Astronomers Upset About Asteroid Panic

DrMorpheus writes "According to the New Scientist, astronomers are horrified by press scares over asteroids - including the recent furore over QQ47 - which briefly had a one-in-a-million chance of crashing into our planet in 2014. So much so that they are toning down the scale they use to rate the threat posed by asteroids in an attempt to discourage journalists from covering potential collisions. Some even want the way asteroids are assessed to be completely overhauled."

Comments

On space.com too

[snake_dad]

Space.com had a nice piece about this too.

Re:We should get rid of the torino scale regardles

[Vihai]

Multiply probability of impact by consequences of collision and you get a meaningful weighed probability of disaster.

Low probability * Low damage = Low danger
High probability * Low damage = Medium Danger
Low probability * High damage = Medium Danger
High probability * High damage = High Danger

Seems reasonable to me

Simple solution

[peacefinder]

I've been following the Current Impact Risks page ever since I found out about it over a year ago.

In order to report on this issue responsibly, all that's required is to ignore any object on the list until the NEO survey folks has collected observations over a span of 20 days or more. Before that, the orbits are too unclear to be worth reporting upon. Practically all objects fall of the list before the obeservations span 20 days.

Sadly, some reporters want to get the story out first, so they jump the gun.

Re:We should get rid of the torino scale regardles

[Idarubicin]

It's really not that hard. You plot on a logarithmic scale the probability of collision (x-axis) and the estimated kinetic energy of the object (y-axis). From this figure, read off the Torino scale value.

I don't think it misrepresents anything. Each value is associated with both a specific kinetic energy and a specific probability. The Torino value not just the result of multiplying the two numbers (which would introduce the orthogonal vectors issue you mentioned) but rather a unique area on the plane defined by those two 'vectors'.