this Asteroid.
:D)
(C'mon, at least give me a +1 funny for calling Bruce Willis a "thespian"...
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
This dangerous situation only get's harder to deride the longer we wait. I am doing everything I can to influence NASA to start working on getting a nuclear blast to deride the course of the oncoming danger. I agree that detonating a nuclear bomb in the course of the approaching llama is a bit drastic, but I refuse to sit idly by as the approaching threat of llama collision approaches.
Dude, they just said earth shattering now...which continent will by save by that
oh by the way
If something bad happens...just know that Raster loves you..
Maybe this will shock the world into paying attention.
Kind of like the Marilyn Manson of Astronomy, except this one could kill a billion people.
Apart from making fun of the BCC, what is the point of reporting this item? Do we really care about an asteroid that's going to burn up on impact or not even go near the earth?
Considering the record they have established lately, I consider it highly unlikely Microsoft will be ready to ship NT 7 by the February 1 2019 date listed in the article.
They will probably just repeat the Windows ME trick, and release "Windows CANDY" in 2019 (so that they could confuse consumers into thinking that that thing MS Marketing had been talking about so long had actually been delivered on), then release the real goods two years later. Rather than the promised 2km asteroid that ends all life on earth, "Windows CANDY" will just be a baseball-sized rock that lands in Ontario, Canada, killing a small boy's pet dog.
So we should be safe from the asteroid until 3rd quarter 2021 at least, at which point it won't matter becuase the UNIX Date Rollover Bug will have plunged the world into anarchy and killed everyone by that time anyway.
Get your reservations in early...
I bet the defense industry is salivating at the thought of all the money about to be thrown in its direction...
Now, who foots the bill? Definitely, the US is going to insist that they only pay 5% of it, as this is their percentage of the world's population.
But the rest of the world is gonna insist that they pay relative of the percentage of their wealth (wealth that, for the most part, has been sucked from the rest of the world anyways).
Since it's gonna take a long time to resolve this, better start ASAP bickering that...
Apparently it's too late... Check out this news flash.
Note the picture. The asteroid in the story is a couple km wide, the one depicted was hundreds of km (big enough to discorporate this seemingly solid little planet of ours for a while). Also note that it is hitting right in the U.S. I think that the artist has some issues with Uncle Sam...
In short, definitely unwarranted.
BlackGriffen
Smithers! Release the flying monkeys!
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
From http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2002nt7.html
Energy - 1.1e+06 MT
1,100,000 Megatons.
1,100 Gigaton
1.1 Teraton
HOLY !#@$%
I guess sending all our nuclear weapons towards this thing would be a good way to disarm countries like Russia, India, and Pakistan. After all, we do want them to reduce their supplies, don't we? I guess the government does.
How about this? Coordinated Worldwide Interplanetary Nuclear Strike Day! Circa 3 days before predicted impact.
We're Doomed
He has experience with this sorta thing and if the Die Hard movies and Unbreakable have tough us one thing...it's that you can't kill the SOB no matter what you try. I'll bet in Aramageddon II he comes back as a ghost to help destroy another planet killer.
Ruger
Liama's attack People!!! I won't be able to sleep tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!
1. mine it for data;
...and, well, you get the point. If it's coming close enough, let's turn it in to something useful.
2. use it as a platform for whatever;
3. sell pieces of it to whomever;
4. mine it for whatever minerals it may carry;
5.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
We all knew that NT4 and NT5 were bad, but when Microsoft releases NT7 in 2019 the world will be plunged into chaos!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Damn, should have gone with that 30 year mortgage during the refinancing instead of the 15.
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
But I don't think I'm going to lose sleep over it.
- Fzz
Most of you only have 16 years to lose your virginity!
Heh teasin =)
No problem. In 19 years a H-bomb could change the asteroid's trajectory enough, I think. There is the added danger that it might go off on the way to the target. Hopefully the warhead wouldn't arm itself before it get's far enough away from the earth. But, ya'll know with everything connetected to the INTERNET, including pace makers and the power grid that it could get hacked.
--You can't win if you don't play but you can loose.--EBM
Bush declares war on A Rock!
sulli
RTFJ.
We may never see Mozilla 2.0. :(
"Derp de derp."
Yes, there is. And no, we aren't telling you.
If the collision course was indeed confirmed to intersect Earth at the right time, and it would be likely that entire civilizations could be wiped out, the best way to "save humanity" would be to start OCRing every text describing our history, and backing up copies across all corners of the globe. If you think about it, what else is more worth saving? What else more strongly defines us as human race that we are? Without it, we are nothing but a bunch of walking, talking, intelligent hairless apes. Five thousand years of wars, philosophies, arts, and sciences are what we think of when we think of the human race.
In order to do any kind of "restoration" of who we are after a cataclysmic event, we'd need as much of our recorded history as possible -- the writings of Plato, Aristotle, all the rest of the great thinkers, and of all of the events that have shaped our world -- dating back to that of the Sumerian civilization who first wrote down what we know about them 4-5 millenia ago.
We should start this right now, to whatever degree feasible... just in case, so we're ready for any unforseen event that happens.
According to the BBC, this is the first object to get a positive score...
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
... we need a protective layer of smog. Throw enough garbage into the atmosphere and the asteroid'll burn up.
Quick! Everybody guy a Canyonero!
It was first seen on the night of 5 July, picked up by the Linear Observatory's automated sky survey programme in New Mexico, in the southern US.
I work at Lincoln labs and acutally know the people running the LINEAR project (they are so proud that they are the best in the world, let me tell you). But for the rest of you, here is their website.
They find more than half of the new NEO (Near earth orbit) asteroids each year that are found. They have a telescope down in New Mexico and have the largest CCD (2560x1960 res) in the market. That's the thing that takes a digital image of the sky and compares it to past images to see if any "stars" have moved...i.e asteroid. The higher resolution you can get, the further out you can see. From their webpage, you can see they have found at least 951 NEO's. So there are a LOT of asteroids comming near us. But in space, near is still very far away. So unpack those bunkers and return to Real Life, we're still safe for a while. Also, the rate of finding new NEO's is decreasing, so that means that we've (humans) found most of the asteroids that can endanger us.
(most of that was taken from this post of mine from a while ago)
Don Yeomans of JPL says that the predicted cross-track error ellipse at the time of impact is 10's of millions of kilometers. Since the diameter of the Earth is 6371 km, and since the probability of impact goes as the square of the (radius / cross track orbit uncertainty), the probability of impact is less than one in 1 million.
Within a week, this will be narrowed by several orders of magnitude, so it is highly likely that the predicted impact will vanish.
so are we supposed to take this seriously or is this just another way to get attention?????
I support publik eduscatation!
The higher-precision text-based orbital calculator is more accurate. (And overloaded right now.) It has 2002 NT7 in its database. Both claim January 28, 2019 is the date of closest approach. Both claim closest approach around 0.8 AU. Remember, this is projecting many orbits ahead, and small-object orbit projection is inherently noisy because minor disturbing forces matter.
Either we'll know it's a definite miss in a few weeks, or this will be a worry for some time to come.
Ok, let's assume for a brief moment that the rock is going to slam into us AND that by some horrible miscalculation it is the size of Greenland AND there is nothing we can do about it?
:)
Assuming that roving gangs of long haired, dirty children have not killed you (a la Mad Max) yet, how do you spend the last 24 hours of human existence?
Bonus for creativity.
Someone above posted a URL to the JPL's Orbits applet to simulate the orbit of NT7. Fast forwarding to 2019 and watching the animation shows NT7 coming "close", but not near as close as on July 1, 2075. Now THAT's close...
Don't worry everyone. I spent most of my youth in the local arcade preparing for just such an event!
Everything will be taken away from you.
"it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries"
in fact, you are more likely to be hit by an asteroid than be affected by this "crisis"
wait a minute...
-----------
there are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't
i seem to have lost the address of Duckville, so no link on this post
pirates
A Palermo value of 0.06 means that the risk from this object is elevated above the background risk for such objects by about 15%. (The 0.06 is the log of the ratio of the risk to the background risk.) So however worried you were yesterday about collisions with 2 km asteroids, you can be 15% more worried today.
In short, not worth losing sleep over.
Hey you unskilled people of infantile knowledge! Listen up! I, being a strong Bruce Willis type, am an Oil Driller. The US Government has come to me with a plan.
...next 17 years.
In 16 years, me and my crew (even my lusty daughter, but not that filthy rotting boyfriend of hers [ben afflack sucks]) are going to lift off on our mission to save the world! That's right, folks. You can all go about your
I will drill a hole into the astroid, then drop a nuclear warhead into the hole, exploding it from the inside out. Thereby, the 2 halfs of the astroid will MISS Earth.
So, buck up, you reched little people!
I was run over by a llama earlier today.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
...on the Liv Tyler part.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Armageddon. The U.S. govt will hire a bunch of hicks to drill a hole into the asteroid, place a nuclear bomb, and leave one guy behind to detonate it! The rock will barely miss the Earth and we will all continue living our lives. I wish they'd come up with something new already.
This should pretty much solve that pesky global warming problem...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Does this mean I can't go outside and loot now?
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Can't Microsoft figure out a better way to install NT7?
The significance is that this is the first object EVER to be given a non-negative score. ie - it WILL hit according to current numbers.
Now, they say themselves two important things -
1.) It's the first one in the relatively short history of closely watching for these threats.
2.) It'll probably drift off into negative ratings as more observations narrow the errors down.
So - the significance is that this is the first time they've seen a threat through the windshield and not in the rear-view as it goes by. That IS fairly significant. Not that we should panic over this one - but the story shows that we're making progress in the important matter of discovering these things in time to make a difference.
Kevin
Due to a conflict on Feb 1, 2019, please reschedule the destruction of the Earth by giant meteorite to November 3, 2025. The year 2019 through most of 2024 has already been scheduled for devistation by global warming and plagues of alien headcrabs.
Thanks,
Mother Nature.
When all else fails, run.
By the time 2019 rolls around, machines will rule the world, it'll be their damn problem.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/close.html
give distances both in AU and LD (lunar distances) for the dozen or so close passes that happen each month or so.
Not that you should be alarmed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"This unique event should not diminish the fact that additional observations in coming weeks will almost certainly, we hope, eliminate the current threat."
Is he saying this just because the odds of a tiny (relativley) piece of something has a very slim chance of hitting a slightly less tiny(relativly) object in the whole universe? Or is there some property of Earth's magnetic field or some other force that would cause things to be pushed away from us? I would think we'd pull stuff towards us due to gravity, but I'm no physicist (or spelling bee champion).
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Sure, in normal business a company would stand to make a killing in something with so wide and presumably desperate a market (the whole world, or at least that one lucky continent), but does anyone truthfully think that if something like this truthfully stood to impact earth in as devastating a manner as predicted by the article that copyright laws would be honored at all? If the company demanded anything (monetary or otherwise) at all for using their copyright, it would result in the company being risen up against by a panicked populace and/or simply having their ideas taken at gunpoint by the threatened government(s).
Surely if we have learned anything over the past months it is that the government can justify most anything in the name of an emergency, and a government forseeing its entire continent devastated would certainly not hesitate to simply take and use the processes covered by the copyright possessed by this company by any means necessary.
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand / your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying"
This has Bin Laden written all over it.
I will use my right to say truefull things when ever I want to. And right now i'm saying that windows, NT5 and probley NT6 will suck. you hear me SUCK, as in get down on their knees and make like a vacuum. And when M$ admits that they are the sucking whores, that everyone know that they are, I will stop saying it so loud.
The impact on the Earth of NT4 and NT5 was bad enough...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Check it out for yourself... - which is why I don't run XP - Just 2K with some extra cosmetics that slows down the computer :(
Oh - and the constant communication probably slows down the internet connection as well...
have all been wrong so far. There's no reason to think this one is right.
Asteroid or no asteroid, I am not breaking in on my nap time.
8AM: Awaken to sounds of sporadic gunfire in my neighbourhood. Refuse to shower or brush teeth. Feast on Breakfast consisting mainly of bacon and coco pops. Place large axe through current PC and monitor, drag battered Case outside to tie to the bumper of the neighbours car.
8AM: Wearing only boxers, fluffy bunny slippers and an assault rifle borrowed from some dead guy who caught a bullet on my lawn, drive down highway at 100mph in neighbours car, PC Case clattering and sparking behind. Neighbour is in the Trunk. His wife is it home with a satisfied look on her face.
10AM: Abandon Car infront of Bill Gates residence. Knock repeatedly on door, but no answer. It appears Bill did leave on that Russian escape transport after all as appeared on the last news broadcast a week ago. Find several MS Marketing managers, execute them gangland style.
12 Noon: Hungry. Stop to steal pop n fresh from local quickie mart. Proceed on killing spree. Follow a Microbus packed with hippies on highway, pull them over for a chat.
12:10PM: Smoking a joint as large as my arm, I have commandeered an I max theater, I slap in my copy of "Mars Attacks" and eat 1 week old popcorn. Its full of buttery goodness.
3PM: Emerge from IMax in refreshed state, steal deck chairs from Walmart, and seek a suitable place to watch the impact with a case of beer.
4PM: Watch asteroid streak overhead, and miss Earth entirely. Seems they miscalculated the trajectory as well as the size. Feeling very dissappointed, I continue the killing spree.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
is the same picture they use for /every/ story about near-hit asteroids. Just like Slashdot uses a picture of gateborg for all MS stories.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I always knew that NT would wipe out all life as we know it.
In case you're wondering what this means (and I was):
The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale was developed to enable NEO specialists to categorize and prioritize potential impact risks spanning a wide range of impact dates, energies and probabilities. Actual scale values less than -2 reflect events for which there are no likely consequences, while Palermo Scale values between -2 and 0 indicate situations that merit careful monitoring. Potential impacts with positive Palermo Scale values will generally indicate situations that merit some level of concern.
The scale compares the likelihood of the detected potential impact with the average risk posed by objects of the same size or larger over the years until the date of the potential impact. This average risk from random impacts is known as the background risk. For convenience the scale is logarithmic, so, for examples, a Palermo Scale value of -2 indicates that the detected potential impact event is only 1% as likely as a random background event occurring in the intervening years, a value of zero indicates that the single event is just as threatening as the background hazard, and a value of +2 indicates an event that is 100 times more likely than a background impact by an object at least as large before the date of the potential impact in question.
Taken from NASA: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/doc/palermo.html
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
If the odds are truely 1 in a million, then they are over 36 times better than your average state lottery.
Has anyone done calculations to see wether or not NT7 will be gone before 2019, e.g. it hits another planet? It comes very close to Venus sometime next year (or so shows the Java applet). Just a thought. It is possible it could hit another planet before 2019.
Actually there are contingency plans that we as a planet can do with this much advanced warning.
Most asteroids such as this one are almost black in color and reflect very little incident light; this coupled with their small size make them very difficult to detect. There is a property in physics called albedo (no, not libido) which is basically the 'reflectivity' of an extraterrestrial object (the moon has an albedo of ~.1, ie it reflects ~10% of incident light). If we could find a way to change one side of an earth-collision asteroid to have a higher albedo, perhaps by icing it with water ice, then we have effectively made a motor to push the asteroid off its normal orbit. More light would be reflected on one side than the other, causing a slight difference in the number of photons absorbed on one side compared to the other. This absorption differential would be enough over time to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid. But this is the sort of thing that won't work in 18 days, it would have to be several years for the photon force to make a real change in the orbit. That is why we have the NEAR program, to determine orbits of near-earth asteroids in advance so we have a lot of time to figure out an appropriate way of dealing with them.
Something like icing an asteroid is much easier than landing a manned crew on it to put a rocket on it or blow it up or the other things suggested in this thread. It could be done using entirely automated systems.
Oh, and I don't believe that methods for avoiding the extinction of our species should be patented...
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
foul-mouthed No arguement there.
perverted You must be taking about Rock Hound, the Buscemi character.
semi-illiterate WRONG! At least in the case of Buscemi's character who had TWO PhD's according to the movie. Let's get our facts straight here fellas!
Ruger
It's just another Republican stunt to divert attention from the Stock Market crisis.
So, the palermo value of 0.06 (p is just greater than one) means we are very, very slightly more likely to get hit by NT7 than we are to get hit by another astreroid of equal or greater size before 2019.
Wouldn't it be possible to change it's delta-v to place it in a stable circular orbit around the earth? Why piddle with little tinker-toy space stations when you could have a kilometer-size rock in a stable orbit to play with to make a real orbital outpost?
M$ no longer supports Windos NT, so there will be no NT7 to hit earth.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
Stick a webcam on it aimed back at us (to avoid destruction from head-on collisions) and send it on its merry way.
After that's done, everyone can be an astronaut, the same way everyone's sexually gratified and everyone's seen the world nowadays.
Hooray for webcammery!
> Those aliens are running NT7 already!
So when did Bill managed to find those guys for beta testing?
But anyway we are pretty safe - it's 17 years and I think it won't make it. My NT5 won't last longer than a month.
Even if it does make it we can simply send a hacker there and upload some virus to break its shield.
I'm growing old waiting for the world to end. Why can't the apocalypse hit tomorrow? ...Waiting for doom can be so tedious.
buford
On the rear side of NT7 a bumper sticker stating the following can be found, "If you can read this, I missed", or "If you can read this, you're a cockroach".
Send up M$ to claim the rock as IP... Then watch the rock crumble under the pressure.
PROBLEM SOLVED !!!
My mistake, I should have said that the Long Count Calendar resets on December 21, 2012. Some believe that this cycle reset will herald/predicts a catastrophic event, hence the earlier comment.
The article says that it is estimated to be 2K wide, but the illustration shows that it is several weather systems long AND wide.
I don't trust the BBC. I'm waiting for Al Roker's take on all this.
The worst part is that kids will get a day off from school that I had NO CHANCE of getting off.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
The cold hard fact is that if an asteroid wants to hit the earth it is going to hit the earth. There is more or less NOTHING we can do with our present technology, or technology in the forseeable future.
Even with this, 19 year lead in time I'd be surprised if the collective powers that be could get something organised to nudge the asteroid far enough off course that it ceases to be a threat. Most asteroids are not found until far far closer than this.
The ONLY way our species will survive is to expand off planet - for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is asteroid collision wiping out THIS colony.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
...to handle this scenerio.
Spaced Penguins
Ruger
You may be joking but there is some truth to what you say, I think we may need something like this to open our eyes a little. A lot of evidence points to asteroid impact likely being the biggest actual threat to mankind, but despite this far to many short sighted politicians wont give it a second thought! Specifically I'm talking about the Australian govt who a while back cut all funds to asteroid search programs, virtually leaving the entire southern hemisphere unchecked for such potential threats.
Hope you don't feel too safe with the fact that NASA and many European astronomers are searching the skies daily for these threats... Someone's letting us down.
(nb yep im an aussie..)
The torino scale is designed more for the general public. While the Palermo rating for this asteroid is now at -.14, which doesn't make it COMPLETELY unlikely, the Torino scale for NT7 is a 1 (maximum). Here is the definition of a 1 on the Torino Scale
Events Meriting Careful Monitoring
(Green Zone)
1
The chance of collision is extremely unlikely, about the same as a random object of the same size striking the Earth within the next few decades.
This sig intentionally left blank.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
well i was caught in a llama stampede when i was younger, so anyone within a 1000 mile radius of me might wanna consider moving...
Couldn't you do us all a favor and just move to someplace remote in 16 years? I'm sure we could all chip in and buy you a nice hard hat.
I'm a lot more worried about the asteroids that are discovered just AFTER missing earth. :-/
When we could be say analyzing the orbits of near-earth objects. Where is the distributed project for this?
Damn you!
Now the corporations monitoring my transmissions won't use my idea of patenting astroid deflection technology because of your comment! Curse you and your kind!
Time to go roll up a tin foil hat!
--Toq
17 year lead time? Sure. We went from 0 to the moon in 1/2 that time. Granted, it was a little tiny ship, and all they did was collect a few rocks, but faced with extinction by a 2km rock? No problem
We'd only get one shot, but I think it could be done. Nudge, crack, something.
Anyone that figured out a real nice way to make these NEO rocks bounce, blow up, deflect, time phase shift, or tractor away from the earth could pull some mass patents on that and laugh all the way to the bank.
Well, that's just the problem with our outdated patent system. Not enough incentive for developing killer astroid deflection systems. Before you get the chance to make your royalties, you find out the end of the world is just past your expiration date and those damn generic solutions and open source hackers are already waiting in the wings to save humankind for basement bargin prices. If you want to make any money at all you've pretty well gotta tie up your application for as long as possible and then slap injunctions on all the would-be good samaritan heroes with some killer submarine claims. We can only hope that they'll increase the term for anti-apocalyptic devices - otherwise I just can't think of any incentive to innovate.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
That sound you just heard were the swag of doomsday websites changing the predicted date of apocolypse from 2003 to 2019. ;)
which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
Yeah but I don't want to be inhaling LLAMA DUST because all the LLAMA'S were turned into a fine white powder from the heat of the impact.
That would even further our trade deficit with the countries bordering the Andes with white powder like substances. Columbia, Peru, lotta white powder (probably cut with llama ash) comes from there already.
We thought there might be a Brain Bug on P...
(please forgive me if somebody already fulfilled the obligatory Starship Troopers quote)
I'm sure if we ask really nice like, Vegeta will blow up that rock for us.
Don't worry about the alarmist graphic. You'll note that they BBC online site uses that "giant asteroid destroying the Earth" image every second on third asteroid story they run. Here's a few recent favorites with the scary image:
Asteroid Impact Centre Site Selected
Earth at Lower Risk of Impact
UK Centre to Study Asteroid Threat
So, yeah, basically you should ignore that image. It's not related to the story in any but the most basic level; it's a picture of an asteroid hitting the Earth... a stock one.
--
RumorsDaily
If the USA take care of this they will do it to save there own skins. The rest of the world can safly say "No, won't pay". For the USA to survive they HAVE TO DO IT, what are is the USA going to do? Only deflect the bit of the rock thats going to hit it... ?
I read at highest scores first. The thing that strikes me is that everybody's been moderated to funny sofar.
What if a big-ass meteorite was really heading into a collision-course with our planet. I'm pro-post-acopoliptic-minded, but such a thing would mean slashdot won't be the same, that's a shame. So please take it a little bit more serious, cause such a thing is inevitable in the end.
What would happen if, say China, would take away this threath by nuking it. We all read past episodes didn't we?
My thought is if there's a threath like this it's going to be a boxingmatch between the most powered governments at that time,
, they are just there to pull out their muscles to show how easy it is to take care of such a threath. It's not more than a marketing stumt that's been bit on the expensive side.
The UN will follow the country that saved us everbodies asses, not for these reasons, but because of they always follow the strongest leader. Even the people who found out about it are going to be heroes..
What do you expect if this were true?
"...run over by a llama..." ...LLLLLLLLLLAMATRON!
Sure wish Minter would port this gem -- not only was it fun, but absolutely hilarious to watch and the sounds, the sounds!. Llamatron would be a great game to play whilst waiting to get bonked by a 2km rock.
Guess I'll have to do the Atari ST emulation setup again. Anyone know where to get the TOS ROMs file?
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Can't we find a way to use this hunk of space rock to our advantage? Maybe we could fire enough missiles into it to dislodge a chunk of burning rock and kill the SNAKEHEAD FISH once and for all...if it works on Llamas, it must work on the damned ASIAN MENACE...
NT7, 16 years before crashing?
ha.. haha.... bwahahahahha. Good one Slashdot, you made my day
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
After a brief press conference today, president George W. Bush was seriously mauled, when he declared war on The Rock, actor/wrestler Dwayne Johnson, which resulted in a surprise drop kick attack followed by a head butt and a pile driver by the professional wrestler, before White House Spokesperson Ari Fleisher managed to stop laughing out loud and informing the press and Dwayne Johnson that the President meant " a rock" and not "" The Rock". President Bush was rushed to the local hospital where doctors feared severe brain damage, but concluded that "there was nothing there to begin with, so it couldn't be hurt anyhow".
The President later appologised for his mistake blaming it on terrorists who had sabotaged his statement.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
... then the asteroids have already won!
Do you like German cars?
Perhaps a group of interns will make off with it, eliminating the threat and saving planet Earth...
So, their error is tens of millions kilometers, or several 10^10 meters. The radius of earth is roughly 10^6 meters. The chance of the asteroid hitting us with this data is proportional to the AREA, which means the ratio of these quantities squared. So the chance is (10^6/10^10)^2 = 10^-8, which is 0.000001%. I wonder if I have a better chance of winning the lottery?
Couldn't we just unleash those 4 NASA interns on this issue?
In a couple of weeks a NASA spokeman could say something along the lines of "We put two an two together. There was a big asteroid heading towards earth. Now theres a big asteroid for sale on Ebay. Problem solved"
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
INCONCEIVABLE!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I bet this would make for a great movie plot.
Considering that we could be fried by a white dwarf accumilating mass from a nearby star, causing it to go supernova, I think a continent is the least we could lose:
2 .html U CK .HTM
http://www.cosmiverse.com/news/space/space0523020
http://www.dispatch.co.za/2002/05/24/features/D
Ever put a bug in a microwave? MUAH!
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
Okay everyone uses the same damn graphic to depict asteroid-enduced armageddon. Is the atmosphere really so similar to the pond down the street? Will the earth really resemble that at the point of impact if I were watching some point out in space? While this rock is 2 kilometers wide, the picture depicts something the size of Texas, if I'm not mistaken. So when mir crashed into the sea did it produce a similar 'cannonball' effect? This to me is just the epitome of embellishment. And besides, I'm sure that by 2019, the resources on this planet will be so depleted that we'll actually welcome the additional iron this will bring in.
Well, it's called NT 7, so you have a point.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Using unrealistic extremes to make an idea sound moronic makes you a shithead. Think first.
It's a fallacy of logic called "excluded middle" (considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities); a common failing of those who do not understand how to construct a logical arugment. See the above link for a list of other common logical fallacies.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It doesn't look so bad. -0.14 on the Palermo Scale (recently downgraded?).
You mean slashdot-like moderators can save us from asteroids just by modding the rock down?
I'm impressed!
Better a rock than me.
Table-ized A.I.
time to go insainly into debt!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
A llama bit my sister once...
"I am not a shrimp - I am a King Prawn! Pepe, "Muppets in Space"
The US government thinks the "war on terror" is more important than the space program. It's too bad the only country with the technological power to stop worldwide destruction is bent on causing it.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Regarding the title, "A rock moves in space".
Moving in space is relative. Relative to the earth, *every* rock in space is moving (unless maybe there is something in those Lagrange points, or whatever you call them.)
Further, the solar system is orbiting around the galactic center, and the galaxy (Milky Way) is moving toward the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
Personally, I don't want to go the the Virgo Cluster. Too many galaxies there to bump into and trigger nasty big-star supernovas in the process. But I have no choice in the matter.
Damned gravity.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh boy, here we go again.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
This is funny because M$ sux0rz LOL!!!!!!
The chance of winning the lottery is roughly 1 in 10^7. So you have about 10 times better odds of winning the lottery than this asteroid hitting us. Ridiculous.
Well, if some extinction level event was about to happen, I would expect all the well-connected people to raise a lot of cash in order to buy a lot of survival goods for their escape rockets, mile-deep bunkers, and what not.
...
Maybe that's why there's been so much selling on the stock market lately
When/if this becomes a confirmed earth course, you can rest assured that the experts would never go public with it.
Last thing people want is a whole continent of people on the run.
by the fifteen year asteroid annihilation project but the asteroid killer satellite was destroyed when it slammed into the asteroid. Apparently calculations were done based on feet instead of meters.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
2002-NT7 was discovered 9-Jul-2002
There have been 102 observations (as of 8 hour ago) up thru 22-Jul-2002
Radar images show that the object is between 2 and 2.1km in size. The mass is about 1.1e13 Kg. This is somewhat light for an asteroid of this size. This suggests that it may belong to the "pile of compressed rock" set as opposed the more solid "iron chunk" types.
Impact speed is high, about 28.5 km/s. This speed is due to the nearly "head on" approaches for most of the close approaches.
There is too little data and some of the observations may suffer from systematic errors. So over the next week or two the odds of impacting will change.
Currently the odds of being hit by 2002-NT7 is about 1 in 100,000. The problem comes from how Earth deflects it during some of its close-by approaches.
The orbit of 2002-NT7 takes about 837 days. The path takes out as far as Mars and just inside Earth's orbit.
Close approach dates are:
The odds, given the current limited observations, of impacting us 2019 thru 2051 are slim. The real problems show up in the 2060 and every 7 years after that. Small changes due to the close passes in 2019 thru 2051 make it hard to pin down later on.
If this rock hits the earth then our way of life as we know it would surely end. Such an impact would be on par (but somewhat less) with the impact that ended the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
It is not known where on earth it might impact. Too early to tell. Not that is matters for a rock of this size ... anyway on early
will suffer sooner or slightly later.
Looking at the raw data: when one tosses out one set data (all from the same source) that seems to have a systematic error: then things get worse. That is, the limited data minus this one source suggests that the odds of being impacted on or after 2060 are much more likely. But again, more independent observations are needed before one can say all this with more certainty.
IMHO: 2002-NT7 does not have much of a chance to hit us before 2060. From 2060 on, things get really ugly.
Stay tuned ...
chongo (was here)
my birthday is february 1st
looks like it will be another very merry unbirthday when i turn 49
of course i'll probably have died from one of the other 300 apocalyptic visions before then
(planet x? 2012? infected hangnails?)
This is the only rule that's true.
Won't you feel like an ass when it misses?
Ok people... let's do some number crunching here. The asteriod is 2km wide, the distance between the earth and the sun is 149,597,890 km. the entire area that a asteriod could intersect the earth's orbit given by 4*pi*r^3 is 4.2071^25 km. The asteriods detected so far that intersect earth's orbit: 18,344 Diameter of earth: 12,756 km. Probability of an asteroid on a random trajectory hitting earth: 1/4.2071^25. Now let's look at this in perspective people! 1/4.2071^25. is VERY SMALL NUMBER. Obviously asteriods will want to be swayed into a orbital plane by the gravitational effects of the sun but who CARES? Think small number. Think low probability. If it orbits earth every 837 days and we have 17 years before impact (if it does impact at all), That reduces the probability even more. Stop thinking of the solar system as a simple thing. It isn't! Each planet has it's own gravity well and can change another object's trajectory easily. We don't have the computing power nor the time to catalogue all of the gravity wells to produce a perfect solar system model so that 17 year prediction is going to be INNACURATE! My simple message to people that are getting scared: don't. Everyone makes mistakes, even us scientists. Also don't believe everything the newspaper says, we don't need a world panic. Now excuse me I have to go outside and try to get a llama to run over me. SOURCES: The Ever Faithful Google http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/
Sorry, but this has to be one for NTK's habitual BBC graphics mock-fest. The asteroid depicted is somewhat larger than Earth's moon.
- undoware.ca
This should serve as a wake up call. I mean come on, even if they confirmed it tomarrow that it is going to hit. Would 15 years be enough time to come up with a solution? The way everything because political and environmental (damm environmentalists). We'd be very lucky if we could get any kind of plan put into action.
we never have to upgrade to 64-bit to avoid Y2K38 =)
The end [is|isn't] near!
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
Beavis>AAHHHHH WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!
Butthead> Shut up Buttknocker, I'm trying to watch TV.
Earth needs to be destroyed to make way for the hyperspace bypass.
When will Microsoft learn... Here's an excerpt from some computer magazine's review of the new "enhanced" version of NT... "In one review the editor had this to say about Microsoft's new version of WindowsNT: "All in all it was a massive undertaking. Massive in scale. It ran quite fast in all test's, giving a maximum of 28km/h (kilo-mips/hertz). But when it crashes... it takes most everything down with it....""
--Kevin
Anyone remember the author?
I looked at the simulation at NASA and as far as I am concerned, Earth already crashed with this rock at 1st February 1980. It was about 20 times closer to Earth than it is supposed to be in 2019.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
the chances of us getting hit by a sizable asteroid are almost nil. can slashdot PLEASE show some scientific common sense and NOT perpetuate the hysteria?
I knew NT would end up killing us all.
Dude, that's the most relavent thing I've ever read. Your a genius!
According to Top Security Specialists our society will be dead by 2005. And according to Dubya we will be dead before that rock hits us... so WHAT THE FUCK DO WE CARE?
...in the "I wouldn't worry" camp. But if you *like* worrying, take a look at all the other objects out there:
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Could someone please mod this up?
Synergy is your friend
Yeah. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.
I wish there were a big rock of crack in space that was going to land on Earth, but hopefully sooner than 2019.
probablility that NT 17 will be a serious problem is small, but for gods sake, arent there better things to do than joke every time the letters NT appear somewhere? Tracking these asteroids is a issue we should be taking seriously and not an excuse to make childish and moronic comments.
Well the consequences of being hit by a lama are not as severe as billions of deaths and an potential ice age. When you multiply the risk by the consequences maybe there's room for some prudent concern over this rock. Divide by the cost of doing something about it to figure out if you should take action. Right now they're observing to see if they can reduce the error in the projected orbit to see if it really is on target for Earth. That seems like the right course of action. I'm not losing sleep over this yet but I want to know where that rock is headed.
The asteroid is actually stationary and peaceful. *We're* going to slam into it...and the World's Governments are trying to cover-up this earthly act of terrorism.
-psyco
Some of the moons in the solar system are in decaying orbits, but the Moon's orbit is expanding by about 4 cm a year.
Friction causes the tidal bulges on the earth to be dragged slightly forward of the earth-moon line. The moon's gravity exerts a torque on the earth through these bulges and causes the earth to slow down in it's spin. The lost angular momentum ends up in the moon's orbit. If the moon's orbital period was shorter than the earth's day, and the moon still tidally locked, the orbital momentum would be transferred in the other direction and the orbit would decay.
Also mentioned in the BBC article is that 2002 NT17 is the first body ever given a positive Palermo technical scale. That is bad enough new in-of-itself.
Though I'm sure future observations will show that NT17 will miss us, what if they don't?
Errors in observations can sometimes have a way of cancelling each other out so that at the end of the day the result that was error-prone is the same as that which is error-free.
Let us go to the stars, dream new dreams, and renew the embers of hope that have long since grown cold.
I don't know which is more scary -- the idea of an asteroid hitting the Earth, or the name "NT7".
According to this it looks like
2002 NY40 will be closer on Aug 17th of this year
than NT comes in 2019. Check for yourself.
Hypothetically speaking...
What if we put more resources into tracking NT7 and found out that it will be MUCH closer than we thought? What if we found out that there would be a substantial chance of NT7 hitting earth?
You know what scares me? That the US government would say something how it isn't cost feasible to attempt do anything. Nuking has been discussed before but I don't think that the US would even bother to throw up the nukes because we would deplete our dangerous nukes and other countries would see as vulnerable. Paranoia.
I could already see this... Congress would debate about this for ages and boom. it would be too late. if it does hit earth, i hope it hits capitol hill or wherever our politicians will be hiding. Gawd I can only hope so. For the good of earth something like this need to happen.
I hope to god it hits Quebecc.
NASA's NEO program currently states that NT7 has a .00001 chance of striking Earth at all, and a .000052 chance of specifically hitting us in 2017.
Of course, the calculations will be refined as time passes, but from my first looks at the slim probabilities, it doesn't seem like it will be much of a problem. The only difference seems to be that it is slightly more likely to hit than previously discovered NEOs.
Prologue
.
."
." Hamner shrugged and continued, "I called Brown this afternoon. Sent him a plane ticket, because I want to meet him. He didn't even want to come until I promised to show him around the solar observatory at Mount Wilson. That's all he really cares about! Sunspots! He found the comet by accident!"
."
."
."
.
Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets.
Chaos was a local thickening in the interstellar medium. Its mass was great enough to attract itself, to hold itself, and it thickened further. Eddies formed. Particles of dust and frozen gas drifted together, and touched, and clung. Flakes formed, and then loose snowballs of frozen gases. Over the ages a whirlpool pattern developed, a fifth of a light-year across. The center contracted further. Local eddies, whirling frantically near the center of the storm, collapsed to form planets.
It formed as a cloud of snow, far from the whirlpool's axis. Ices joined the swarm, but slowly, slowly, a few molecules at a time. Methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide; and sometimes denser objects struck it and embedded themselves, so that it held rocks, and iron. Now it was a single stable mass. Other ices formed, chemicals that could only be stable in the interstellar cold.
It was four miles across when the disaster came.
The end was sudden. In no more than fifty years, the wink of an eye in its lifetime, the whirlpool's center collapsed. A new sun burned fearfully bright.
Myriads of comets flashed to vapor in that hellish flame Planets lost their atmospheres. A great wind of light pressure stripped an the loose gas and dust from the inner system and hurled it at the stars.
It hardly noticed. It was two hundred times as far from the sun as the newly formed planet Neptune. The new sun was no more than an uncommonly bright star, gradually dimming now.
Down in the maelstrom there was frantic activity. Gases boiled out of the rocks of the inner system. Complex chemicals developed in the seas of the third planet. Endless hurricanes boded across and within the gas-giant worlds. The inner worlds would never know calm.
The only real calm was at the edge of interstellar space, in the halo, where millions of thinly spread comets, each as far from its nearest brother as Earth is from Mars, cruise forever through the cold black vacuum. Here its endless quiet sleep could last for billions of years . . . but not forever. Nothing lasts forever.
1
THE ANVIL
Against boredom, even the gods themselves struggle in vain.
Nietzsche
January: The Portent
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
William Shakespeare, Richard II
The blue Mercedes turned into the big circular drive of the Beverly Hills mansion at precisely five after six. Julia Sutter was understandably startled. "Good God, George, it's Tim! And dead on time."
George Sutter joined her at the window. That was Tim's car, yup. He grunted and turned back to the bar. His wife's parties were always important events, so why, after weeks of careful engineering and orchestration, was she terrified that no one would show up? The psychosis was so common there ought to be a name for it.
Tim Hamner, though, and on time. That was strange. Tim's money was third-generation. Old money, by Los Angeles standards, and Tim had a lot of it. He only came to parties when he wanted to.
The Sutters' architect had been in love with concrete. There were square walls and square angles for the house, and softly curving free-form pools in the gardens outside; not unusual for Beverly Hills, but startling to easterners. To their right was a traditional Monterey villa of white stucco and red tile roofs, to the left a Norman chateau magically transplanted to California. The Sutter place was set well back from the street so that it seemed divorced from the tall palms the city fathers had decreed for this part of Beverly Hills. A great loop of drive ran up to the house itself. On the porch stood eight parking attendants, agile young men in red jackets.
Hamner left the motor running and got out of the car. The "key left" reminder screamed at him. Ordinarily Tim would have snarled a powerful curse upon Ralph Nader's hemorrhoids, but tonight he never noticed. His eyes were dreamy; his hand patted at his coat pocket, then stole inside. The parking attendant hesitated. People didn't usually tip until they were leaving. Hamner kept walking, dreamy-eyed, and the attendant drove away.
Hamner glanced back at the red-coated young men, wondering if one or another might be interested in astronomy. They were almost always from UCLA or Loyola University. Could be . . . Reluctantly he decided against it and went inside, his hand straying from time to time to feel the telegram crackle under his fingers.
The big double doors opened onto an enormous area that extended right through the house. Large arches, rimmed by red brick, separated the entry from the living areas: a mere suggestion of walls between rooms. The floor was continuous throughout: brown tile laid with bright mosaic patterns. Of the two hundred and more guests expected, fewer than a dozen were clustered near the bar. Their talk was bright and cheery, louder than necessary. They looked isolated in all that empty space, all that expanse of tables with candles and patterned tablecloths. There were nearly as many uniformed attendants as guests. Hamner noticed none of this. He'd grown up with it.
Julia Sutter broke from the tiny group of guests and hurried to meet him. There was a tight look around her eyes: Her face had been lifted, and was younger than her hands. She made a kissing motion a fraction of an inch from Tim's cheek and said, "Timmy, I'm glad to see you!" Then she noticed his radiant smile.
She drew back a little and her eyes narrowed. The note of mock concern in her voice covered real worry. "My God, Timmy! What have you been smoking?"
Tim Hamner was tall and bony, with just a touch of paunch to break the smooth lines. His long face was built for melancholy. His mother's family had owned a highly successful cemetery-mortuary, and it showed. Tonight, though, his face was cracked wide apart in a blazing smile, and there was a strange light in his eyes. He said, "The Hamner-Brown Comet!"
"Oh!" Julia stared. "What?" That didn't make sense. You don't smoke a comet. She tried to puzzle it out while her eyes roved to her husband-was he having a second drink already?-to the door-when were the others coming? The invitations had been explicit. The important guests were coming early-weren't they?-and couldn't stay late, and-
She heard the low purr of a big car outside, and through the narrow windows framing the door saw half a dozen people spilling out of a dark limousine. Tim would have to take care of himself. She patted his arm and said, "That's nice, Timmy. Excuse me, please?" A hasty intimate smile and she was gone.
If it bothered Hamner it didn't show. He ambled toward the bar. Behind him Julia went to welcome her most important guest, Senator Jellison, with his entourage. He always brought everyone, administrative assistants as well as family. Tim Hamner's smile was blazing when he reached the bar.
"Good evening, Mr. Hamner."
"Good it is. Tonight I'm walking on pink clouds. Congratulate me, Rodrigo, they're going to name a comet after me!"
Michael Rodriguez, laying out glasses behind the bar, missed a beat. "A comet?"
"Right. Hamner-Brown Comet. It's coming, Rodrigo, you can see it, oh, around June, give or take a few weeks." Hamner took out the telegram and opened it with a snap.
"We will not see it from Los Angeles," Rodriguez laughed. "What may I serve you tonight?"
"Scotch rocks. You could see it. It could be as big as Halley's Comet." Hamner took the drink and looked about. There was a group around George Sutter. The knot of people drew Tim like a magnet. He clutched the telegram in one hand and his drink in another, as Julia brought the new guests over and introduced them.
Senator Arthur Clay Jellison was built something like a brick, muscular rather than overweight. He was bulky, jovial and blessed with thick white hair. He was photogenic as hell, and half the people in the country would have recognized him. His voice sounded exactly as it did on TV: resonant, enveloping, so that everything he said took on a mysterious importance.
Maureen Jellison, the Senator's daughter, had long, dark red hair and pale clear skin and a beauty that would have made Tim Hamner shy on any other night; but when Julia Sutter turned to him and (finally!) said, "What was that about a-"
"Hamner-Brown Comet" Tim waved the telegram. "Kitt Peak Observatory had confirmed my sighting! It's a real comet, it's my comet, they're naming it after me!"
Maureen Jellison's eyebrows went up slightly. George Sutter drained his glass before asking the obvious question. "Who's Brown?"
Hamner shrugged; his untasted drink slopped a little onto the carpet, and Julia frowned. "Nobody's ever heard of him," Tim said. "But the International Astronomical Union says it was a simultaneous sighting."
"So what you own is half a comet," said George Sutter.
Tim laughed, quite genuinely. "The day you own half a comet, George, I'll buy all those bonds you keep trying to sell me. And buy your drinks all night." He downed his scotch rocks in two swallows.
When he looked up he'd lost his audience. George was headed back to the bar. Julia had Senator Jellison's arm and was steering him toward new arrivals. The Senator's administrative assistants followed in her wake.
"Half a comet is quite a lot," Maureen said. Tim Hamner turned to find her still there. "Tell me, how do you see anything through the smog?"
She sounded interested. She looked interested. And she could have gone with her father. The scotch was a warm trace in his throat and stomach. Tim began telling her about his mountain observatory, not too many miles past Mount Wilson but far enough into the Angeles Mountains that the lights from Pasadena didn't ruin the seeing. He kept food supplies there, and an assistant, and he'd spent months of nights watching the sky, tracking known asteroids and the outer moons, letting his eye and brain learn the territory, and forever watching for the dot of light that shouldn't be there, the anomaly that would . .
Maureen Jellison had a familiar glazed look in her eyes. He asked, "Hey, am I boring you?"
She was instantly apologetic. "No, I'm sorry, it was just a stray thought."
"I know I sometimes get carried away."
She smiled and shook her head; a wealth of deep red hair rippled and danced. "No, really. Dad's on the Finance Subcommittee for Science and Astronautics. He loves pure science, and I caught the bug from him. I was just. . . You're a man who knows what he wants, and you've found it. Not many can say that." She was suddenly very serious.
Tim laughed, embarrassed; he was only just getting used to the fact. "What can I do for an encore?"
"Yes, exactly. What do you do when you've walked on the moon, and then they cancel the space program?"
"Why . . . I don't know. I've heard they sometimes have troubles. . .
"Don't worry about it," Maureen said. "You're on the moon now. Enjoy it."
The hot dry wind known as the Santa Ana blew across the Los Angeles hills, clearing the city of smog. Lights glittered and danced in the early darkness. Harvey Randall, his wife, Loretta, beside him, drove his green Toronado with the windows open, relishing the summer weather in January. When they arrived at the Sutter place he turned the car over to the red-jacketed attendant, and paused while Loretta adjusted her smile before moving through the big front doors.
They found the usual mob scene for a Beverly Hills party. A hundred people were scattered among the little tables, and another hundred in clumps; a mariachi group in one corner played gay background music and the singer, deprived of his microphone, was still doing pretty well telling everyone about the state of his corazon. They greeted their hostess and parted: Loretta found a conversation, and Harvey located the bar by searching out the thickest cluster of people. He collected two gin and tonics.
Bits of conversation ricocheted around him. "We didn't let him on the white rug, you see. So the dog had the cat 'treed' in the middle of the rug and was pacing sentry duty around the perimeter...."
". . . was this beautiful young chick one seat ahead of me on the plane. A real knockout, even if all I could see was her hair and the back of her head. I was thinking of a way to meet her when she looked back and said, 'Uncle Pete! What are you doing here?'"
". . . man, it's helped a lot! When I call and say it's Commissioner Robbins, I get right through. Haven't had a customer miss a good option since the Mayor appointed me."
They stuck in his mind, these bits and pieces of story. For Harvey Randall it was an occupational hazard of the TV documentary business; he couldn't help listening. He didn't want to, really. People fascinated him. He would have liked to follow up some of these glimpses into other minds.
He looked around for Loretta, but she was too short to stand out in this crowd. Instead he picked out high-piled hair of unconvincing orange-red: Brenda Tey, who'd been talking to Loretta before Harvey went to the bar. He made for that point, easing past shoals of elbows attached to drinks.
"Twenty billion bucks, and all we got was rocks! Those damn big rockets, billions of dollars dropped into the drink. Why spend all that money out there when we could be-"
"Bullshit," said Harvey.
George Sutter turned in surprise. "Oh. Hello, Harv.... It'll be the same with the Shuttte. Just the same. It's all money thrown down the drain-"
"That turns out not to be the case." The voice was clear, sweet and penetrating. It cut right through George's manifesto, and it couldn't be ignored. George stopped in midsentence.
Harvey found a spectacular redhead in a green one-shoulder party gown. Her eyes met his when he looked at her, and he looked away first. He smiled and said, "Is that the same as bullshit?"
"Yes. But more tactful." She grinned at him, and Harvey let his own smile stay in place instead of fading away. She turned to the attack. "Mr. Sutter, NASA didn't spend the Apollo money on hardware. We bought research on how to build the hardware, and we've still got it. Knowledge can't go into the drink. As for the Shuttle, that's the price to get out there where we can really learn things, and not much of a price at that...."
A woman's breast and shoulder rubbed playfully against Harvey's arm. That had to be Loretta, and it was. He handed her her drink. His own was half gone. When Loretta started to speak he gestured her silent, a little more rudely than he usually did, and ignored her look of protest.
The redhead knew her stuff. If careful reason and logic could win arguments, she won. But she had a lot more: She had every male's eye, and a slow southern drawl that made every word count, and a voice so pure and musical that any interruption seemed stuttered or mumbled.
The unequal contest ended when George discovered that his drink was empty and, with visible relief, broke for the bar.
Smiling triumph, the girl turned toward Harvey, and he nodded his congratulations.
"I'm Harvey Randall. My wife, Loretta."
"Maureen Jellison. Most pleased." She frowned for half a second. "I remember now. You were the last U.S. newsman in Cambodia." She shook hands, formally, with Harvey and Loretta. "And wasn't your newscopter shot down over there?"
"Twice," Loretta said proudly. "Harvey brought his Air Force pilot out. Fifty miles of enemy lines."
Maureen nodded gravely. She was fifteen years younger than the Randalls, and seemed very self-possessed. "So now you're here. Are you natives?"
"I am," Harvey said. "Loretta's from Detroit-"
"Grosse Pointe," Loretta said automatically.
"-but I was born in L.A." Harvey could never quite bring himself to tell Loretta's half-truth for her. "We're scarce, we natives."
"And what do they have you doing now?" Maureen asked.
"Documentaries. News features, mostly," Harvey said.
"I know who you are," Loretta said in some awe. "I just met your father. Senator Jellison."
"That's right." Maureen looked thoughtful, then grinned broadly. "Say, if you do news features there's somebody you ought to meet. Tim Hamner."
Harvey frowned. The name seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it. "Why?"
Loretta said, "Hamner? A young man with a frightening grin?" She giggled. "He's a teensy bit drunk. He wouldn't let anyone else talk. At all. He owns half a comet."
"That's him," Maureen said. Her smile made Loretta feel part of a conspiracy.
"He also owns a lot of soap," Harvey said.
It was Maureen's turn to look blank.
"I just remembered," Harvey said. "He inherited the Kalva Soap Company."
"May be, but he's prouder of the comet," Maureen said. "I don't blame him. Dear old Dad could have been President once, but he's never come close to discovering a comet." She scanned the room until she spotted her target. "The tall man in the suit with white and maroon in it. You'll know him by his smile. Get anywhere near him and he'll tell you all about it."
Harvey felt Loretta tugging at his arm, and reluctantly looked away from Maureen. When he looked back someone else had snared her. He went to fetch another pair of drinks.
As always, Harvey Randall drank too much and wondered why he came to these parties. But he knew; Loretta saw them as a way to participate in his life. She didn't enjoy his field trips. The one attempt to take her on a hike with their son had been a disaster. When she went with him on location she wanted to stay in the best hotels, and if she dutifully came to the small bars and gathering places Harvey preferred, it was obvious that she was working hard to hide her unhappiness.
But she was very much at home at parties like this one, and tonight's had been especially good. She even managed a private conversation with Senator Jellison. Harvey left her with the Senator and went to find more drinks. "Light on the gin, Rodriguez. Please."
The bartender smiled and mixed the drink without comment. Harvey stood with it. Tim Hamner was alone at one of the little tables. He was looking at Harvey, but the eyes were dreamy; they saw nothing. And that smile. Harvey made his way across the room and dropped into the other chair at the table. "Mr. Hamner? Harvey Randall. Maureen Jellison said I should say 'Comet.'"
Hamner's face came alight. The grin broadened, if that were possible. He took a telegram out of his pocket and waved it. "Right! The sighting was confirmed this afternoon. Hamner-Brown Comet."
"You skipped a step."
"She didn't tell you anything? Well! I'm Tim Hamner. Astronomer. Well, not professional, but my equipment's professional. And I work at it-anyway. I'm an amateur astronomer. A week ago I found a smear of light not far from Neptune. A dim smear. It didn't belong there. I kept looking at it, and it moved. I studied it long enough to be sure, and then I reported it. It's a new comet. Kitt Peak just confirmed it. The IAU is naming it after me-and Brown."
For just that moment, envy flashed through Harvey Randall like a lightning strike. It was gone as quickly; he made it go, shoving it into the bottom of his mind where he could pull it up and look at it later. He was ashamed of it. But without that flash he would have asked a more tactful first question. "Who's Brown?"
Hamner's face didn't change. "Gavin Brown is a kid in Centerville, Iowa. Ground his own mirror to build his telescope. He reported the comet at the same time I did. The IAU rules it a simultaneous sighting. If I hadn't waited to be certain . .
"When will we see this comet? That is," Harvey backtracked, "will it be visible at all?"
"Much too early to ask. Wait a month. Watch the news."
"I'm not supposed to watch the news. I'm supposed to report the news," said Harvey. "And this could be news. Tell me more."
Hamner was eager to do that. He rattled on, while Harvey nodded with a broadening grin. Beautiful! You didn't have to know what all the words meant to know the equipment was expensive, and probably photogenic to boot. Expensive and elaborate equipment, and the kid with a bent pin for a hook and a willow stick for a rod had caught just as big a fish as the millionaire!
Millionaire. "Mr. Hamner, if this comet turns out to be worth a documentary-"
"Well, it might. And the discovery would be. How amateur astronomers can be important . .
Hooked, by God! "What I was going to ask was, if we can make a documentary on the comet, would Kalva Soap be interested in sponsoring it?"
The change in Hamner was subtle, but it was there. Harvey instantly revised his opinion of the man. Hamner had a lot of experience with people after his money. He was an enthusiast, but hardly a fool.
"Tell me, Mr. Randall, didn't you do that thing on the Alaskan glacier?"
"Harvey. Yes."
"It stunk."
"Sure did," Harvey agreed. "The sponsor insisted on control. And got it. And used it. I didn't inherit control of a big company." And to hell with you, too, Mr. Timothy Comet Hamner.
"But I did. And this would be worth doing. You did the Hell's Gate Dam story too, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"I liked that one."
"So did I."
"Good." Hamner nodded several times. "Look, this could be worth sponsoring. Even if the comet never becomes visible, and I think it will. Lord knows they spend enough of the advertising budget sponsoring crap that nobody wants to watch. Might as well tell a story worth telling. Harvey, you need a refill."
They went to the bar. The party was thinning out fast. The Jellisons were just leaving, but Loretta had found another conversation. Harvey recognized a city councilman who'd been after Harvey's station to do a show on a park that was his current goal. He probably thought Loretta would influence Harvey-which was correct-and that Harvey had influence over what the network and its Los Angeles station did- which was a laugh.
Rodriguez was busy for the moment and they stood at the bar. "There's all kinds of excellent new equipment for studying comets," Hamner said. "Including a big orbital telescope only used once, for Kahoutek. Scientists all over the world will want to know how comets differ, how Kahoutek was different from Hamner-Brown. Lot of scientists right here. Cal Tech, and the planetary astronomers at JPL. They'll all want to know more about Hamner-Brown."
Hamner-Brown resonated in his mouth, and Tim Hamner obviously loved the taste. "You see, comets aren't just something pretty up in the sky. They're left over from the big gas cloud that formed the solar system. If we could really learn something about comets-maybe send up a space probe- we'd know more about what the original cloud of gas and dust was like before it fell in on itself and made the Sun and the planets and moons and things like that."
"You're sober," Harvey said in wonder.
Hamner was startled. Then he laughed. "I meant to get drunk just to celebrate, but I guess I've been talking instead of drinking." Rodriguez came over and put drinks in front of them. Hamner lifted his scotch rocks in a salute.
"The way your eyes glow," Harvey said, "I thought you must be drunk. But what you say makes a lot of sense. I doubt we could get a space probe launched, but what the hell, we could try. Only you're talking about more than a single documentary for something like that. Listen, is there a chance? I mean, could we send a probe into the comet? Because I know some people in the aerospace industry, and . .
And, thought Harvey, that would be a story. Who can I get for editor? he wondered. And Charlie Bascomb's available to do camera....
"Jellison, too," Hamner said. "He'd be for it. But look, Harv, I know a lot about comets, but not that much. It's all guesswork right now. Be a few months before Hamner-Brown gets to perihelion." He added quickly, "Closest point to the Sun. Which isn't the same as the closest point to the Earth. . .
"How close will that be?" Harvey asked.
Hamner shrugged. "Haven't analyzed the orbit yet. Maybe close. Anyway, Hamner-Brown will be moving fast when it rounds the Sun. It will have fallen all the way from the halo, out there beyond Pluto, a long way. You understand, I won't really be computing the orbit. I'll have to wait for the professionals, just like you."
Harvey nodded. They lifted their glasses and drank.
"But I like the idea," Hamner said. "There's going to be a lot of scientific pressure for studies of Hamner-Brown, and it wouldn't hurt to push the idea with the general public. I like it."
"Of course," Harvey said carefully, "I'd have to have a firm commitment on sponsorship before I could do much work on this. Are you sure Kalva Soap would be interested? The show might pull a good audience-but it might not."
Hamner nodded. "Kahoutek," he said. "They were burned on that one before. Nobody wants to be disappointed again."
"Yeah."
"So you can count on Kalva Soap. Let's get across why it's important to study comets even if you can't see them. Because I can promise the sponsorship, but I can't promise the comet will deliver. It might not be visible at all. Don't tell people anything more than that."
"I have a reputation for getting my facts straight."
"When your sponsor doesn't interfere," Hamner said.
"Even then, I have my facts straight."
"Good. But right now there aren't any facts. Hamner-Brown is pretty big. It has to be, or I couldn't have seen it out that far. And it looks to get pretty close to the Sun. It has a chance of being spectacular, but really, it's impossible to tell. The tail could stretch way-y-y out, or it could just blow away. It depends on the comet."
"Yeah. Look," Harvey said, "can you name one newsman who lost his reputation because of Kahoutek?" He nodded at the puzzled look that got. "Right. None. No chance. The public blamed the astronomers for blowing it all out of proportion. Nobody blamed the news people."
"Why should they? You were quoting the astronomers."
"Half the time," Harvey agreed. "But we quoted the ones who said exciting things. Two interviews. One man says Kahoutek is going to be the Big Christmas Comet. Another says, well, it's going to be a comet, but you might not see it without field glasses. Guess which tape gets shown on the six o'clock news?"
Hamner laughed. He was draining his glass when Julia Sutter came over.
"Busy, Tim?" she asked, but didn't wait for an answer. "Your cousin Barry is making a fool of himself out in the kitchen. Can you get him to go home?" She spoke low and urgently.
Harvey hated her. Was Hamner sober? Would he remember any of this in the morning? Damn.
"Be right with you, Julia," Hamner said. He broke free and made his way back to Harvey. "Just remember, our series on Hamner-Brown is going to be honest. Even if it costs ratings. Kalva Soap can afford it. When do you want to start?"
Maybe there was some justice in the world after all. "Right away, Tim. I want some footage of you and Gavin Brown up at Mount Wilson. And his comments when you show him your setup."
Hamner grinned. He liked that. "Right. Call you tomorrow."
Loretta slept quietly in the other bed.
Harvey had been staring at the ceiling long enough. He knew this feeling. He would have to get up.
He got up. He made cocoa in a big mug and carried it into his study. Kipling greeted him with tail-thumping joy, and he rubbed the German shepherd's ears absently as he opened the drapes. Los Angeles was semidark below. The Santa Ana had blown away the smog. Freeways were rivers of moving light even at this late hour. Other major streets were marked by a grid of lights whose yellow-orange brilliance Harvey noticed for the first time. Hamner had said they played hell with the seeing at Mount Wilson Observatory.
The city stretched away endlessly. High-rise apartments in shadowed darkness. Blue squares of still-lit swimming pools. Cars. Bright flashing light winking at intervals, the police helicopter on patrol. He left the window and went to the desk, picked up a book, set it down; scratched the dog's ears once more; and very gently, because he didn't trust himself to move rapidly, put the cocoa on the desk.
He'd never had any trouble getting to sleep in the mountains on camping trips. He'd get into his sleeping bag just after dark and sleep all night. It was only in the city that he had insomnia. For years he'd tried to fight it by lying rigid on his back. These nights he got up and stayed up until he was sleepy. Only he didn't usually have trouble on Wednesdays.
Wednesdays, he and Loretta made love.
He'd tried to fight that habit once, but that was years ago; and yes, Loretta would come to his bed on a Monday night; but not always, and never in the afternoon when it was light; and it was never as good on a Tuesday or a Saturday because on Wednesdays they knew it was coming, they were ready. By now the habit had set like concrete.
He shook away those thoughts and concentrated on his good fortune. Hamner had meant it. The documentary would be made. He thought about problems. They'd need an expert on low-light photography; probably time-lapse for the comet itself. This would be fun. Have to thank Maureen Jellison for putting me onto Hamner, he thought. Nice girl. Vivid. More real than most of the women I meet. Too bad Loretta was standing right there....
He submerged that thought so quickly that he was barely aware of it. It was a habit he'd developed long ago. He knew too many men who talked themselves into hating their wives when they didn't really dislike them at all. The grass wasn't always greener on the other side of the fence; a lesson that he'd learned from his father and never forgotten. His father had been an architect and builder, always close to the Hollywood set but never quite catching the big contracts that would make him rich; but he'd gone to plenty of Hollywood parties.
He'd also had time to take Harvey up into the mountains, and on those long camping hikes he would tell Harvey about producers and stars and writers who spent more than they earned and built themselves images that could never be satisfied. "Can't be happy," Bert Randall would say. "Keep thinking somebody else's wife is better in bed, or just prettier at parties, and talk to themselves enough that they believe it. This whole damn town's got itself believing its own press agents, and nobody can live up to those dreams."
And it was all true. Dreams could be dangerous. Better to concentrate on what you had. And, Harvey thought, I have a lot. A good job, a big house, a swimming pool . .
None of it paid for, and you can't do what you want on the job, a malicious voice said inside his head.
Harvey ignored it.
In futurama the air pollution was so bad that the meteor burned up before hitting earth.
Gentlemen, start you SUVs!
Well, the 32bit time_t might not actually NEED further change - current unix time, if I am not mistaken will be sufficient until 2038 or something. So it would last almost 20 years after "total destruction".
;)
In that case, this might be the first computer "assumption", that might prove sufficient in the long run - unlike the famous "640k will be enough for everybody"...
Oh, that's just a little one.
We'll just tag it and throw it back.
Good thing we have a catch-n-release program in place.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Ok, Yes the probabilites of it hitting us are pretty slim. And as an earlier post mentioned, they're very slim before 2060. Probabilities of it hitting us increase after 2060.
.. with our *current* technology can we take this thing down (if it were closer than it is now ofcourse)?
So, my question is
[alk]
The KT event asteroid that hit 65 million years and formed the Chicxulub crater ago was almost certainly larger. Estimates of that impactor have ranged from 4km to 18km in diameter with more recent evidence suggesting that the smaller size estimates may be more accurate. Others prefer the larger sizes. Even if they are correct and the KT-impactor was on the larger end of the scale, an impact of a 2km asteroid is no trivial matter.
Assuming the same density, the ~2km 2002-NT7 has about 1/8th the mass of KT impactor. Perhaps 1/10th the mass if 2002-NT7 turns out to be a lower than average density asteroid.
When I said:
I should have said:
I want to repeat that the chance of impact prior to 2060, based on the current limited set of observations, is slim (1 in ~100,000 more).
The chance of an 2002-NT7 impact after 2060 is uncertain. It is hard to estimate the location of 2002-NT7 on/after 2060 in part because of the 4 prior close approaches and in part because positions become more uncertain as time goes on.
It is common to consider asteroid positions 100 years or more in the future to uncertain enough as to not be useful to estimate impact risk. This 100 year uncertainty limit gets shorter when one throws in 1 or more close approaches.
While 2002-NT7's orbit position will become better defined with additional data, the risk assessment of the 2060 pass (and beyond) will remain more uncertain for some time. Time (and more accurate observations) will tell how much the next generations will have to worry or not about 2002-NT7.
IMHO, there is nil chance of an impact by 2002-NT7 before 2060. The trend / perturbations on 2002-NT7 suggest that things could get ugly later on. Monitoring of 2002-NT7 over time, plus improved orbit models will tell how much future generations will need to worry about an impact >= 2060.
chongo (was here)
the asteroid itself?
Then we can all click on it, it will be Slashdotted, and the Earth will be saved.
Thanks.
If the US government won't tell you about what's in or was in hangar 19 and won't even acknowledge it's connection with Area 51 that what makes you think they will tell you about a potential hit.
check it out here
look at the "blast" heading -- this is mostly what we are concerned with. (i linked to a higher level of the hiarchy in case anyone is interested in the other effects as well.
anyway... you can see from the data that on earth, one megaton bomb can devastate a radious of ~3km -- which is already larger than the asteroid... but i digress, and will try to look at this systematically
1) delivery of the weapon
this is probabbly the most no-brainer of the whole deal. all current ICBMs go into sub-orbit already anyway, strapping a few boosters onto them for escape velocity should not be a big problem.
it is useful to note that the asteroid will be a threat even if no impact occurs on 2019; in fact it would be a much larger threat down the line. however, the frequent encounters with it in the near future gives up plenty of time to approach it and take action.
2) effective-ness of the weapon
this is somewhat harder to determine. see -- the problem is that all of our data on nuclear weapons is earth-based; i.e in a atmospheric environment. -- the 3km effective radius is based on this fact as well -- the destruction is not from the blast of the weapon -- but instead the sudden compressiong / decompression of the atmosphere that transmit the detonation energy to do the destruction. if the asteroid is indeed loosely packet -- much of the energy will just escape; while if the asteroid is solid-packet -- the bomb may not be powerful enough to break it all the way apart.
before we go further -- it is very obvious that the bomb(s) need to be deeply implanted inside the asteroid for maximum effective-ness.
the best scenario to hope for is that the asteroid have a large ice content. the vaporization of the ice would then be the medium of energy transfer -- breaking apart the asteroids into chunks that the earth's atmosphere can handle - which is probabbly the best we can hope for.
similar things can happen with solidified CO2 / methane / whatever. but we won't know about the asteroid's contents until later (more observations).
the good news is that if the asteroid was ever broken apart -- the gravitational force between the pieces should be small enough that they won't meaningfully get back together.
3) possible hiccups
the fact is that simply not enough is known about the behavior of nuclear weapons in vacuum -- which is both very cold, and lack the aforementioned energy transfer medium. so it may be that the weapon is actually quite in-effective in space. furthermore, depending on nuclear bombs to vaporize a whole asteroid is only a dream -- nuclear weapons destroy via shockwaves, and the thermal energy is actually comparatively low for what we need to accomplish.
this basically lead to the fact that if we press the red button, the bomb goes off, and nothing happens to the asteroid except a shockwave rings through its structure but it remains intact.
moreover -- drilling 1km down on an asteroid in as un-proven technology at best -- so there may be tons of problems there.
4) some alternatives
besides straight-up disintergration of the asteroid, there can be other things to try, for example, if you insert bombs in a planar fashion - it *may* be possible to break the asteroid into two or more chunks -- and if it is properly calculated -- it should be possible to get the thing either crash into mars, or get into earth orbit. (on a side note -- this would be very cool -- space elevator baby) and the smaller chunk can be much more easily broken down by nuclear means. (this is assuming the asteroid is a fairly rigid body of iron, etc etc.
i had some other points -- but since this *might* be the end of the world after all -- i am going to go out and try to get laid now.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
quoteth : "On the other hand, announcing a product 17 years before it hits, come on, that's not really serious, even by NT's standards."
/. :
The following story will be on
Duke Nukem Forever Released!
Posted by CmdrTaco'sKid on Thursday January 31, @10:00
from the just-in-time dept.
----- One piece short of Legoland
Detailed calculations of NT7's orbit suggest that this asteroid already has impacted the Earth three times in the past, the last one being Mar 2, 1997 ... oops, all continents still here? Guess we should upgrade those Pentiums.
Right now the orbital data that we have for the object isn't good enough to exclude an Earth impact. Once we get a good number of observations over a period of time - and preferably find the object on older pictures - we'll narrow down the possibilities of its orbit. Right now there's enough uncertainty about the orbit that there's a greater chance of it missing us than hitting us. The Earth's magnetic field wouldn't push it away, but various gravitational effects between now and 2019 could change the expected path of the asteroid.
That must be more then 0.14 on any damage scale, metric or not.
(I know It woun't be here untill 2119 at least.)
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Why would we want to destroy this perfectly good rock? Okay, so it might end life in 1 of 7 continents... but if we could pull it into orbit using some nukes, some rockets, or maybe a few tricked out solar sails + 30 years, we would have a great resource. Talk about space stations, hotels and space commerce, just to be able to use matter in space and not have to pay to get it up there would be worth it!
I read that this rock is mostly just that, rock. Still... there must be some metal in there. There should be some other uses that you guys could think of right?
Delta flight 1024 leaving NY, NY for Lunar base Echo via "The Rock" is now boarding.
Giovanni
But officer there is no way this car could even approach c.
Remember all that fuss and bother about Y2K? Remember the Unix crowd talking about having a similar problem in 2038 when the epoch rolls over?
Suddenly it doesn't seem like much of a problem anymore, does it?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Fantastic! I'm going to be hit by a big rock on my 43rd birthday! ;)
Still, I suppose it's an unusual way to go...
I told the RIAA that they'd piss the Aliens off with all this MP3 buisness, but did they listen? Nooooooo!!!! Now look what happens.
Imagine a Leonid cluster of these!
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
well, not for the sex with Liv Tyler part, but wait 17 more years before you round up the hooligans. gotta make it dramatic, you know? someone's gonna want the rip-off-movie rights.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Friggin riddles...I wanna go to bed....Friggin asteroids, I can't sleep!
I mean, clinton knows everything about a "deep impact" in little rock. Since this thing is just 2km wide, i would consider it a little rock.
Fleur de Sel
When did llamas become the random animal of choice for jokes? Is it just a computer workd thing? They're big in maxis games and and insult for online gaming. Who started this revo-llama-lution? I can't believe I just said "revo-llama-lution". Anyway, why dont we stop picking on llamas? There are tons of humorous animals out there just waiting to give us loads of hilarity. Such as the penguin, the caribou, the aardvark, and the list could go on forever. So I say we free the llama for now and move on. It will still be there if "titmouse" or soemthing doesnt catch on.
Problem SOlved.
The java applet on jpl puts 2002-NT7 as being 0.0080 AU (Approximately 120,000 km) from Earth on Feb 1st 1980. Pushing the stepping to hours, you get a minimum of 0.0040 AU (60,000 km). This is closer than the minimum of 0.082 AU given by the calculator for an approach in 2019. The java app isn't that accurate (as it mentions on the page), so I tried to run an Emphemeris report to get detailed info, but it's either being hammered very hard, or dying a long death, so I can't say more.
For an idea in how far away 120,000 km's or 60,000 km is, the moon is approximately 385,000 km's away (on average, centre to centre), and the Earth is approximately 12,750 km's in diameter.
If only we had accurate data. The questions this puts in my mind is:
1) Why haven't we seen it before?
2) If it's only recent, where did it come from?
3) If it's recent, is it's orbit stable or decaying?
--
Arthur - So this is it, we're all going to die!
Ford, Zaphod and Trillian - Will you stop saying that?!?
at least getting laid on Jan 31st, 2019 should be reasonably easy.
Sources tell me that the impact of the asteroid will be partly absorbed by an f-22 in the middle of an in-flight reboot.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I don't want to tempt fate and have an asteroid hit me/become victim of mad serial killer/get struck by lightning.
NASA, like the rest of the US federal govt, uses metric measurements. The problem was that the contractor, Lockheed IIRC, was using imperial.
Insert obReference to Terry Gilliam's Brazil here.
NASA: "Wait... is that 19 metric years?"
My deviantArt site
Indenda: "We're loosing ships Lur. What are your orders?"
Lur: "Increase speed, drop down, and reverse direction."
Fry: "I've still got a trick or two up my sleeve. Watch as I fire upward through our own shields!"
Bender: "He's a mad man... A MAD MAN!"
(Yes, weak pretense to bring out the futurama quotes, but what else is new?)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
With these stories, why do they alway show objects that are a couple of thousand miles large and plop into the earth like a pebble into a big pond?
...the most frightful disaster Earth has faced since NT4.
Consider this: It is 95% likely that you are in the middle 95% of an event or thing's duration. That's 2.5% at the far ends. If you are witnessing it at the extreme 95% beginning, the future is 39 times longer than the past. At the other extreme, only 1/39th of the future remains. So using the factor of 39 rule, it is 95% likely that something will last more than 1/39th of its current duration, but less than 39 times its current duration.
Let's apply this to Homo sapiens. Our current duration is about 200,000 years. So, it's 95% likely that we will live for more than 5,100 years, but less than 7.8 million years.
The odds are all for us.
Note: This concept was originally created by astrophysicist J. Richart Gott III.
We're Doomed
Right now we are looking at a Perihelion of 0.817 AU, which equates to ~122,221,459 Km. The distance to the moon is 385,000 Km. So its gonna be a fair way out for a while yet. IIRC the last time we went to the Moon it took about 10 days to get there. Its gonna take a hell of a lot longer to get to this rock.
Ok, in a few years it will be getting closer but right now theres not really much to do about it except talk. Reaching it wont be practical, even with better technology, for at least another 15 years yet. Given the current state of Nasa funding for deep space manned flight, I can't see anyone getting enthusiastic about this in Government. Probably the only way it would happen would be for private enterprise to figure a way to make it profitable to go there.
OTOH it could just be a lump of mashed up rock with no redeeming features at all and not worth visiting. In which case I'm sure the US military would love to blow it up ;)
Undistributed Middle
All Russians were revolutionists, and all anarchists were revolutionist, therefore, all anarchists were Russians.
... hurling asteroids at us! We must go their home planet and find the SMART bug as soon as possible.
Hurry, before they get Argentina.. RICO!!!!!!!!!!
Live web cams
Microsoft has leaked to the media that they are currently planning publicity stunts for the far off release of thier next generation server operating system, this release will be the 7th iteration of thier NT platform. NT7, will hit the US approx first quarter of 2019 according to our sources.
Aw, crapola. Where the hell did I put that White Materia...?
can I sue space if it hits me? :-)
still under review:
.
FIRST EVER POSITIVE PALERMO SCALE 'VIRTUAL IMPACTOR' ANNOUNCED - WITHOUT IAU REVIEW From Asteroid/Comet Connection, 23 July 2002 http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/news.htm
Excerpted from CCNET
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cccmenu.html
"It is interesting to note that NEODyS appear to have announced this first-ever positive Palermo Scale 'virtual impactor' without any formal IAU technical review. The IAU encourages such a review for any impact prediction that is at a level equal to or greater than zero on the Palermo Technical Scale (http://web.mit.edu/rpb/wgneo/TechComm.html)."
the last dozen or so 'close calls' have been retracted within a few days as the rest of the scientific community catches up.
And somewhere, on the teaming campuses of America, four college interns just got a brilliant idea...
That's a bit misleading. While 0.06 isn't an incredibly high number, obviously Timmy doesn't understand it. This is the first object that has ever received a rating on the Palermo scale that is POSITIVE. That is something. (Timmy, reading the BBC article doesn't really make you an expert so why don't you be a bit more careful in the future.)
Does this mean that Taco Bell will be putting another target out, and we all have a chance at getting a Free Taco?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
there's more comming...
NT8, XP8, Palladium9...
that will certainly destroy the world.
2019? I was hoping to get smoked by an asteroid tonight.
My other .sig isn't funny either.
George W. Bush put out an alert saying this asteroid may be another terrorist plot and we should all be on the look out for anything suspicious.
..next Al Qaeda strike.
The threat is known, it's orbit watched and we have 60+ years to do something about it. Even with as little as 5 years and a more precise trajectory, I'm sure we could build something riduculously nasty to introduce it to... A government in panic mode can do a lot of things in that time, devoting all it's resources to survival.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The rock in the photo is hardly 2km diameter - and apparently causing quite a splash of water from... oh, anyway.
And the caption, "An asteroid could devastate the earth." is an unconnected hypothetical statement that was just as true when the BBC were first formed as it is today, tomorrow, or on Feb *2* 2019.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It should read
One nation under God
there is not comma there.
Xaotik Designs
I believe the line is "You are crunchy and taste good with ketchup".
(Reposted, account being moderated into oblivion)
All I see on the BBC story is a graphic showing intersecting paths. Maybe they changed it.
For an excellent asteroid impact image, see this page with art by C. Crowley (my brother). Scroll about halfway down for the scary stuff captioned "A Hadean countryside. Here, a mountain ten miles tall falls out of the sky in an everyday Hadean event.
Earth took hits like this much more frequently in the Hadean than it does today, but Hadean moments like this still happen on a regular basis.
Chixulub Crater of Yucutan records a cosmic disaster everyone knows about. The large asteroid that struck Manson, Iowa, a few million years before that, must have certainly killed all life in central North America."
But the rest of the world is gonna insist that they pay relative of the percentage of their wealth (wealth that, for the most part, has been sucked from the rest of the world anyways).
Since it's gonna take a long time to resolve this, better start ASAP bickering that...
(Reposted, account being moderated into oblivion)
This asteroid will hit Buenos Aries, and our new fascist government will blame it on evil, giant bugs from another planet (even though these bugs couldnt possibly have the technology to do something like this...you will see when we get there to blow them all up)...
Oh wait, I've been watching too much sci-fi...
Never mind...
Tilted Orbit?
Passes between the Earth and Mars?
And there not *exaclty* sure of it's actual orbit?
Sounds like Planet X to me!
See! Didn't I say that we'd be glad some day that we learned to make fusion bombs? We've got 16-17 years to give this rock a better (for us) orbit.
Now where did I put my Tom Corbett books?
A couple of things:
1. The BBC News is written by reporters all over the world, not a bunch of British journalists sitting in an office in London.
2. If the BBC website were a newspaper, it would be very much a broadsheet. Not a tabloid.
Someone get me Liv Tyler, STAT!!!.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
it will be for all those ugly nerds who once heared: "I will have sex with you on the last day of the earth".
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Mozilla will probably be 2.0 RC96
~
~
:wq
Well at least puxatonie phil will still be nice and safe.
This will bring a whole new meaning to downloading NT.
That picture they have at the top of the article makes it look very scary... Thats not a 2km wide asteriod... its a MOON, this isn't something to worry about, I despise it when the news is blown out of proportion and exaggerated -- Something the BBC can be known for.
Please nudge it towards one of the following (in order of preference):
1. Los Angeles (esp Hollywood studios)
2. Washington DC, preferably on "lobbyist day" (yah, hate to see the Air & Space museum go but sacrifices have to be made)
3. Sen. Trent Lott's house
4. Las Vegas (they killed the Colorado river for THAT?)
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The cold hard fact is that if an asteroid wants to hit the earth it is going to hit the earth.
It's inarguably true that suicidal, sentient asteroids would pose a major threat to life on earth...
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Right. Let's install gigantic pinball flippers :)
on the poles
This means we do NOT have to solve the 32-bit unix timestamp problem!
Yay!
I'll recompile my kernel
Asteroid support? Yes( ) - Module ( ) - No (*)
Øyvind the wondersquid
And now, I am worried about getting run over by a llama.
Annoying Peruvian geek trivia: no one over the age of 10 actually rides a llama. Llamas are pack animals and won't carry riders. They spit, too. They will happily run over you without prompting, all by themselves.
"The probability that the tabulated impact will occur. The probability computation is complex and depends on a number of assumptions that are difficult to verify. For these reasons the stated probability can easily be inaccurate by a factor of a few, and occasionally by a factor of ten or more." NASA - [neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2002nt7.html]
Nasa, stardate: January 31, 2019.
Joe: "Hey Bob, have you seen that big object that we thought was going to hit the earth tomorrow?"
Bob points up.
Joe: "Oh yeah"
managers...why god invented purgatory
All I'm saying is that NERV better get some new Eva models produced, or the Angel inside that Astroid is gonna fuck us up mad crazy like.
word.
-da5id
No matter how long it takes for a pessimists' predictions to come true, they will say "I told you so" when it does come true.
I have no doubt that this Rock thinks we're all a bunch of Jabroni's
Palermo? Torino? I smell the Mafia's hands behind this threat! :)
"I'll have a witty
From the AP wire:
Scientists said if it had hit a populated area, it would have released as much energy as a large nuclear weapon.
Forgive my ignorance of modern scientific theory, but why does the density of people affect the amount of energy released? Would it have been less energy if it hit the ocean?
Maybe there is some human fission reaction anticipated here? If so, I think I know how to solve our energy woes... It's time for Carousel. Renew!
Please mod me up. My grandma might not make it to the weekend and she always wanted me to hit karma cap.
I did a doubletake when I read this, and though it was quite obvious on second reading that you meant assess, I had a nice grin in the meantime wondering how you might ass danger. Perhaps it's like Charades with your ass trying to mime danger, or perhaps the Palermo scale is simply a rating of how likely it is you need to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. None the less, thanks for the grin :)
Compare to NT 2 all further versions are just steps of degradation - they are worse and worse and worse ... worst!
Let's see what will Mr. Gates do at this time. Say what, pay another $550,000 to NASA?
It's offical - M$ apologists have no sence of humor !
"...and remember that if we are to show fear by changing our American way of life, the Giant Space Rock has already won."
I can only hope that we act fast to make sure that the Giant Space Rock becomes part of the Axis of Evil.
Until now, the scientists can only specify the Asteroid's position on February 1st 2019 within an error margin of several million kilometers. (Translation by me).
That gives us a chance of less than one in a million of getting hit. So I guess it's a bit too early to take the next spaceship to mars and never look back.
Kavau
I'd hate to see a Beowulf cluster of these.
First NT3, then NT4 (without DVD support). Next Win2k (NT5?, with some DVD support). In 2019, MS releases NT7 and it destroys all of North America, but still with out really good DVD support.
www.linux-skunkworks.com
...then can we send Jeff Goldblum to infect them with an Exchange virus?
Can we make sure that Téa Leoni is near the impact site?
December 1, 2017
Reuters
Today in the 17th year of the anti-terror extended presidency, Bush urged everyone on Earth to pray to Jesus to stop the asteroid. He blamed democrats for stopping all efforts to divert destruction but said he had faith everything would be "hunky-dorey."
A summery of the anti-asteroid efforts are as follows:
2002: Republicans reject idea that asteroids exist.
2004: A bill funding more science is rejected as "pork barrel".
2006: Republicans reject theorey asteroids have ever hit Earth in it's 4000 year history, and therefore never will.
2008: Republicans admit asteroids may exist, but if one did hit the Earth it wouldn't be that bad.
2010: Despite mounting evidence that the asteroid will have a direct hit, Bush rejects the science as "shakey and controversial."
2012: UN resolution on asteroid vetoed by US as being too intrusive.
2014: Senate plan to stop asteroid rejected by Bush as "too costly." Tax cut for rich is passed.
2016: Emperor Bush rejects an internation coalition to stop the asteroid as "flawed."
The good news: The Feb 1, 2035 and Feb 1, 2051 close approaches have moved far enough away to become a nil-hazard.
The not-so-good news: The Feb, 1 2044 and Feb 1, 2053 passes have shifted from the nil-hazard to a close approaches. In the case of Feb 1, 2044 the miss is by about 86,900 km. In the case of Feb 1, 2053 the miss is about 30,600 km.
The size estimate of the object has changed from 2.03km to 2.06km in diameter. The mass estimate has been upgraded from 1.1e13 kg to 1.2e13 kg.
The bad news: The Feb 1, 2060 and Feb 1, 2078 approach continues to be a concern. With the data we have now the close approach on Feb 1, 2060 is only about 18,000 km (much closer than before). The Feb 1, 2066 miss distance has increased but the Feb 1, 2078 approach is about 18,800 km. But as I said before, future events will be hard to pin down until the 2019, 2044 and 2052 approaches become better understood.
Overall the impact probability has changed from 1 in ~100,000 to 1 in ~6,600,000. The Palermo Scale has changed from 0.06 to -0.05. However the object remains 1 on the Torino Scale remains at 1.
While the Earth's perturbation on the pre-2060 approaches has been reduced, 2002-NT7 still seems to settle into a 7 to 14 year close approach pattern post 2060.
IMHO, now: 2002-NT7 is not a problem prior to 2060. On and after 2060 those passes could be a problem.
We need more data and more time to improve the orbit models. Don't be fooled by those orbit calculators that you find in over the counter astro programs or on-line ones such as the supplied on the JPL web site. Those are good for most cases but fail when anything gets close or when one looks out farther in time. They simply do not have the precision needed to calculate such close approaches. To give you an idea of the precision: In the Feb 1, 2060 case a time error of only 550 seconds (1 part in ~3,200,000) is enough to convert the 18,000 km miss into an almost certain impact. And the uncertainly of Feb 1, 2060 makes it even harder to pin down Feb 1, 2078 and beyond.
I'll post an update (as a reply to my initial 2002-NT7 update posting) if new observational data changes things again.
chongo (was here)
Yeah, this could definitely be considered anti-USA behavior. Maybe the FBI should investigate the individual who drew it. He's probably a terrorist.
To Do: 1. Take over world 2. Pick up Milk and Bread on the way home
Actucally, this really isn't a huge challenge. We have the technology at every level to develope a weapon that will destroy a rogue asteroid.
Design. We can not only land payloads on other planets, but achieve there orbits without much difficulty (relatively speaking). Hitting an asteroid using basic physics shouldn't be hard. It'd probably be wiser to assemble any Anti-Ballistic Event weapon in orbit. This will give it a greater endurance from it's propulsion system than from launching so deep within the Earth's gravity well. More endurance = greater in flight error tolerance if something should go amiss trajectory-wise. If we can put a giant space station in orbit, we can do this.
Payload. So far, nuclear weapons are the payload of choice for an ABE Weapon, ie; We have the most experience in them and they have plenty of power. If you can dig massive craters with these, surely it'd do something nasty to a space rock, though I'm no nuclear weapons in a vacuume expert.
Alternatives. Partical dispersion. Theory- A meteor burns up in the atmosphere because of it's speed and atmospheric friction. So our ABE Weapon is loaded up with sandbags... Yes, Sandbags. These will be dispersed directly in front of the incoming asteroid (collision course). Repeated assaults of this sort might have the same effect as an atmosphere, burning it up in a fasion.
Yeah, you could also try the Armageddon approach, I guess. Not a huge fan of it, but there's no reason why it couldn't be done. That's what drones are for, personally. Any laser based weapon would have to be built in space to be even remotly effective (vaporize? And barely within current technology). Still, it's looking like nukes (which we have LOTS of) are the best bet. Heck, you could even attatch orbit-built solid and liquid boosters to it if you wanted to get fancy. On that note, a probe with a four or five weapons landing on it's flank, detonating simutaneously might just bounce it out of it's track even if destruction isn't outright. See? no problems ^__^
You need a FREE iPod Nano
We finally have a way of riding the world of slashdot britney babe,motley suck,Jenifer Hopez,and the christian news network
On a scale of one to ten, in terms of difficulty:
Locating an habitable world outside our own solar system, designing and building a large enough transport to support enough human, animal, and plant life for a long enough time to survive the journey and/or a faster-than-light drive technology, etc.
Difficulty: 9
(level of protection from asteroids: 100%
level of protection from solar heat-death: 100% (repeat as necessary)
level of protection from other threats such as plagues from alien pathogens, neutron stars, local supernovas, etc. : not all that good)
Designing and building a transport infrastructure robust enough to move engineers, vast quantities of equipment and materials, and vehicles either being large enough to support rotational gravity, or some magical artificial gravity technology invented, perfected, and implemented, to be taken to Mars, (presumably the best candidate) in order to establish self-sustaining colonies, in order to produce enough climate change, in order to be able to sustain life long enough to establish a permanent effect on the climate (which would require constant effort to maintain, due to the solar wind's constant erosion and lack of a protective planetary magnetic field).
Difficulty: 10
(level of protection from asteroid impact: six of one, half dozen of the other, if Earth gets creamed, who's to say Mars wouldn't also?)
(Level of protection from solar heat death: 0)
(level of protection from other threats - compared to earth?: 0)
Designing and building an infrastructure to create a vessel large enough (or again, artificial gravity) constructed to orbit at one of earth's lagrange points, overcoming hazards from space debris, radiation, lack of water and other resources, to support a large enough contingent of human, animal and plant life to sustain life indefinitely.
Difficulty: 8
(need I go over the pointlessness of the relative threats again?)
Launching a large ion-propulsion unit into interplanetary space, equipped with solar panels for energy, rendevouz-ing at 28km/sec with a 2km asteroid, becoming secured to the surface through some claw-like mechanism, and operation low impulse thrust over long periods of time, perhaps getting periodic propellant resupply missions - in order to slow the asteroid's orbit enough that it drops away from the vicintity of earth's orbit, or perhaps, eventually into the sun.
Difficulty: 2
Taking any of the first three solutions, (or even the fourth) and applying the social complexities to the human element, including maintaining a stable political situation given the various social and religious backgrounds, and propensity for populations of people to not easily be controlled over long time periods - and obtaining a population that could survive for any length of time that would make it meaningful towards the goal of survival of the species.
Difficulty: 11
(ie. given how crazy and fucked up we humans are, I'm quite certain we're going to extinguish ourselves long before any silly asteroid has a chance).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Jan 31, 2019 -- don't do anything because more observations might indicate that it won't hit the earth.
Thank god we will have at least 9 years to get a real president.
The asteroid is said to hit the earth in New Mexico...(and yes the rest of the world wil be overjoyed at finding such an easy way of gettin' rid of the US :P No Offence Intended of course ;)
:P
But do you remember what happend last time when a big asteroid hit earth?
Exactly..the Dino's where whiped out!
And to think the 4th of Feb is my birthday!
Oh, wait, I know what to do REBOOT!
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
A lot of posts here were kind of funny, but that's a classic.
By the time February 2019 rolls around we'll be on the other side of the Sun entirely, the asteroid will go right by us!
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
Ali's Hot Stock Tips!!!
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Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Reasons why we are gonna fry:
:)
1.) Bruce Willis and his crack crew of drillers will be too old to do this in 16.7 (approx) years.
2.) NASA can don't basic math.
Might as well start moving all my 401K to my Bunker Fund
IOException - Can't Speak
Methinks that if saving the Earth from distruction was the issue, most people would be inclined to ignore any patent issues... "Sorry, you can't save the Earth because you haven't paid my royalties" doesn't sound like a viable business position, does it?
and it will hit antartica, spraying ash into the stratosphere, then maybee it will finally cool the hell down(not global warming mind you, just those annoying 2 months in summer that are a bitch)
Ask any third or fourth grader if you have trouble understanding the gramatical complication introduced by the use of multiple clauses separated by commas.
Wasn't it the distinction between miles and nautical mies or was that another cock-up?
IIRC 1 Nautical Mile = 1.1 Miles
If nature abhors a vacuum, why isn't there more dust in the world?
If they have to be metal, I want a sexy robot instead.
Oh, my GOD! I got to the server, and there was no response.
We're all going to die.
Not so good news: The odds of an impact prior to 2060 was 1 in ~6,600,000 and now is about 1 in ~4,500,000.
The Feb 1, 2060 approach is now very close, only 3570 km! There is still a great deal of uncertainly. At 1 sigma, the margin of error is about +/- 29600 km.
Sure, the center line of the model comes very close to the earth. And sure, the 1 sigma margin of error of the model paints a wide path that intersects the Earth. However the model relevance (i.e., how well does the orbit model match the real 2002-NT7 asteroid) is still in doubt and needs more observational data to refine it.
To give you an example of how small effects can change the model: A 125 second model error, adjusted in the wrong way, out at Feb 1, 2060 (about 1 part in about 14,600,000) is all that it takes to turn a miss into an impact.
At the risk of stating the obvious: Just because the orbit model draws a line thru your neighborhood doesn't mean that the Asteroid will follow the same path. We have to improve the model and validate it with direct and accurate observations over time before we can begin to place more trust in the model reflecting reality. So continue to pay your bills and refrain from end the world rioting. :-)
For those who are keeping track. The following is the list of close approaches (according to the model):
(your asteroid's mileage may vary
The Palermo Scale value has changed from -0.05 to -0.25. (A lower number means less risk) However the Torino Scale remains at 1. (A value >0 means there is something to worry about). The main reason for the Palermo scale drop is that there are fewer close approaches to worry about over the next 50 to 100 years. Fewer close approaches means fewer risky events. Fewer risky events in the next 50 to 100 years results in a lower Palermo value.
IMHO, It is still the case that there is next to nil chance of impact before 2060. It is 2060 and beyond events that are of concern. It is the pattern of orbit adjustments at and beyond 2060 that may be of concern.
p.s. My memory of the other asteroid that as a non-zero Torino value was bad. The other non-zero Torino risk object is the asteroid 1997-XR2 with a -2.44 Palermo Scale value and the impact odds of 1 in about 970,000. While better odds than 2002-NT7, it is smaller ... only 230 meters
across.
The impact energy of 2002-NT7 (if it
were to hit) is some 3333 times as
great as 1997-XR2.
And while an impact of 1997-XR2 (somewhere
around June 1, 2101) would not be fun, it
is does not have nearly the same potential
impact as 2002-NT7.
The other object on the hit parade that is being watched is 2002-NY40. However we only have 76 observations over 9+ days so things are still WAY WAY too early to tell or say anything. It has a -1.91 Palermo value and a 0 Torino value so far.
IMHO, I would not be surprised to see the 2002-NY40 drop in the charts as the days go by.
Well I have other work that I need to do, so it may be a day or so before I update things again ... unless something changes
dramatically ...
chongo (was here)
People of Earth: Do you hear those nukes, Earth Grazer? That's the sound of your death approaching...
Asteroid: My name....is NEO!
(boom)
graspee
" Well, if some extinction level event was about to happen, I would expect all the well-connected people to raise a lot of cash in order to buy a lot of survival goods for their escape rockets, mile-deep bunkers, and what not."
They can get the money back after the impact by selling bits of NT7 on ebay.
Item: 58m Chunk of NT7 NO RESERVE!
Current Price: 15,000 Eurobucks
Buyer responsible for Shipping and Handling charges. Seller sends internationally.
Note: I do not take paypal anymore!
graspee
The estimate is done on one of those Pentium 1's with a FDIV malfunction. That way, not only will the asteroid crash into the sun, but by the time it does it will have crumbled and melted away into the size of a thimble.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I'd say match the velocity, but that is a healthy chunk of speed to dump from intercept to velocity matching. Ok, have the nuclear rockets aim for the flanks. I guess it's the easiest solution. But you're right. Velocity matching isn't exactly an economical easy fix.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Right. Let's install gigantic pinball flippers :)
on the poles
Great idea! Better get going on your US patent app though - you've got one year to file. Of course, there'll be no incentive to use your gigantic pinball flippers anywhere outside the US since you've just given up your foreign patent rights through public disclosure... and you'd better hope for a good NEO scare in the next 20 years or so, otherwise you should sell them for missile defense before everyone and their brother are making gigantic pinball flipper knock-offs. Maybe if you register giganticpinballflippers.com...
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Its acronym time again !
:-))
IANACM (I Am Not A Celestial Mechanic),
but this:
> 1.Feb 1, 2019 (distance: ~28500 km)
> 2.Feb 1, 2044 (distance: ~91100 km)
> 3.Feb 1, 2053 (distance: ~53500 km)
> 4.Feb 1, 2060 (distance: ~3570 km)
> 5.Feb 1, 2078 (distance: ~15900 km)
> 6.with interesting passes every 7 to 14 years after that
> (your asteroid's mileage may vary
looks highly questionable to me.
This suggests that the asteroid, which according to the bbc article has an orbit that does not lie in the ecliptic plane, comes within less than 8 earth diameters on 5 occasions in less than ten 7-year periods.
This would require two things:
a) The period of the asteroid and the earth must be synchronized to a ratio of 3/7 to within less than app. 1 hour in 60 years - an accuracy of approximately 1:500000
b) All those near flybys must not significantly alter the course of the asteroid. (comparison: geostationary satellite orbit is app. 35000km, and the satellite is deflected by 360 degrees in one day)
I would expect the first flyby in 2019, according to the poster well within geosynchronous orbit, to change the course of the asteroid by something like 0.1 degree (the asteroid is app 10 times faster relative to the earth as the satellite).
After that, the course has changed randomly and the speed has changed significantly (the swingby effect), so any synchronization that may have been there is lost. If we then have 4 more close flybys, the chances for that are more like 5 lottery wins in a row.
Maybe there was just a decimal error in those calculations.
You are asking a good question. The reason why the close approaches occur on the same day of the year is because 2002-NT7's orbit is closest to Earth's orbit at one point. That point does shift around. The current model suggests the closest approach occurs at:
The path of 2002-NT7 will next cross earth's orbit plane going upward at a point about 132.1708757 degrees from the Fall Equinox. Now 132.1708757 degrees / 360 degrees = 0.3671413214 of a circle. Using 365.2564 days (Earth's year), 0.3671413214 of a circle * 365.2564 days = about 134.1 days from the Fall Equinox. 134.1 days from Sep 23 (~06 hr UTC) lands one near 1 Feb.
Take a look at this 2002-NT7 orbit diagram. The dark blue part of 2002-NT7's orbit is below Earth's plane. The light blue part is above Earth's plane. The yellow line from the Sun (red dot in center) going down and to the right is the 0 degree fall equinox line. The vertical yellow line, 132.1708757 degrees from the equinox line (as measured in the plane of Earth's orbit, not the plane shown on your screen) shows where 2002-NT7 crosses Earth's orbit plane. That crossing spot (the place where the dark/light parts of 2002-NT7's orbit meet near the yellow line), you will notice, is very close to Earth's orbit. That spot is the place where Earth is found on/near Feb 1. No other place on Earth's or 2002-NT7's orbit comes as close.
You ask another good question about deflection:
Not every object that gets within 35000km of Earth enters a geostationary orbit. The reason why 2002-NT7 is not captured by earth is that it is moving about 26.25 km/second as it crosses Earth's orbit plane. It is moving too fast to be captured by Earth and pulled into a orbit around our planet.
FYI: An object orbiting the Earth once a day 35,000 km above the surface is moving about 3 km/second with respect to the center of the Earth. The 26.25 km/second speed of 2002-NT7 is much faster.
BTW: Earth DOES deflect 2002-NT7. The crossing point and angle in inclination do shift a but after a close approach, but not by a huge amount. These close passes make the 2002-NT7 orbit tricky to model.
On a different question that somebody else asked:
Your typical astro/solar system display program that runs on your PC (XEphem, RedShift, TheSky, or even that Java app on the JPL site) uses simplified assumptions that are OK for general approximation of objects that do not have significant encounters. They frequently use point size masses and only take into account the Grav pull of the Sun and major planets. High precision models must use much much much more complex models. For example, in addition to accurate 2002-NT7 observations (to measure its position) one must use a non-point Earth model. That gravity lump called EurAsia has a slightly different "tug" than the Pacific Ocean, for example. Normally that difference is not critical, but when one is trying to predict with high precision year in the future, such details can become important.
Permit me to end with a note about critical NASA mission called GRACE.
There is a very critical mission (largely ignored by the general press) known called GRACE. GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. The mission will obtain obtain accurate global and high-resolution determination of both the static and the time-variable components of the Earth's gravity field. This goal will be achieved by making accurate measurements of the inter-satellite range change to within one micron between two co-planar, low altitude polar orbiting satellites, using a microwave tracking system.
GRACE will provide us with an accurate Gravity map which will improve the modeling of very close approaches. I am looking forward to the day with GRACE's gravity maps can be used to establish more detailed close approach orbit models. I wish the GRACE team all the best!
IAACM (I Am A Celestial Mechanic) :-)
and I hope this helps.
chongo (was here)
The Guardian had this to say about the coming weeks news stories. The BBC always trot this one out when there's nothing else much to say.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
If you have been following the recent articles about the "Interplanetary Superhighway" discovered by NASA researcher Martin Lo (I have been scouring the net for papers recently) you will realize that there may be a good case for early deflection. In fact NASA re-released the story about this with a little more data just this morning (jpl mailing list). This is hot stuff!
Lo is trying to map the low energy trajectories through the Solar System which result from calculating n-body gravitational problems for all the objects in the System. Apparently there are tube-like trails between the Sun and the Oort Belt along which objects can travel theoretically without thrust, and the dinosaur killer is thought to have come down an "offramp" to the Earth much like Shoemaker-Levy apparently did with Jupiter.
This technology was used in the Genesis Mission and chaos theory applies to the low-energy halo orbit around a Sun-Earth libration point. After orbitting around this point a few times the robot will (without thrust) return to a sample capture point in Earth orbit.
While I do not yet understand the math itself, it seems likely that this Rock is in a somewhat chaotic orbit and that small nudges can have very large effects on its trajectory down the way. A decade or two may not be long enough, or we might even set up a pattern which will smash us on a later orbit, but the technology is being developed right now.
Punxsutawney, PA (AP) - Good news for those living in Pennsylvania - Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog that by virtue of being a groundhog is far less obnoxious than any television weather forcaster, has been yanked from his makeshift burrow and did not see his shadow, indicating only 4 more decades of nuclear winter.
having read The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale I'm thinking that loosely coupled Llama trains are less a hazard to us void engineers here in Houston than this asteroid is. Just think of the hazards of trying to explain logarithmic scales to the masses. I can feel blood pressure spiking at JSC already.
Still, like the doc's say:
Potential impacts with positive Palermo Scale values will generally indicate situations that merit some level of concern.
so 0.06 merits some concern, but doesn't justify drama llamas
Life is a decision tree. We must accept that it is, like a diode, one way. Athena of the Bifurcated Pathways
I hope it hits France.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
Personally I think Micro$oft version of NT7.0 will do far more damage then any space drifting rock. Windows 2015, scary shit..
Only thing worse is windows booting when I start my car.. it could be worse though. I might have to recompile the kernel to get the lights to turn on
So far, no pre-discovery images of 2002-NT7 have been found. A search of pre-discovery images is on-going.
I will post new updates to chongo's journal over the next few weeks. Please check my journal for the latest 2002-NT7 orbit model information.
chongo (was here)
What we know as "NT7" is really just service pack that will contain numerous bug fixes and security enhancements. Unfortunately this update will necessitate a reboot. This update, however complete, poses considerable risk to mission critical systems and no warranties are implied. Networked users should discuss this update with their system administrator for further details about the risk of data loss and migration plans to another planet.
So long and thanks for all the fish! R.I.P. D.A.
The year 2019: From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man's civilization is cast in ruin. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn... A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil. He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!
I have read that the Tunguska hit is imagined to have been 50-60 metres in diameter, air-burst at a height of 8 km, releasing energy equivalent to a 10 megaton H-bomb. I read that it blew down and ignited 1000 square kilometres of Siberian forest. So clearly blowing apart in the atmosphere doesn't keep a strike from being devastating.
Kinetic energy is one half mass times velocity squared. So a rock or an iceberg 200 metres in diameter will release 64 times as much energy as one 50 metres in diameter.
I have a couple of questions.
A big rock that strikes an ocean can produce a wave that will devastate coastal cities an ocean away. How much smaller is the wave if it blows apart before striking the ocean?
It now seems that a lot of asteroids, and maybe comets, are not solid rocks, with a measure of structural integrity. It now seems that many asteroids more closely resemble very loosely bound piles of gravel. Tidal forces ripped apart Shoemaker-Levy 9.
So, if an asteroid that is a big pile of rubble is speeding towards Earth, at what point does tidal forces overpower its very loose gravity so it fails to hold together? If none of the fragments strike solid ground it will throw up relatively little dust -- which could otherwise cloak the earth in a cloud that brings us years of endless winter. How many deaths would even a year of total crop failures cause? Hundreds of millions? Billions?
Those of us old enough to watch broadcast TV over the air will remember how lightning disrupted the broadcast. Nuclear weapons also generate an electro-magnetic pulse (aka EMP). It is a stronger one, strong enough that our electrical power grid into a huge antennae, receiving enough energy to turn all our electronic devices into junk.
Am I wrong to believe a rock that air-burst that releases the equivalent of kilotons bombs would generate an electro-magnetic pulse, just like a bomb? 8 kilometres, that is about the height an airliner flies at. What is the distance of your horizon at 8 kilometres? A hundred kilometres? Hundreds of kilometres?
Some frequencies of radio can be heard at long distance. The radio waves are reflected off layers in the upper atmosphere. Can light at those frequencies carry enough energy to ruin electronics over the horizon?
Would the EMP from a 1200 metre rock generate enough EMP to ruin electronics around the Earth?
Lots of civilization ending threats face us. Race ending threats face us. Life on Earth ending threats face us. For most of them the odds are basically impossible to calculate. Will we end civilization? Render the human race extinct? Render the Earth unfit for anything but the most primitve life through poisoning the Earth with our waste? It is incalculable, because it depends on making a subjective judgement of whether we can learn to be wise, instead of clever. We are clever enough to build things that could kill us as a side-effect. Are we wise enough not to? That is incalculable.
Astronomical disasters are ones about which we can make reasonable, defensible judgements, and start to enter into actuarial calculations.
Yes, a close enough Supernova burst could destroy civilization. Slashdot has discussed this recently, and again here. 160 to 200 light years was suggested to be the distance beyond which civilization would be safe from a supernova. NASA's picture of the day site has half a dozen articles about eta carinae, a large variable star that they state is a good candidate for the next supernova in our neck of the woods. It is well beyond that 200 ly limit.
The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
My family lives right next door to a Llama farm!
...if you got half the chance!
Perhaps the chance of this one hitting the Earth is only 1/16,000,000, but it could kill off half the world population if it does.
That's an expected value of 187.5 deaths, which is comparable to an average days killings by automobiles in the US. Of course, that's over the next 17 years, so actually, it's not something that people should worry about that much...
But still, on average, that rock will kill 11 people a year for the next couple of decades :-).
1. lets determine which continent it will hit. ... so when NT7 comes, it'll miss a continent... and put out our worries on the llamas... :) I kid ;)
2. bring all the llamas in that continent.
3. hit it with all our nuclear wepons
no-one happened to notice dividing 2,000 meters by 3 (rough rounding) yielded approx. 666? :)