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Armageddon... in 2014. Almost.
anetic was among several to note a story making the rounds striking fear into the hearts of many.
Armageddon will just barely miss us, so make sure to get your panic in the streets over with early.
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I don't need to worry about the unix 2038 time problem??
Near Earth Objects
A mugshot of Bruce Willis as icon will draw the right associations.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
...Armourgeddon outta here quickly!!
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Glad to see that the Slashdot editors are doing their best to educate it's readers... considering that we're talking about an event that is over 10 years away, and that is extremely unlikely to even hit us.
*YAWN* Where's the morning SCO story at?
...then we won't have to fix the 32bit time stamp. Someone tell Linus and the rest of the 2.6 devs.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Look at the bright side, Bruce Willis will drill it AND he won't be coming back.
Philip
Signatures are broken
There should be a new scale: The probability that a particular NEO will cause an article to be written up in main stream newspapers.
Seems like every year or less another "near miss" gets some play in the papers.
Who knows, maybe it's the same 3 or 4 objects that keep getting reporting on all the time...
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
They might be onto something here.
'nuf said.
Time to dust off those schematics for the Orion lifter... the only thing that has the capability of lifting enough nukes into an intercept course to hit it early enough to get a good deflection vector. Of course the eco freaks won't like the idea of Orion being nuclear powered...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
what's the problem? we throw a nuclear missile at it and we're saved.
They say that there is a one in 909,000 chance of asteroid 2003 QQ47 impacting our planet.
I like those odds!
Why would you even alert the masses of this? Saying "We were almost all going to die" is akin to saying "You were almost murdered." That would panic the person(s) a lot, and if you didn't tell them they would've been completely happy and fine. Remember, ignorance is bliss!
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
is a tonne alot of weight? :)
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
The poster has an unusual definition of "just barely" - according to the article there's only a one in 909,000 chance of it hitting us, and the odds are likely to become even slimmer once more measurements have been made.
Bruce Willis can stay put.
Here at NASA JPL http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2003qq47.html is the risk summary.
but the brits are playing it down here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3200019.stm
Hmmmmmm now where did I put that Anderson shelter?
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
What should an enterprising geek stock an underground shelter with? What would /. users suggest?
Microsoft survives again!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Correct me, If I am indeed wrong, however a One in 909,000 chance is for the most part, hardly worth consideration.
That being said, I do wish for at least a few more objects of reasonable size to decend from the heavens at terminal velocity to strike at the stupid, and ignorant.
-Gwala
#!/bin/csh cat $0
So where is the story now about the cult following 2003 QQ47. I mean there has to be somebody who thinks its driven by aliens and will take them off the planet to nirvanna.. to leave the rest of us to hell or something equivalent.
God i wish the Scientologists swung that way.. I'd say let the rock take them.
Who makes you Sig?
"The top of the scale, 10, is reserved for certain collisions capable of causing a global climatic catastophe." I don't what it is, but a catastophe must be really bad.
Bush economic plan, why have a fiscally sound government when the world will end in a few years anyway? Next trick, the IRS embraces micro-payments.
People: AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!
Female AI voice: Don't panic.
L337 points if you know what crippled game that came from...
Hint: it had the storyline of Earth being hit by an asteroid.
Note how the story doesn't mention the asteroid actually missing us. It notes that the probability of it hitting us is a little under 1:900000, based on current data.
Now, that doesn't mean the asteroid will hit us, and it doesn't mean it won't. It means that we don't know yet.
Still, the chances of this wiping out most of a continent are better than the chances of you winning the lottery. There, feel better yet?
"Scientists say that there is a one in 909,000 chance of asteroid 2003 QQ47 impacting our planet."
:o
So it's pretty much a million-to-one chance of getting hit...
but...any geek knows that million-to-one chances crop up nine out of ten times
The big question is how big is it in the standard scale of VW Bugs?
... that movie sucked. Only redeeming scene was Liv tyler w/o her shirt...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Cool. Mabye I'll have a chance with Liv Tyler for the sequel! Does anyone know when the auditions start?
The top of the scale, 10, is reserved for certain collisions capable of causing a global climatic catastophe.
Like collision of interests in an oil context for instance?
The chances of a catastrophe are likely to become even slimmer once more measurements of the asteroid's orbit have been made. Will measuring it somehow appease its appetite for destruction and make it less likely to want to hit Earth?
"They say that there is a one in 909,000 chance of asteroid 2003 QQ47 impacting our planet."
Anyone know the significance of naming it this? Why not just call it "Killer McBride", which of course has more significance.
The nasa page says that the calculation is based on less than 7 days of observation, but everyone is saying 'let us look for a few more months, it may not be a big deal'. Why don't they wait a couple of months before announcing this? It serves little to no purpose other than selling newspapers.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
'At last! We, the long dormant Atlanteans have risen to claim our rightful place as rulers as the world and be the object of worship for hordes of crystal-wearing new agers. Oh, bugger.'*wham*
A chance of 1 in 909,000! That was a close shave, people.
As is well known, things that have a 1 in a million chance of occurring happen nine times out of ten. But 909,000 is such an odd number, we should be safe.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Go on, feel stupid for missing it.
CNN is giving March 21, 2012 as the impact date.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
According to my wife, Miramani, you take out a communicator, you say "Kirk to Enterprise", and the magic repulsive laser pushes the rock away.
Never pet a burning dog.
Looking down on that NASA impact calc table, I find that in 2078 the calculated distance from the predicted orbit to the earth is 0.11 earth diameters. That doesn't sound too good to me. Sure, it's difficult to predict so far into the future, but perhaps it's a good idea to nip this one in the bud, before our grandchildren gets it in the face.
At 1 in 909,000, you're still much more likely to be hit by an asteroid than you are to win PowerBall.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I have to wonder how they (them, you-know-who ;) ;)
.....
came up with a name for this massive rock...given the chances that it will hit us, you'd have thought that they'd come up with something more imaginative...
(For good examples, please see relevant crap doomsday movies or scifi novels
In a situation like this, I'd recommend what any other geek would: We need a slashdot Poll!
"Most appropriate name for a massive rock that will most likely possibly maybe destroy all life on earth:
A) EarthCrusher
B) Foot of God
C) StarHammer
D) SCO's Laywers' Bill
E) DinosaurKiller
F)
G) CowboyNeal's Booger
909000 to one? So I'll get hit by this thing before I win the national lottery jackpot! Guess I'll just go and rip up those tickets...
Skiing? Check out The Independant Skiers Portal
They say that there is a one in 909,000 chance of asteroid 2003 QQ47 impacting our planet.
The chances of a catastrophe are likely to become even slimmer once more measurements of the asteroid's orbit have been made.
Yes, duh. With our current knowledge, there is a 1 in 909,000 chance of the chance going to 1, and a 908,999 in 909,000 chance of the chance going to 0.
Saying it is likely to become slimmer is a totally content-less comment.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
*ducks*
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
So im wondering who can I sue about this? NASA?
So there is about 1 in a million chance but taking that 1 in a million chances happen 9 times out of 10 we are all doomed
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I'd be more worried about this one which is also rated 1 on the torino scale but has a 1 in 10,000 chance of hitting the earth.
Oh by the way, it's not due 'til 2101..
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
them...
And I, for one, welcome our new Armageddon/Asteroid Overlords...
I'd like to remind them that, as a "Slashdot Coward", I can be useful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves...
Looking down on that NASA impact calc table, I find that in 2078 the calculated distance from the predicted orbit to the earth is 0.11 earth diameters. That doesn't sound too good to me. Sure, it's difficult to predict so far into the future, but perhaps it's a good idea to nip this one in the bud, before our grandchildren gets it in the face. (Repost non-anonymously. Duh. Forgot to log in.)
Does everything include nothing?
The probability of this one hitting the earth is near to zero, according to the JPL NEO site, but eventually one will turn up with a much higher probability, given that there are many objects that have not yet been discovered and that comets can change their trajectories very rapidly due to outgassing near to the sun.
I think that most space agencies know this, which is why there is a fair amount of observation and research into discovering, predicting and hindering such objects. For instance, it has been discovered that only the high density non porous asteroids can be reliably moved with nuclear explosions. Porous low density asteroids and comets will need completely different technologies in order to change their trajectories, such as solar powered lasers to melt parts of them and ion engines to manouver the probes.
As another poster already said, "We should smack it away for practice."
Wow. So this is how it all ends. I don't think that the roaches are gonna survive this one. Let's hope that in the next evolutionary cycle that the birds finally get a chance to rule the planet. Or maybe the insects. Anything but the reptiles again.
So who won? Gates? Figures.
Where does the looting begin? Can I do an Ask Slashdot about whether to loot a projection TV or an LCD?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Terry Pratchett.
General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
Well, looking at the NASA NEO page (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2003qq47.html) shows the actual probability of 2003 QQ47 impacting the Earth in 2014 is 1 in 1.754 million, the highest isolated probability. The BBC's figure of 1 in 909000 is the cumulative probability of the asteroid impacting the Earth in the next century.
2003 QQ47 only merits a 1 on the Torino scale. That's the same rating given to random events. For anyone to get upset, you'd be looking for at least a 3 (out of 10) which is a 1% chance of a collision and some regional destruction. Compare this to a 10, which is guaranteed collision and global climatic catastrophe. A 10 event on the Torino scale happens every thousand centuries or so.
Journalists really ought to at least try and understand their subject matter before committing their thoughts to be distributed to the general public. They have a duty of responsibility to ensure that data of limited significance is not represented as some twisted interpretation of a coming apocalypse.
You mean the crappy Bruce Willis movie. Here I am, thinking the story is about some Nostradamus-related story about the great final battle that destroys the world somewhere in the Middle East. You know, what Armageddon has meant for hundreds of years before Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck were involved.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Armageddon is usually associated with Greek, but its root is from Hebrew...
Armageddon = Har Megiddo
Har is "mountain", and Megiddo is an ancient battlefield in ancient Israel or "Canaan".
In addition, Apocalypse comes from Greek roots where, the "calypse" part comes from a root meaning "hidden" and when paired with "apo" becomes "to reveal the hidden". This goes along with the name of the witch who trapped Odysseus on her island for 9-10 years, hiding him from the rest of the world, Calypso
could speed up that scenario (planet/population destruction) by about 11 years.
no matter. live each day as though.... (we didn't make that up).
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive/positive behaviours/intentions.
the daze of the georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazi execrable, aka the walking dead, are #ed.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Sorry to take this seriously, but enough of the "And I for one welcome our new Asteroid Overlords" jokes. The idea of a scale that measures the likelyhood of impending destruction just seems too wonderful to leave unanalyzed.
The Torino scale seems a wonderful invention, since obviously the dinosaurs didn't have it, and see what happened to them! But it has an obvious bug, it works only with integer values. Zero means "all clear" and One means "enough danger to panic and start looting". What about "enough danger to reconsider whether life as a tea jockey is really worthwhile?" I mean, it would be really useful to know that the current Torino scale is 0.003 or whatever. People could change jobs and say "Torino went up, I'm reconsidering my life choices!" or whatever. A single decimal Torino jump could be enough to spark divorces, a full digit change enough to halt wars. But we need more accuracy.
I for one welcome our new Torino overlords!!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Why isn't anyone doing anything!!
Wormwood in Russian is "chernobyl" - in case you are interested..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
'Horizon' on the BBC covered this issue a while back - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/armagedd on.shtml
A quote from the link above:
Asteroids like sponges
Three years ago, the residents of Tagish Lake in northern Canada witnessed a bright explosion in the sky, as an asteroid burned up in the atmosphere above them. Jim Brook was lucky enough to find debris from the impact. The first thing he noticed was that it was far lighter than he expected it would be. Like a sponge, the chunks of debris were mostly air.
Dan Durdan makes his living by firing ball bearings at asteroid samples - meteorites - to study what happens when they are hit. When he tested samples similar to the Tagish Lake meteorite, he was surprised to see that, rather than shattering or being deflected, these less dense asteroids simply absorbed the impact of the blast.
These results were worrying. This could mean that many asteroids would not be deflected by a nuclear blast. Trying to deflect an asteroid with a blast might have no effect, and would keep it coming on its deadly trajectory.
The programme also covered an alternative solution (another quote..)
The power of the Sun
Jay Meloch has suggested a radical new way of dealing with a dangerous asteroid. He wanted a surer, more controlled way of diverting a large body - with a gentle push instead of a blast. His idea was to find a way of harnessing the biggest power source in the Solar System - the Sun.
In the same way as you can use a magnifying glass to set fire to a sheet of paper, you could focus the Sun's rays onto a point on the surface on an asteroid. The spot where the Sun's rays met would heat up, blasting particles of the asteroid into space. This would act like a rocket engine, and might be enough nudge the asteroid out of harm's way.
The scientific community ridiculed his suggestion - until Meloch received a phone call from someone who took his idea very seriously. The US military already uses collectors like Meloch's to gather radio waves. Meloch may well have come up with a suggestion that will one day save the Earth.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Let's freeze Bruce Willis and all the people involved in the movie, so that they can be thrown into the asteroid when it gets close; no need to defreeze'em anyway. ;-)
Otherwise, we'll have Space Cowboys meets Armegeddon, which sounds simply dreadful - though Space Cowboys is way better than the other one, which stands so far as my worse movie experience ever; glad I saw it for free!
To sig or not to sig.
Just a thought..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Arrange for some interesting interviews instead of
propagating this sh*t.
an asteroid with a 1:909,000 probability of hitting the earth! So whats the big deal? Doesnt this actually mean 908,999 : 909,000 (~1) probability of the asteroid NOT hitting the earth. There are so many other Clear & Present Dangers, with a much higher probability, not least of which is the threat of Biological/Nuclear weapons. That should cause more perturbation among the masses than a lonely asteroid hitting the earth!
Or maybe he read Arthur C Clarke's "The Light of Other Days", in which an earth-killer asteroid is named Wormwood. Yes, biblical reference in the book, but just a thought.
...taking the 909,000 to 1 odds?
Do we get hourly updates on the odds? Are the now 1,000,000 to 1 or 800,000 to 1?
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Data on this NEO's future return trips from the nasa site (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2003qq47.html):
Date: 2078-03-22.19
Distance in earth radius from center of earth: 0.11
Chance that it won't hit: 0.000
I REALLY HOPE that there's some new measurements coming out soon...
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Christ, Armageddon? That song came out in 1987, get with the times...
... the Microsoft Deathstar comes online? (And I don't mean MSN)
--
Actually I'd say it is closer to
1 to (6)^10 (total combinations)
Which is about 1 to 60 million.
I love how the article tries to make asteroids into good things, with this caption under the picture of an asteroid:
:)
"Asteroids may have brought life-forming chemicals to the early Earth"
I guess they felt the need to defend asteroids against the horrible stereotype Hollywood has built against them
Get yer asteroid insurance here!! Starting at the low-low price of $699/year.
You who keeps buying lottery tickets(1 chance on 1000k to win) saying it will be the lucky one, fear the armageddon!(1 on 909k) ...or stop spending money on lottery
The odds are all about uncertainty, but they are only expressed as a probability. The actual probability is either 0 or 1, but given our uncertainty we only know the actual probability with enough accuracy to say that the odds are 909,000 to 1.
(Unlike quanta, celestial mechanics is deterministic.)
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
So, you're saying there's a chance!?!??!?! /end dumb & dumber
How close can it actually come without causing ill effects? Suppose it missed by 100kM ? 10kM? Can anyone provide enlightenment?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
if we survive, I am looking forward for the third impact in 2015 (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Personally, I'll start worrying when the propability is more than 1% (Torino Scale 3) and increasing with time.
Of course, you were aware that the Russian for wormwood is "Chernobyl", weren't you? It must've poisoned about a third of the world's surface by the time it had reached its maximum extent...
Vimes: Does this mean I'm going to die?
Death: POSSIBLY.
Vimes: You turn up when people are possibly going to die?
Death: OH YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
Vimes: What's that?
Death: I'M NOT SURE.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
one in 909,000. well it's doing better than me with the lottery, and I don't like that.
Armageddon has been just barely missing me since it was released. I've successfully managed to avoid seeing that movie so far.
The Mayans predicted the apocalypse would be year 2012 CE, for astronomical reasons. Coincidence? Probably.
--
"The Centre issued the warning about the asteroid after the giant rock was first observed in New Mexico."
From CNN article on the subject.
or does the asteroid in the picture in the article look like a 747?
Nine weeks to unemployment. Please hire me in NYC/Long Island area
I would, but I'm looking to hire a statistician...
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
OK, I'm old. I knew what it was.
Having just visited Duxford in the past week I actually saw one.
Now how many others of you got the ref.?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
It's just that at least some of them are not going to be killed from a giant asteroid. Even if it hits (900000:1 is a much better bet than most state-run lotteries) chances are some of them will die before that. A lot can happen in a decade.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They give probabilities and other statistics to two or three significant figures, yet also state that the figures could easily be off by a factor of a few, or occasionally, ten. There should really just be an exponent with no significant digits. Get the probability right within a factor of ten, and add significant digits as you obtain more precision.
I know its the job of the media to tell us what is going on in the world today.. but I wish they wouldn't leap on these 'asteroid headed for earth' stories.
Its not like they report on them in a sensible way either.. the headline is always 'huge asteroid headed for earth' or 'asteroid to slam into earth' - all it does is cause un-necessary concern.
Let the scientists do the math and work out how serious (or not as the case has always been so far) the chances are of something like this happening before spreading panic.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I can't see why they chose 2014.
Looking at the orbit simulation, it seems to cross Earth's orbit roughly every 14 months. It's not going anywhere further away anytime soon is it?
A little wobble of that orbit every now and again caused by other stray objects could easily bring it closer again surely.
OK I'll stop calling you shirley.
yuo=teh sux @ teh internet
OK, so it's only a subcontinent. But can you think of a more effective way to get rid of offshore outsourcing?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
2014 is the year the Mayan calender predicts something will happen. Either the world will end or their friendly alien friend will come back.
[see below]
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
This must really worry the authors and marketeers, what with release planned for Q2 2014.
Come on ! The best thing that can happen to this dying planet is to get rid with this parasite/virus/superstupidpredator named "Man"...
I'm so sad it's once again a false alert.
The goal of this fake warning remains... Er... maybe guns sales will raise, won't they ? Good, let's buy some S&W share...
errr, nm, wrong series.
Before I start rioting in the streets, I need to know, how many VW Beetles is this thing? Do I really need to be worried?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Why isn't anyone doing anything!!
Nine weeks to unemployment. Please hire me in NYC/Long Island area
Shhh, you fool! That's 6,601 jobs opening up!
-T
Do these scales take into account the odds of this asteroid being nudged by a scrape with another asteroid into a collision course with earth?
I know, space is mostly empty, but if we don't know where most of the neo asteroids are, calculating the odds of a collision seems even more error-prone.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
That George W. Bush is US President? That most Americans didn't vote for him? That he can start a war without reason? Or 909,000:1 some asteroid can hit the earth in 11 years?
(According to Terry Pratchett anyway, who also admits that there's a million to one chance of it being a million to one chance- ok here on in it gets complicated ;-) )
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"perhaps after that problem is taken care of we can either create or just ignore other problems currently in existence. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it" is often most repeated by those that don't have to bother either crossing the water or re-building the damn bridge
Well, I for one welcome our new hurtling space mass-ters!
It'll burn up in our atmosphere and whatever's left will be no bigger than a Chihuaha's head.
University - a box of academia nuts.
Well, one of those two predicted the end of the world roughly around the time that that asteroid is going to do its flyby. Perhaps that is what they were predicting, this rock crashing into earth, and their techniques weren't quite precise enough to estimate the odds properly. Or on further research maybe we will see it is on a collision course.
Either way, I'd say there is a good chance we've now sighted the end predicted by those wacky prehistoric mexicans, well in advance, and can come up with countermeasures in time should further observation in the next few years show a significant likelihood of an impact.
...a good starwars refernce.
never tell me the odds!
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Yes, we have this same story twice a year. So how many years will it take us to figure out that even if the chances of a real strike are slim, the certainty of the undesirable outcome of the event should make us begin to experiment with ways to send Bruce Willis' greatgrandson out to nudge it aside? How far could we have gotten with the billions squandered in the Iraq farce?
Then again, we go out and vote to spend our money bombing a country that was of no threat to us. Maybe we deserve to have a big rock dropped on us.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
shark fins and owl feathers.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
to do it in a away that helps you achieve something. For instance:
there is going to be a near miss in 2014, and OUR SOFTWARE is NOT COMPLIANT!!! we need to hire more programmers!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A picture of Keuno Reeves.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I may be confused here, and i am buy no means an expert, but what type of effect aside from impact oculd this asteroid have?
with a weight that high, passing that close to earth, how would it affect our tides due to the magnetic pull?br>
i dont know about you, but it would suck to wake up and see a tsunami bearing down on me out the window....
anyone with a greater background in this field give some clarification on the chances plz? I consider this somethign worth considering and havnt seen amention of it anywhere in here:-p
...an Jehova's Witness once told me that Chernobyl is Russian for Wormwood.
Stick Men
15 March 2005: The object will be .082 AU from earth.
24 September 2012: The object will pass within 0.098 AU of earth.
I also noticed (if I am reading the orbital diagrams correctly) that the points where the object is closest to the earth coincide with the points where the object passes through the plane of the ecliptic. Since these are the Acending / Decending nodes of a solar orbit, wouldn't this point be ideal for a change of orbital plane? I'm thinking these near-Earth encounters may change the object's orbit somewhat, since surely the earth encounters will impart some delta-v on the object.
Anyone else up on orbital mechanics care to take a better look at the ephermis?Oh wait, wrong list. Sorry.
I read an article on this at CNN as well and they are like "OMGWTF YOU DIE!" Way to go with hyping it up... It's 1 on the torino scale... and soon to be 0 they say... ...unless, 1 and 0... 10 and it's a conspiracy.....
_________ Help me get a PSP!
...just sounds like the drug-induced rantings of some dude in ancient times. Too much fasting or consuming magic mushrooms.
Stick Men
Coast to Coast AM with George Noory and you will hear all about much graver things coming our way, like Planet X! We miss you Art Bell!!!!
see the close approach table here - note the the distances on this chart are typically in single digit earth radii.
See also this data on the NEODyS home page
It means that any space alien or mad scientist with a grudge could give it a nudge to do something nasty.
Note also that the orbit simulations link given above seems to be calculated with old data. showing no collision in 2014
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This is the funniest thing I've read on slashdot in a very long time.
One in 909,000 impact chance. We know that one human life costs significanlty more than $1 million, but let's agree on 1 mln. That means the estimated losses from the potential collision with the asteroid can be at least $2 billion just for the expected loss of human life (assuming one continent is devastated). Add to that the loss in industrial capital, loss of cultural artifacts and the culture in now dead humans, some other things as well, and finally a loss of a continent. This might very well add up to $10 billion. If we take a larger estimate for the cost of human life, make it $100 billion. This is our expected loss just from the fact that this piece of rock is flying around.
I am not even talking about the fact that most dangerous asteroids are as yet unnoticed, that there are other dangerous ones, etc. I guess we better spend a good chunk of this money on developing some working tech to destroy dangerous asteroids. We can't rely on Bruce Willis and his team of misfits to save us.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Your best consolation is the hope that the things you failed to get weren't really worth having.
Entirely appropriate. :-)
Every time of of these damn things whips by I hear the same story. "Wah, we're all gonna die hideous cannibal deaths in the freezing dark. Wah, it's going to kill every living being just like the other ones did. Wah, I want my robust space program back." Why be so negative? If we could park this boulder off the Earth's coast somewhere, does anyone have an idea of how much it could be *worth?* I vote for clamping a booster to it, then nudging it into place at one of the L-points. (Distracted by movement, he glances at television monitor set into the wing-shaped ebony desk on his metallic dias.) "Ah, Mr. Bond! So good of you to...join us." Heh heh heh.
I find it interesting that this is in almost the same timeframe as the predicted end of the world based on the Mayan calendar which states that civilization as we know it will end in 2013.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
I'm a little confused, and was hoping that someone knew -- but my question was: let's say that a HUGE asteroid was passing near earth. Okay - chances are really slim, but lets say that we do find a way to deflect it - thus saving mankind as we know it and avoiding another ice age.
Assuming that this case does play out, is there a possibility of the gravitational field from the large body changing earth's orbit?
I heard they are already recruiting orbital fuel station attendants who chainsmoke.
Yeah, they'll be sending up another space shuttle to release a giant "laser" It will malfunction and instead of one giant rock, will be millions of mendium-sized rocks. Go NASA!
I know the Carlin routine is done in jest, but the opposite of a 'near miss' is not a 'near hit' but a 'far miss'.
If something almost hits you, it misses you by a near distance.
That's what the term implies.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
I just remembered similar (official & scientific) (?) news prior the launch of movies like DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON...
Doesn't it sucks that Hollywood utilizes the news network to promote red-neck eye candy?
LE+
Go on, feel stupid for missing it.
:\
Don't worry....I do.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
How the fuck does asking a legitimate (although admittedly foolish) question get modded as redundant?!?
Just because there was one SCO comment in the same post. Sheesh!
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
When does the Mayan calendar end? Is it 2014? Maybe that's why they stopped counting, why bother when some asteroid they've charted will annihilate Earth.
this is all humorous speculation; you don't honestly take this seriously do you?
I hate all sigs, even this one.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
End of the mayan calendar?
"In all of this movement the Maya plotted the evolution of man, the falls in consciousness; they say 2012 will be a raising of consciousness for those who are ready, for those who have done work on the inner self. Thus in 2012 they say it is the great cycle that will close, the zodiacal precisional cycle will be coming to a close, but an even grander cycle will come to a close. "
Maybe 2012 is when we learn we are all phukked.
http://www.levity.com/eschaton/Why2012.html
"So you're saying there's a chance!"
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
Thing is, if there's a 1:900000 chance of the earth being hit by an asteroid big enough to extinguish all life in 2014, the statistical odds are that more than 6000 people will die from this meteor impact.
Do politicians understand maths well enough to judge whether that's statistically significant or not?
Regards,
--
*Art
Kind of redundant pointing out how many sides are on a die.
Go ahead, make my day.
-atto denotes 10^18. That's a very small number.
Perhaps you meant terawatt, or petawatt, or something?
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Asteroids are not necessarily spherical, as they do not have enough gravity to become round that way.
So it does not have to have been 10x10x10 times bigger.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
but the brits are playing it down here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3200019.stm
Hmmmmmm now where did I put that Anderson shelter?
IIRC a 1 on the Gran Torino Scale rates HIGHLY UNLIKELY that Paul Michael Glaser slides across the hood of a '71 ford into an asteroid causing regional devestation.
if it ain't broke, break it.
Actually you can just try to figure out what's going on with 2003 QQ47 using the ORSA software. It is not a simple computation, but you can try anyway. --Lino
Looks like the Maya weren't far off! Didn't they perdict the end of the world in 2012?
http://www.levity.com/eschaton/Why2012.html
1 in 909,000 is better than the odds of winning most multi-million dollar lotteries.
Vote for Pedro
The fear of an asteroid collision is completely overblown although it makes good reading in newspapers. The asteroid traveling on a trajectory colliding with earth can be easily deflected from its path by a small nuclear explosion when the asteroid is far away. Just plop a nuclear warhead on top of a huge rocket; shoot the rocket at the asteroid so that collision occurs somewhere outside of our galaxy. The impact and accompanying explosion should deflect the asteroid by a couple of millimeters from its trajectory. Those millimeters translate into millions of miles when the asteroid finally enters our solar system.
Please read the news article "Asteroid Might Hit Earth in 2880, Unless it is Painted" about another asteroid that might hit earth. The article suggests that painting the asteroid would deflect it from its course.
Early posts that aren't obvious karma whores are always modded into oblivion.
Welcome to Slashdot.
Let me just say again how glad I am that there are people keeping track of this stuff. It's nice to know we won't get blindsided one of these days because nobody was paying attention.
RP
While this site looks cheesy and some of it may be suspect, I am beginning to think that these folks might be onto something. There's lots of historical and anecdotal evidence that seems to support what they are saying. Finally, how many of you are just *feeling* that there is something massively wrong that goes beyond human matters? The feeling that something so tremendous and terrifying is looming that is beyond our civilzation's control? Discuss...
Un-news
Yeah, maybe now they'll have color-coded Star Trek-esque alerts for the Torino scale. I can see it now...
Yellow alert today, Torino 1. 0.0034% chance of asteroid hitting sometime in the next decade. Stay alert and watch for suspicious activity. If anyone starts looting, shoot them.
People: aaaagghh!!!
Orange alert today, Torino 1.03. 0.0040% chance of asteroid hitting sometime in the next decade. Keep your eyelids peeled and call the authorities if you see anything fall out of the sky
People: whatever...they were wrong last time..
Finally...
Red alert today. 100% chance of asteroid hitting sometime the day after tomorrow.
People: Yeah, right...
Table 28.9 Global Catastrophies
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The lunar orbit averages 60 times the radius of the earth (a number calculated by Archimedes). So the earth's cross-section is (1/60)^2 or 1:3600. This ignores that gravity pulls an object closer toward earth.
NEOs (near earth objects) are computed in terms of LEDs (lunear earth distances). A LED=1 is started to get serious.
Great news! Attention fellow Microserfs, now we can delay Longhorn even further. Of course, now that we KNOW we are facing extinction, that means our Microsoft stock options are kinda worthless. For all the latest news, be sure to check us out at Microsith.com
In principio erat Verbum.
I AM KIROCK!!!
He'll save us!
If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
is everyone using SAE or Metric?
Just so you know, in an unsigned 32bit integer, you can fit around "4 000 000 000". So that problem techincally won't happen for another 50 to 60 years or so after 2038.
I bet with just the right nudge, this could hit Redmond.
Set the wayback machine to the early 1980's when there was a one in a million chance that the Space Shuttle would suffer a catastrophe during a mission. We soon found out it was 1 in 62 and that was revised a few years later to about 1 in 55. I'm not really worried about a big rock hitting us because there's nothing that I can do about it, but I just like to keep scientific probability in check.
------
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
Currently we're all hoping that the move to 64-bit computing will automagically solve this problem for us, at least till 2^63 seconds past $#%$#$%# 1970.
Related note, in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" (a great read) the space gypsies still calculate dates as an offset from 1970.
In metric, 2003QQ47 has a length 1.2 km and a mass of 2.6 billion tons.
In Volkswagons (2003 model year), 2003QQ47 has a length of 293 beetles and a mass of 1.9 million beetles.
In American football units, 2003QQ47 has a length of 13 football fields and a mass of 930,000 twenty-two-man football teams.
In transatlantic oceangoing vessels, 2003QQ47 has a length of 4 QE2s and a mass of 37 QE2s.
In states, 2003QQ47 has a length 1/4 of 1% of the size of Texas.
You may now, if you are so inclined, panic porportionately.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
what's so funny about this?
First, the orbit simulation says not to use it years in the future or for close approaches (since it's only using 2-body approximations).
Second, recall Earth's axis is tipped 22 degrees to the ecliptic, so it appears to be coming down from 68 degrees North (assuming north is up in the simulation which is verifiable but I haven't done so), but at an undetermined latitude (depending on time of day).
Third, it needn't hit at the "top", but could be hit on the front face of earth orbitwise, or a grazing strike on the retreating face of Earth.
any space alien or mad scientist with a grudge could give it a nudge to do something nasty
Giving it a nudge to miss for sure is easier than giving it a nudge to ensure contact, which is still less difficult than to hit a specific continent. Not only in the sense of reducing the pseuod-probability ambiguity either: nudging an orbit is like nudging a gyroscope, there's a subtle precesion of effect. The continent is tracing a point along a spiral, while the asteroid is tracing a point along an ellipse. If you apply delta-v to deform the elipse you also speed or retard the point's progress along the ellipse, and vice-versa. The required delta-v to ensure contact may be prohibitive for a sure miss, whereas the required delta-V for undoing a sure-hit is small, only need to turn it into a very near miss.
according to my caclulations collected by googleing
KE=1/2MV(squared) so that rock has 1.17x10(14 power) Kenetic energy in joules while a 20 megaton nuke has 8.4x10(13) joules energy, therefor transferred without loss of energy that rock has the distructive power of 1393 20 megaton nukes! run for cover!
I'm impressed with how much press this object is getting, since it's extremely unlikely that it will hit the Earth. So unlikely, in fact, that the probability of it impacting is calculated at at about one in a million over the next century (not for the 2014 encounter, which would consequently much lower probability). Furthermore, one in a million is about the background probability of any object hitting us over the next century, so in fact the probability of 2003 QQ47 hitting us is no greater than any object, including ones we don't know about, hitting us in the same time period.
I for one welcome our new asteroid maste...
Ahh... forget it.
Run the simulation at the JPL link mentioned a few threads above. It looks a lot more like the asteroid is going to hit mars than earth.
2's compliment rollover: Mon Jan 18 22:14:08 EST 2038
After this point, any implementation that does not explicitly handle Unix timestamps as unsigned 32-bit integers will have the internal representations flip into the negative domain. The most common fault is to revert to 1902. A lot of systems will fail long before this if dates are compared before and after this event.
32 bit overflow: Sometime early the year 2106.
The limits for a 32bit unsigned number are exceeded. The most common fault mode will be to restart counting back at 1970. Countless other problems will be caused by date arithmetic causing invalid answers.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Nonetheless... You'll look pretty stupid if the asteroid hits earth and you forgot to back up!
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
The object probably goes too fast to capture into orbit, but it would be nice to have a cheap source of minerals that could be sent down to earth in carefully planned decents.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
The thing is, with these prophecies, and any form of mysticism in general (including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Astrology - you name it) is that there are many "predictions" and they are vague enough that they could apply to almost anything. People do go on to apply them to everything. That's why there are those that believe the end of the world is just around the corner, all the time. Forget 666. It's always coming up. It even came up in conjunction with Microsoft.
Stick Men
This theory is commonly referred to as the "Sponge Asteroid Square Pants" theory...
Where's Ariana Huffington? The people need to know that this is 's fault. Did anyone see if Hillary Clinton also ran to the press with a quote?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Something tells me that "second trumpet" won't catch on and replace Armegeddon as the term people allude to when they talk about asteroid strikes. . .
Did they check where the moon would be? Perhaps it won't hit Earth, but if the moon suddenly isn't there anymore we will have BIG PROBLEM. (no tides, no stable axis, etc.
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
Just as long as PETA is a measurement of its power and not an indication of who controls it...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Okay by me.
I can't afford to retire anyway.
Eh, forget where you are?
This is slashdot, no one cares about your fairytales.
The liberals mod down anything Christian that's not in mocking tone. Sad. They laugh and slap each other's backs and insult the Christians. Stupid posts get +5Phunny but theological posts with a Christian flavor get negatives.
Sad indeed.
Interesting, but I prefer the Karaethon Cycle.
So it was written in The Great Hunt, ch. 26:
Twice and twice shall he be marked,
twice to live and twice to die.
Once the heron, to set his path.
Twice the heron, to name him true.
Once the Dragon, for remembrance lost.
Twice the Dragon, for the price he must pay.
Twice dawns the day when his blood is shed.
Once for mourning, once for birth.
Red on black, the Dragon's blood stains the rock of Shayol Ghul.
In the Pit of Doom shall his blood free men from the Shadow
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
With your mention of "Yoggoth" and your insinuation that five is not important, I discern that you must be from the Illuminati! I will not submit! I and my Legion of Dynamic Discord will defeat you and your shoggothes and all the rest!
I just need to read the next two books in the trilogy first.
fnord
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Since asteroids contain all kinds of useful elements, and since the moon is sadly deficient in many important elements -to the grief of those who make plans for permanent space colonization- it would make sense to give the asteroid a gente nudge with a nuclear engine to send it crashing into the moon.
The Earth itself has received much valuable elements from asteroid impacts during the past 4 billion years (check the Sudbury impact site), and while no one wants an asteroid to hit the Earth today, there are no lunar inhabitants that might get hurt.
If it crashed at a very shallow angle, the scattered lunar regolith will dissipate the kinetic energy without vaporizing the asteroid fragments. This will give future lunar colonists a rich supply of substances containing nitrogen, carbon, and possibly even hydrated minerals.
Yours Birger Johansson
Fuck!!! Osama and his asteroid worshipping camel-sacrificers!
Is it just from margin of error in measurements?
Or are there variables that will affect the trajectory of the asteroid?
What I mean to ask is, are orbits static, or do they change based on, say the solar weather of the moment?
.... and the pesky problems of an uncalculated jump to hyperspace.
Revised data rule out the possibility of a collision in 2014: Read about it here.
Impact Risk for QQ47
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2003qq47.html
2014 has disappeared from the list, since the probability of impact has gone to zero. There are still 18 possible impact dates. The most likely, at one in 5.2 million is in 2067.
If, in six months, 2067 is still in the list, it's probability of impact will be greater. Then, we'd have 64 years to do something about it.
Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.
-- Stephen.