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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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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
Armageddon
A roughneck crew of the world's foremost deep-core oil drillers, including Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis), set out on a heroic journey into space to save the world from an oncoming asteroid the size of Texas.
For you Spetics out there, a tonne is a metric ton. It is equal to a mass of 1000kg. There are approximately 0.454kg in one of your pound thingies.
Stick Men
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.
Terry Pratchet and British satirist. In his Discworld series of books one of the running jokes is the way that "million to one" chances are almost always a dead certainty.
It's further explained by his theory of "narrative causality" that is a sufficiently good story can impact reality in such a fashion as to bring the conditons of "reality" closer to that in the narrative.
The idea here being, how often in some story do they say "It's a million to one chance, but it just might work," and then, like magic it happens.
Check out;
http://www.ie.lspace.org/
for an idea of what he's all about. He's one of my favorite authors.
-H
"If there's anything more important than my ego, I want it caught and shot now." -- Z. Beeblebrox
Personally, I'll start worrying when the propability is more than 1% (Torino Scale 3) and increasing with time.
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"
But more interestingly -- is 2014 an election year?
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to 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