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Simulation Of An Asteroid Impact In The Year 2880
JoeRobe writes "Researchers at UCSC have simulated a possible outcome of an impact by asteroid 1950DA when it passes near us in the year 2880. Note that there is a 0.3% chance of impact during that encounter. In the event that it impacts in the Atlantic, they predict that the '60,000 megaton blast' would create 400 foot waves along the east coast. In addition to an assessment of the danger, their studies point out the resulting geologic features that we should be looking for now, which would indicate where and when such impacts have occured in the past."
> Note that there is a 0.3% chance of impact during that encounter.
Is that 0.3% chance mostly from the inaccuracy of the devices that measure the velocity of the object, inaccuracy of the prediction models, or genuine random events (like uh being affected by random solar wind variations, or something ).
Is there a port for Linux?
...this UCSC computer simulation will be as high tech as a 2880 refrigerator magnet.
You guys really sure you want to put this out there? They are gonna LTAO...
It's 90% because more people work at your average burger king than are full time looking for potental asteroid hazards. Polticians don't care, neither do most people. Until, of course, something happens. Sadly, nothing short of a asteroid impact in the western world will change this. I just hope that it's not mistaken for an act of terrorism, triggering a nuclear holocaust. I also hope it's not so big as to trigger massive climate change.
There is also the problem that we can only detect such objects at so-and-so a range, so earth needs to be in the right place at the right time for an event to be recorded.
Also, comets count potentially disturb the orbits of many asteroids in the meantime. You can't ever predict a comet we haven't seen before - by the time we see it, it will likely be too late to do anything.
Rosy, isn't it.
..don't panic
Don't even think about it, you fscking Canadians.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The characters in the book thought it had a 1000 to 1 chance of missing too, but they were horribly wrong.
Imagine how boring the book would have been if they were right!
Interestingly Lucifer's Hammer has become practically required reading for the "survivalist" movement (people who believe in being prepared for a catastrophic destruction of civilization... they got a little too closely associated with the Y2K nuts a couple years back, but for the most part they are fairly level-headed).
But Lucifer's Hammer is a good read. I think it's filed under SciFi, but it is pretty light on the Science Fiction.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
If us is US (the east coast), Cumbre Viejo would have wiped it twice by then. Actually it will do so within the next 100 years. Considering that the wave at Washington DC will be 15m+ methinks that it may not be such a bad idea.
;-)
More info on BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/966968.stm
I've been there. The volcano is awesome
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
How far inland does one have to be to avoid a 400 foot wave?
The problem I see when ever any reads an article like this is the fact that they think, "oh well, that's so long away, I won't worry about it", when in reality the danger is real. Not nessicarly 1950 DA, but earth asteroid impact is a realistic happening, though pretty rare. Given our present technology, it takes months to prep a shuttle, and we don't really have much experence beyond sending probes to the outer / inner planets, let alone anything close to a game plan in the event that that a huge object is set to smack into the earth.
We spend much time monitoring volcanos, fault lines, things that have proven to cause a danger to man, yet we still don't have much in the way of program to reliably spot dangers from our own solar system, which while we haven't had a trully catastrophic event in human history, there is enough in the way of evidence that this sorta event does take place.
Even the smaller meteor strikes which are much more common place, though less destrictive then many forms of earth natural disaster, are much more common place, and near as I can tell, there pretty much isn't any program to detect and alert people as to the danger. The best thing we got are amature astrometers, who have been great, but are limited to earth bound telescopes.
This is why we need a space program... if but for nothing else but to provide simple observation satalights in orbit to help detect such threats in advance.
A moon base would also be somewhat spiffy too as far as creating a staging area in the event we do actually find a huge rock with a destination of earth.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Does anybody else feel unbelievably comforted that the biggest asteroid concern scientists have is 800 years from now? I guess that pretty much rules out the possibility of getting hit by an asterioid by surprise.
could happen much sooner, and come from this very planet. I recently watched a show televised on TLC (The Learning Channel) about several islands in the mid to north Atlantic ocean, the Canaries and Madeira among them, that are volcanic in nature. The idea proposed on the show was that on one of these islands (Iforget which), there is a volcano that is based literally on the coast and if it was to erupt and the side was to slide into the ocean, it would create a tsunami 600 feet high that would have enough momentum to carry itself straight through to the US Atlantic coast where it would still be between 300-400 high. And, oh, did I mention that it will be travelling at 600 MPH! I didn't believe that speed when I heard it and did a double take, but the narrator repeated the speed like he was sure that no one else would believe it either. Let's see... 3500 miles from the US coast divided by 600 MPH... that's roughly 6 hours to get the hell out of dodge if you're an east coast dweller. They also said that the floods that would result would affect people as far in as Kansas. Said flood would also affect the river levels and flood the tributaries. This would cause major crop damage, destry infrastructure like dams, berms, and controlled water flow.
So, this could happen in our lifetimes if this volcano was to erupt. It is way past due for another eruption. The last known eruption was in the 1700s. The volcano barely erupted, but many people were killed and the landscape was changed in such a way that the next eruption will likely cause the landmass to slide into the ocean causing the above problem.
monserrat(sp). Yeah, masive landslide. THey also had a special about supervolcanoes, one of which might have literally almost wiped out the human race 75000 years ago. Volcano was called toba, and they think its responsible for the bottleneck in the human gene pool about 75000 years ago, where the human race was down to like a thousand individuals world wide. THink nuclear winter times 100. Oh, also, yellowstone park, with the happy fun geisers is another one of these volcanos of the same type, it goes of every 600,000 years or so. Last went off 600,000 years ago. SO id avoid yellostone. really intersting stuff. Look it up.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
But if I were you, I'd be more worried about the small stuff.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show