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Astronomers Upset About Asteroid Panic

Posted by simoniker on from the construct-identical-trashteroid dept.

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."

3 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Any attention is good by mao+che+minh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The hype and panic brings needed attention to an often overlooked scientific field: watching out for big ass shit that could annihilate us. We spend far too little on this kind of work as it is.

  2. Moderating asteroids?? by gaber1187 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Maybe scientists should apply the slashdot moderation process to asteroids, (5, Interesting), (6, Oh crap)...

    but seriously, I think part of the problem is that scientists want to be the first to publish something about important things they have found, so we end up with people racing to the press to say they found something before other people found it.

    Maybe what they need is some sort of identifier showing how much data has been collected to tell people how certain the track is. Right now, they just say, ooh, 1 in a million chance based on small dataset with huge error bars. But in reality it should be 1 in 5 billion because our error bars are huge. I really think this is the scientists fault for publishing really early data that has not been corroborated yet or refined--not the press... its not like they are hacking into the scientists computers and misinterpreting data, its the scientist trying to impress a good looking journalist or something or get some recognition...

    --if only coffee and techno came in the same drink...

  3. It's their own fault by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 5, Interesting
    OK, let's think about this. Astronomers find an asteroid that has an extremely remote chance, BASED ON PRELIMINARY CALCULATIONS of hitting Earth 11 YEARS FROM NOW. It will take another TWO OR THREE DAYS days to get more accurate calculations.

    So...what do they do? Instead of waiting the two days and seeing if the risk is real, they announce right away.

    Let's consider the possibilities if they had waited a couple of days. In the overwhelmingly most likely case, they find after a couple days that things are OK, and so say nothing. No panic. All is well.

    In the extremely unlikely case, it turns out it does have a reasonable chance of hitting the Earth, perhaps high enough that we actually need to do something about it. In that case, would a delay of TWO DAYS OUT OF 11 YEARS really have made a difference?

    Either someone was very irresponsible in announcing in the first place, or someone was trying to get publicity for astronomers (perhaps to help with funding?)