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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.
...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
'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.
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.
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?
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?
No, it's a lot of MASS
About the same mass as one fat American, or a European car.
That was classic intercourse!
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?
The big question is how big is it in the standard scale of VW Bugs?
It's SCO's final solution.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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!!
'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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
The Mayans predicted the apocalypse would be year 2012 CE, for astronomical reasons. Coincidence? Probably.
--
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
(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!"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
A picture of Keuno Reeves.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?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"
Or, indeed, one of my favorite Simpson's quotes:
Lets burn down the Observatory so this never happens again!
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
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.
Ah well - never mind, we can use them to propel the kitten-tipped missiles we'll be firing at the asteroid.
They also had a prediction that Jaguars would consume us all. They had a 12,000 years calender. You should look up the counting system they used, it is pretty interesting. coincidentally, there calender coresponds to when the magnetict north pole will be closest to the physical north pole, smething that happen, you guessed it, once ever 12,000 years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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.
Table 28.9 Global Catastrophies
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
That would be tricky, given that the bodies in question orbit the sun.
Mind the Gap
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I agree it is interesting how much press this is getting for such a basically non-existant chance of a collision. However, I have to think anything that causes the public, especially the American public, to take any sort of intrest in space is a good thing. We've fallen a long way from our glorious Apollo and Gemini roots. I really hope China, the EU or anyone else just makes massive strides into space to force our government to seriously look up again to space. Or, alternatively, I'd be willing to risk a 1 in 10 colllision to make us at least get out there to crush asteroids. Though I have a strange feeling it would just result in most rich people/nations finding ways to survive an impact, instead of defending against it.
We seem to have lost touch with the stars and became much more focused on more trivial, Earth-centric problems recently. Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm all for saving the environment and national defense and all that, but all it would take is a good, massive impact to solve all of our problems here and leave our ruins for some alien civilization to possibly come across. Here's to the future...
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
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
.... and the pesky problems of an uncalculated jump to hyperspace.