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Earth's Asteroid Risk Downgraded
xanthines-R-yummy writes "Relax, everyone - the risk of a gigantic asteroid colliding with Earth just got smaller! Nature reports: "A new survey revises down the likelihood of a massive asteroid hitting the Earth by 20-30%. We're only due to collide with rocks larger than one kilometre across roughly once every 600,000 years, it concludes." Whew! What a relief!"
Man, I guess I won't have to worry about any rocks smaller than 1km big, it's not like they'll do any real damage.
That still gives you 100 yrs, right?
Seriously, tho, that would be one of statistician's largest pet peeves: thinking that because outcome X has not occured at all in a period in which it is predicted to occur, that X is overdue to occur. IIRC, this is the Gambler's Fallacy. Somehow I'm reminded of the joke where three statisticians go duck hunting. First one shoots, and misses- too high. Second one shoots, and misses- too low. Third one yells, "We got 'em!"
#define DRM chmod 000
What other page would it make? Slashdot, like any news source, is just trying to find content. I can think of more trivial articles than this in the recent past.
> "Relax, everyone - the risk of a gigantic asteroid colliding with Earth just got smaller!"
Surely the risk hasn't changed, just our estimate of it...
-- "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." -- HL Mencken
From the same website.
:P
So what's the big deal?
There may be none. This region has active hydrothermal features, and possibly some uplift. It's possible that the area could host future hydrothermal explosions, but so could other areas beneath the lake and other areas within the Park.
Do any of the features beneath the lake relate to possible volcanic eruptions?
It is very unlikely. All active features are related to faults and hot water (hydrothermal) vents. Identified craters were formed by collapse or as a result of old hydrothermal explosions. Many of the rocks beneath the lake are lava flows more than 100,000 years old.
I don't think we have too much to worry about
In a truly Random Distribution the probabilities of an event occuring are equal at any point in time. If scientists think Asteriod strikes are really a normal distribution (can't tell from the abstract linked) then things are different, but the strike times are still random just in the long run tend to the mean (600,000 yrs).Just because we are past the mean time does NOT say anything about "lateness". There is the whole other half of the curve to consider, so getting a strike in 100,000 yrs or next Tuesday has a non-zero chance depending on the standard deviation. Looks like a nice example of trying to get more NEO asteroid research funding by raising a scare scenario with statistics even though they admit there was a lot of error in prior observations and that there is more work to be done. I tried to read the actual papere at Science but I'm not going to pay $30 to get it!! Anyone able to grab it and post it?
Not to slight the research and the pure theoretical chance calculations and all, but..
The statistics are only as good as the sampling set.. and suffice to say, we're *not* watching every single asteroid out there - greater than 1km (diameter) or not.
And any single one asteroid we're not watching has the potential to be that 'killer asteroid'.
And we already know that we've had 'near misses' only realized until after the asteroid had already passed.
Which means that for any foreseeable future, the practical chance of us getting hit by an asteroid of size 1km in diameter or larger, tomorrow, is 50%.
Either we do, or we don't. And we won't know until it either happens, or not.
That's what the uncertainty of the limited sampling set brings us in practice.
Which doesn't mean that if it doesn't hit tomorrow, that the chances for it hitting the day after tomorrow is 75%. The chances remain 50%.
What's more interesting is predicting the chances of a particular asteroid we -are- spotting are of hitting us.
humans are the planet's worst fear.
humans are humans' worst fear.