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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."
I believe that nuclear war will have killed us all by then. Don't worry about the comet.
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.
Craters?
And thus I do not care.
I have been pwned because my
> 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 ).
Well given the human race's ingenuity, if in the next 800 hundred years or so we haven't worked out a way to prevent this, we probably deserve extinction for being idle.
Maybe we could all spend a little less on improving ways to kill each other, and a little more on planning our survival?
May 27, 2003
Contact: Tim Stephens (831) 459-2495; stephens@ucsc.edu
Massive tsunami sweeps Atlantic Coast in asteroid impact scenario for March 16, 2880
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
We're all fscked
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
"Until we detect all the big ones and can predict their orbits, we could be struck without warning," said Asphaug. "With the ongoing search campaigns, we'll probably be able to sound the 'all clear' by 2030 for 90 percent of the impacts that could trigger a global catastrophe."
Um, why is the goal to only find 90 percent of the asteroids that can kill us? Shouldn't they be trying to find all of them?
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I have been pwned because my
Who wants to bet it doesn't turn out like they predict? I'll bet my house on it.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
"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."
Wondering what'd happen if it hit anywhere near Seattle!? heh... forgot, it's gonna be more than 700 years away. Can we have a simulation of that thing in Seattle right now? In a place which rhymes with Deadbund?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Is there a port for Linux?
Anyone else looking for the classic CNN artist rendition of an astoroid impact that looks like the moon hitting the earth to go with this story?
Our great^12 grandchildren are going to look back on news stories like this one and *laugh their feelers off*...
-- Terry
Just because there is a 3 in 1000 chance of a strike and a strike actually occurs, it does not mean that the initial odds were wrong.
I have been pwned because my
Homes destroyed, their leader missing, pandemonium falling into utter madness.
Roads crumbled, storehouses plundered, the sky is literally falling.
You can really mess up an anthill when you're 10 years old.
...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...
A hUgE r0ck tWo-tHiRdS 0F @ MiL3 in DiAmEtEr
I see you're confident the USA won't have switched to metric by then.
Don't even think about it, you fscking Canadians.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I find it funny how people talk about these so called "asteroids" that might strike earth and cause massive destruction. The idea of "giant rocks flying around in space" is almost impossible the fathom to any educated christian scientist. I believe these "asteroids" are just liberal propaganda.
First of all, many people claim asteroids are what killed dinosaurs millions of years ago. This is impossible. God created in the earth in 6 days, not millions. It is entirely possible to assume then that dinosaurs and humans roamed the planet at the same time. At the time of the great flood (caused by God, not an asteroid!) the dinosaurs were too big to fit in the arc and that is why there are none today.
Any educated right-wing christian knows that God is the only one who will cause massive destruction to earth, not a "floating ball of rock from outer space". There is no way to predict God's actions, we must simply have faith and follow his word. No tsunami will sweep away the faithful.
Asteroids are simply the liberals way of trying to disprove God and attack the believes of educated right-wing christians! Do not accept this misinformation!
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
There are many distinct ways that the asteroid could hit. I imagine that after you determine if, when, and where it impacts the Earth, the next most important thing to know to weigh the consequences would be at what angle and trajectory it hits at. I imagine it would be quite different if it hit at a 1/16 * Pi angle and streaked across the sea than it would be if it hit orthogonal ( right angle ) to the surface.
Also, I imagine the rotation of the asteroid could be a major factor, as well as its shape and composition.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
IMHO mankind has more to fear from viruses than tsunamis generated from wandering asteroids. I am afraid that something very tiny will wipe us out, not someting very big.
I am not a biologist, but I bet the threat is more than 0.3 percent that this could happen. This SARS outbreak has me thinking.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
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)
Relax - when it hits it'll be no bigger than a Chihuahua's head.
Anything to stop the horror that is Adam Sandler. I'll pay any price.
But they'd be reading Slashdot even then?
They will, an when the news hits they will complain it's a dupe: "So what the asteroid will hit tomorrow, this is old news it was posted like 800 years ago, fscking slashdot dupes"
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
Don't worry.
By 2880 we will have developed amazing technology such as asteroid repellent beams, fusion and flying cars.
Yeah right, next thing you'll be saying is that Duke Nukem Forever will be out by then!
And I suppose none of these angular approches would be negated by gravity? Try to glance a ball bearing off of a magnet and then talk to me about an asteriod with a 1/16 * Pi approach angle. A hit is at least 50% tractor-pull...
I doubt there are as many distinct/unique hit scenarios as some would propose. This isn't a weeked destruction derby, with hollowed out Cadillacs bouncing off each other in a mud pit.
Next, asteriods are not known for their 'rotation' as much as they are for tumbling. Neither of which matters much as the gases and kinetic energy involved in a strike will have their way long before actual contact of the two entities. Much like an avalanche, or tsunami, the bulk of the damage is from the shock and pressure wave(s) that arrive before the object/event itself. Contact is after the fact, and I don't think anyone is going to come out from under their desk saying "man! that was close! Good thing it only grazed us!" In this case, a miss really is as good as a hit.
Pic
How far inland does one have to be to avoid a 400 foot wave?
A larger version.
Or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or my favourite: this one.
Artists seem to like to portray asteroids as being sveral hundred kilometres in size.
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.
Debian 3.0 delayed again: developers blame difficulties of locating 800 year old 32 bit hardware to complete kernel 2.4 testing on. Claim current quantum computers 'not stable enough'. spare a moment to think of joel "espy" klecker.
yawn...
according to this story, this simulation was done on a debian cluster running the hurd.
check out the date, it was published months ago.
Check out the Billabong XXL Surf Contest. They are only surfing 66 footers now. This would have them creaming the inside of their strides.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
"The so-called K/T impact, for example, ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago." So this is now a fact? Why wasn't I told?
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.
I have hit a brick wall at 215 kph at an angle of 30 degrees (relative to the wall, not the normal) AND I'm here to tell you this.
Pretty much irrelevant. The asteroid would hit at a velocity 300 times faster. The energy is one-half mass times velocity squared. That "squared" part means you are looking at 90,000 times as much energy per unit of mass. That's enough to vaporize not only your car but a huge section of the wall as well.
Then consider the fact that the asteroid is around a billion times more massive than your car. You're looking at about a hundred trillion times as much total energy. The atmosphere wont noticably slow it down even on a "grazing" angle. If it touches the ground at even a 2 degree angle you vaporize not only the asteroid, but several cubic kilometers (or cubic miles) of the earth as well. Heck, the grazing hit could be worse. A direct hit would sink much of the energy downwards into the earth to dissipate. A grazing hit would vaporize a long shallow stretch of the surface dumping the energy where it can do the most harm.
A few of the details may vary, but the general result is the same.
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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.
Um, isn't that the image of what happened one minute before the goatse picture was taken? (ewwww)
-T