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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."
Even as the commotion over QQ47 was dying down
Umm... what commotion exactly? I know it got some coverage on a slow news day, but seriously, was anyone actually worried about this?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
At some point in the future, Earth will get hit by a global-killer! That's statistically probable, too! (given infinite time... well, ok... maybe we don't have INFINITE time, but... close enough for government work).
;)
Oops! Shouldn't have posted this... now the National Inquirer will have fodder to run with this overly-used story for another 10 years.
I'll start worrying about the accuracy of asteroid collision prediction after they manage to figure out how to predict rain 3 days from now with better than 70% accuracy. 8/
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
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.
do we really need to be notified every time an asteroid is within a percentage of a collision course? the media should focus on the more interesting statistics of astronomy.. like.. uh.. mars!
Reporters: The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!
Scientists: STFU!
Reporters: Aw, damn.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Having a 1 on the Torino scale is kind of like having a Blue on the Terrorism Threat Scale, or a DEFCON 4 instead of 5. It's kind of cute but it's not very meaningful.
Changing the scale won't change the sensationalist, advertising-powered press at all. They'll continue to report asteroids as "harbinger of the approaching eschaton" whether it's on the Torino or Donuto scale (instead of covering, say, the deleterious effects of gasoline consumption by SUV's on the environment, or the tobacco industry's clever solicitation of candidates for DEATH).
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Asteroid? Not worried. Vaguely worried. Sorta worried. Kinda worried. Somewhat worried. Fairly worried. Worried. FEAR FEAR FEAR
The Torino scale is trying to represent two completely orthogonal scalars (chance of collision and consequences of collision) with a single scalar. It's going to end up misrepresenting something.
Don't believe them!! They're trying to... hey, get out of my room!, AARRRRGHHGHH.....
[NO CARRIER]
What will it take before we get more money for watching the skies and funding for technologies that can divert a disaster? I think inciting panic or fear without exagerating the risks or facts can have a positive social change.
Right now, most of the sky is ignored and there is no solution to moving a huge asteroid just a little bit to avoid collision with the Earth or the moon. If Joe Sixpack demanded some kind of plan eventually something would be debated in Congress. The alternative is to watch a small part of the sky and do nothing if a real threat is detected.
What gets me is that people actually panic even when they put the statistics right there in the page, 1 in a million chance. There is greater chance that we would nuke ourselves out of existance. Or yet maybe I could win the lottery, think ill go buy a ticket.
Serenity|Chaos
Please stop paying attention to us! We don't need funding or publicity! Give our money to the effort to stamp out terrorist bad breath!
This sounds suspisciously like an Onion article in the making...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Well, it would be funny if I had someway to get to another earth-like planet ...
Of course, with essentially no space program, there's nothing we could do even if we DID believe them, so maybe they're worrying over nothing.
See what I've been reading.
It's not only the astronomers who are worried about one of these things coming, it's Bruce Willis who is worried, too.
He's afraid he's going to have to wear that hideous cordoroy space-suit again and listen to Ben Affleck mope about J.Lo.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Space.com had a nice piece about this too.
karma capped
Oh wait, they are all dead, I forgot.
Where is my green/blue/yellow/orange/red?
Perhaps we should always be in an elevated state for possible impact too!
I understand that the scientists should be concerned that their data not be misrepresented, but the blame for any panic that ensues following one of these press releases lies on the media that reports it, not the scientists.
As long as the information the Astonomers release is accurate and fully explains the likelyhood of an impact, I think they're covered. There is enough of a peer review process involved that keeps inaccurate information from being disseminated. And the scale they use to rate the impact probability seems quite satisfactory to me. (granted, I'm no astronomer)
Maybe I'm assuming too much, but media hype doesn't usually make it past my BS filter. Until I hear a report from a multiple reliable media sources, I'm unlikely to believe in wild claims of global destruction. But that's just me.
Traxman
than the people who declare we're all going to die after only a nights worth of orbit data (And yes I am an astronomer dammit!). There are too many people trying to do sloppy science by deriving an orbit after only a night's worth of data and then send out a press release (*cough* University of Pisa *cough*)
It makes us look bad that they declare we're all going to die and then later late week after they've gotten more data and re-crunch the numbers have to come back and say "Ohh, yeah, please ignore what we just said"
This really isn't anything new. The amount of sensationalism that is poured through journalism now is gotten silly. It has really become a form of entertainment, rather than a reliable source of information. Its really too bad that you have to take the news with a grain of salt generally, since everything is jumping to conclusions, rather than giving you the facts and leaving out the opinions.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
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
What will it take before we get more money for watching the skies and funding for technologies that can divert a disaster?
Watching the skies for asteroids is comparatively inexpensive. The distances that telescopes are required to resolve in order to detect a threatening asteroid within sufficient lead time are far shorter than those routinely resolved by Hubble or Chandra, and lower-power telescopes = lower cost. It's the research into asteroid diversion techniques that really must be beefed up. I can almost understand the bureaucracy's reluctant attitude toward funding such projects -- why, they reason, should they pump money into research for circumstances that in all likelihood will never occur?
Nevertheless, the price for such an event, one asteroid at the expense of the human race, is far too high. This presents its own kind of pragmatism, which mustn't be ignored by those with the power to decide.
The coolest voice ever.
Michael Moore seems to have hit it on the head about the U.S. news organizations jumping from remote possibility to remote possibility getting everybody as scared shitless as they can. film at 11.
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
Obviously, the people that panic because of a one-in-a-million chance of an asteroid hitting the earth are the same ones that buy lottery tickets because of a one-in-sixty-million chance of winning the lottery. Apparently a large segment of the population suffers from a Rainman-like inability to comprehend either large numbers or statistics. Perhaps we SHOULD be careful what we tell these people. It's like when I was babysitting the 7-year old next store, and causually mentioned that because rivers meander, some day the river slough a half mile from his house would be where his house his. He started screaming and crying -- he couldn't comprehend the fact that "some day" would be long after he was dead and his house had been torn down anyway.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Some even want the way asteroids are assessed to be completely overhauled."
What needs to be overhauled is how the astronomers interact with the press. Perhaps they should simply not hold press conferences on "maybes". Especially when certainty will be available within a few days anyway.
The problem isn't the system, the problem is the people. Glory hungry amateurs and stupid journalists, feeding off of each other.
To hell with 'em all.
10. Fox News: "TERROR FROM ABOVE!"
9. CNN: "We now go to our Washington bureau for the latest on the Bush administration's responsibility for this catastrophy.
8. PBS: "If you send us $100, you'll get this nice Yanni videotape."
7. MSNBC: "In Scarborough country, asteroids are held accountable"
6. C-Span: "Tonight on Book Chat, the author of the "Meteor" tie-in novel weighs in."
5. CBS News with Dan Rather: "This meteor will sweep through the South like a tornado through a trailer park"
4. The View: "What do you think we should wear for this?"
3. Good Morning America: "Is your pet psychic? These and more stories after the asteroid report."
2. MTV News: "With this new asteroid in the sky, Meat Loaf has a few words to say about the fact that he is no longer the biggest `Rock Star' around"
1. James Carville on Crossfire: "Ken Starr is bringing this upon us! This asteroid will kill minorities and poor children!"
0. Springfield News: "This is Kent Brockman. I for one, welcome our...."
It's depressing to think that we continue to keep all of mankind's eggs in one basket when we don't have to. Zubrin says $20 billion and 10 years to get to Mars and $2B a launch after that -- that's 70+ Mars missions just for what we're spending for W's war in Iraq, which I suspect would do a lot towards addressing the idea of permanent colonization.
Get some puny dictator who poses no threat to the US or do something so great that it'd be remembered forever so long as humans draw breath...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Convincing the blond next door that an asteroid is about to hit the earth may be the only chance most slashdotters have of getting laid...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I say we let the press make the articles MORE sensational. Quite frankly, if some Enquirer or World Weekly News reader is incapable of grasping the odds when they are posted right in the article, let them riot. Perhaps a few of them will die in the ensuing chaos and keep Darwin happy. Our gene pool is becoming clogged at the filter.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
The gotcha is without mainstream media coverage and public opinion there is no way they are going to get additional funding. I think that the occasional bit of overwrought journalism is the cross they are just going to have to bare if they want to stay in business. Personally, given the trillions spent worldwide on "defense", I'm quite happy for a few billion to go on the effort to detect an killer asteroid in time to do something about it.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
All we have to do is put a little white triangle in space that we can control on the ground using a conputer. We can then just spin it around and around and fire little white dots of light to blast the asteroids into smaller and smaller pieces...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
The media craziness would be solved if people just applied a simple rule: Don't assign a Torino rating to an object until you have observations covering 1% of the time between now and the first potential collision.
All these level 1 rated objects have been reclassified as level 0 as soon as a couple weeks of data have been obtained; why not wait those couple weeks before publising anything?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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...
>> orthogonal scalars
>
> Would you mind clarifying how that works?
When mathematics hits language... no good outcome. I suppose the original poster meant that the Torino-scale combines two completely unrelated scales with each other.
The probability of an impact has nothing to with its potential (desastrous) effects.
Two orthogonal vectors are linear independent from each other, that is, one isn't a multiple of the other.
If you'd measure impact-probabilty on the x-axis, and the effects on the y-axis, any combination of these two can be described by a vector in this 2d-plain. however, if you only name the length of the vector, thus give only a single value where otherwise two would be needed (i.e. x,y coordinates or length and polar angle), your scale looses much of its meaning.
The human brain is immensely bad at assessing risks and consequences. Just look at the relative frequencies of fear-of-flying vs. fear-of-riding-in-a-car and compare those frequencies with the objective safety data for the two modes of transport. Add in fear of the unknown vs. complacency with the commonplace and all logic of probability and expected value go out the window. Since most people have never experienced an asteroid strike and since most asteroids never strike the Earth, it is easy to discount the possibility of the event.
And even statistics is inadequate for assessing the threat. On a deeper level, no single asteroid threat scale can work if different people have different levels of risk aversion. Which would you prefer: 1) an event that has a 1-in-a-million chance of killing 1 billion people or 2) an event that has a 100% chance of killing 1000 people. Different people will argue for different preferences despite the fact that both events have the same expected value of 1000 people dead. Some, who are risk averse, would abhor even the remotest possibility that a billion people might perish. Others, who are risk seeking, would rather take a 99.9999% chance of nobody dying to avoid the option in which 1000 people are most certainly killed.
Overall, I can see why the scientists want to downplay all the preliminary sightings of asteroids. With too little tracking data, nearly every rock they find looks like it might hit the Earth sometime. The real question is: how many false alarms can the public tolerate? If it is 1 false alarm per month, then scientists should only publish a threat assessment once a month.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
... be VERY afraid.
After the second civil war, we'll be much more worried about the next world war, which will make a mere asteroid crashing into the earth look like a tiny drop in the bucket.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
. . . by the awful news about Jo Lo and Ben Affleck.
Or was it Johnny Cash and John Ritter?
Nothing to feel bad about. Most people didn't read about the discovery of those bipedal sapient weasels in Burma because of all the ruckus over Bob Hope dying.
Stefan
Ha! That was easy! Surprisingly you use the exact same password as I do! What are the odds?! Needless to say I changed it.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Astonomers should embrace the public's irrational fear and push Congress for more funding on the locations of earth intersecting asteroids.
It worked for the PATRIOT act, why not astronomy?
I know this is a little off topic, but...
I was thinking about the various reports I've heard about deflecting an asteroid or shooting it with a missle. One idea I just thought of would be to somehow increase the speed of the asteroid so that it would miss earth. Maybe by using a solar sail or attaching rockets to it that would increase it's speed. If you had enough warning ahead of time then maybe you wouldn't actually have to have much acceleration as long as it was continuous (such as the solar sail idea).
Do you think that would be possible? Would it work any better than blowing it up or deflection?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I will sell, to the highest bidder, a lottery ticket in the year 2014 which will guarantee you a 1 in a million chance of winning a multi-million dollar jackpot.
Boy, the media should pick up on this story and cause some hysteria.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
the ones we see. So far every one that we see has been studied for a couple more days and the threat has been eliminated. Even if they found that it was absolutely going to hit the the planet, there's 10 years for them to come up with a way to send up some nukes and blast it out of the sky.
The REAL problem is the ones we DON'T see coming. It's all well and good to say "yes, we're watching, and we're making sure that nothing will hit the planet", but we can't possibly watch every corner of the sky all the time. And it will be one helluva shock to the powers that be when someone comes along and says "This asteroid is bearing down upon is, we weren't watching and we now have three weeks to come up with a plan".
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?)
it occurs to me that "sorry for the misunderstanding" would make an excellent sig!
-pyrrho
Astronomers Upset About Asteroid. Panic!
Asteroid scares (along with virii and genetic engineering) are an important part of contemporary mythology, just like radiation in the fifties. Until there are proper anti-asteroid mechanisms in place we need to exaggerate and fret over these percieved threats. It dulls our eyes to the pain of everyday problems and frustrating hierarchic structures. Give the people dreams of threats from space lest they get restless and rise anew.
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'.
~Idarubicin
"Chance of rain" in a weather forecast actually means "probability that you personally will get rained on," not "probability that it will rain somewhere in the area in question." Watch a time-lapse radar animation -- if those blobs travel across x% of the area, that's considered an x% chance of rain, even though the actual probability that rain will occur is 100%. (And of course weather patterns are vastly more complicated than simple celestial mechanics.)
The BSD syslog Protocol already has a scale that can be adapated with a little tweaking. And then we can have notification relayed to a plethora of Syslog consoles that can take appropriate action (backup, shutdown, pager, send T101 back in time to stop it, etc). So we have:
which with a little tweaking becomesThe only downside I see is that it is the BSD syslog protocol, and I understand that BSD is dead...
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
Barring any glitches, it should be churning out production data in three years. The observation program will then proceed over three to five years, depending on funding. Given the short cycle time between individual observations, PanSTARRS should usually be able to accurately calculate an object's orbit by the time a science editor gets wind of it. It beats a sharp stick in the eye.
Other projects intended to detect objects down to several hundred meters are still in the planning stage.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Astronomers upset about journalists reporting that astronomers are upset about asteroid panic.
and I, for one, will welcome our new carbon and silicate overlords! You guys rock!
Actually sensational journalists are right. Look, do you think that a train derailing and killing a hundred people should be reported? OK, I thought so. Asteroid marked 1 on Torino scale has a 1 in a million chance to collide with Earth and to destroy a continent, killing 2 billion people in the process. The expected value of damage to the humankind is thus a couple billion dollars and 2 thousand people. Do you still think this should not be reported? Do you still think this is not dangerous and scary?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Channel 4 news, a fairly mainstream and usually reliable UK news program which was almost unbelievable. The reporter opened the report by saying that an asteroid of such and such a size was going to hit the earth on such and such a date and the consequences were going to be this and that. It was only half way through the report they mentioned that the probability of it hitting was virtually zero, despite earlier saying that is was going to hit us, without any qualification. I can only assume this is exactly the kind of reporting these astronomers are talking about.
How disengenuous. For years astronomers have whipped up a frenzy about the latest asteroid encounter, presumably to compete for funding with the other "natural disaster" sciences of climatology and volcanology. The amount of funding they is proportional to how much fear they can produce in the the public. slashdot.org dutifully assists by publishing these stories.
an ill wind that blows no good
All that's changed is our assessment or understanding of that chance.
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