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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.
How likely are we to be able to nuke 'em once we see them? How likely are we to see those anyway? We've had several near-misses that we only detected after the asteroid passed us...
If it weren't for fog, the world would run at a really crappy framerate.
Thank goodness - I was worried.
mix_master_mike
vafrous
Will this finally put an end to all those damn asteroid-hitting-the-Earth movies?
Please?
I mean, there hasn't been a rock that large hitting us in, like, 599,000 years...
Aw FUCK!
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Now, what can we do about Yellowstone?
Bam! We get hit tomorrow...
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Earth is about to enter an ice age.
The Sun is about to erupt a massive solar flare which will kill everyone on Earth.
Scientists accidentally turn off the weather.
Earth's orbit disrupted by nearby blackhole.
You're not going to die from a killer-asteroid fall.
You can now safely return to previous activity.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
That the dinosaur version of Slashdot released that same story on the Jurassicnet just 48 hours before they left the earth.
"There was a lot of error in our previous estimates," says astronomer Alan Harris of the German space agency, DLR. "It's all because near-Earth asteroids are somewhat brighter than we thought".
lots of errors is a bad thing. what if their estimates are wrong now, and the previous estimates were right. I hope it's not the same people who made the previous calculations. And who exactly did they survey?
Still pretty low, unless you are wearing a blindfold... and walk in to the suckers...
#define DRM chmod 000
Did anyone see Armageddon and then go home unable to sleep for nights on end?
I just find it hard to believe that in the vast informational space of the Internet, this is a story that collided with the front page of Slashdot.
The analysis doesn't change the chance of an asteroid hitting the Earth, points out astronomer Iwan Williams of Queen Mary University of London, UK. "But assuming that there are fewer large asteroids, the damage will be less," he says.
When news editors say, "Damn it, just print something!", this is what we get.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
It makes a big difference. If it's a Poisson Process, no matter how long we wait, every day our probability of being struck remains the same. If not, every day that we don't get struck, increases our probability for getting struck the next day.
if we're going to be hit by a massive asteroid approximately every 600,000 years, doesn't that kind of make the probability 100%?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
(The preceding text is brought to you by the Tin-Foil Society for Public Awareness, have a nice day.)
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
IF we were under a threat ? What would be the strategy ?
Rockets that use nuclear bombs ? Or use retrorockets to push the asteroid ? Lasers ?
... that we now get hit by an asteroid.
Jonathanjk.com
Wait, then it'd be a bomb...
Needle Nardle Noo
> "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
We have plenty of more probable ways to destroy civilization. Assuming we do absolutely nothing about the problem for another 1000 years, the change of getting clobbered by "the big one" is still miniscule, and the odds are still much less that we won't detect it in enough time to do something. There have been a few near misses that were not detected until the last moment, but many others were found with decades of warning - enough time to devise a mission from scratch to push the sucker into a slightly different trajectory.
And by that time I predict we will either be i) extinct, ii) living in a second stone age, or iii) have unimaginable technology such as planet wide deflector shields or some super weapon that could take care of the problem in the blink of an eye.
My rights don't need management.
If these guys are so smart, why were all those recent close calls such a surprise? Someone is playing with numbers here so I wouldn't get all cozy about being prefectly safe from THE BIG ROCK.
;-)
Then again, Mr Bush will probably cause WW III so what's THE BIG ROCK going to do but kill a dead planet.
Dr Smith: Doomed, we're all doomed.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Yeah, take it easy. Two major asteroids passed within 200,000 miles of us (less than the distance to the moon) in the last year or so... http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/0 7/138256&mode=thread&tid=160
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/2 0/1916206&mode=thread&tid=160
Fortunately, we didn't know about them until after they had passed...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
A new survey revises down the likelihood of a massive asteroid hitting the Earth by 20-30%.
A survey? What did they do? Round up all the big and little asteroids and ask "Are you gonna hit us? No? Next!"
Great. I had already decided to blow off doing my homework and go out instead tonight, since I figured there was at least a decent chance that the world would be obliterated by an asteroid any day now anyway. There goes my plans for tonight...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
As usual, my latest investment is now proven to be a total lost cause.
I had just finished completion of my under ground bunker located 100km beneath the surface with lead walls and a built-in optical-network uplinked to a well fortified satelite dish array (so I can get online, watch some Japanese hentai and shop at eBay till the end of the world)
And am waiting for my shipment of rations to arrive (FedEx said they'd be here Monday, I was too cheap for the express overnight/weekends)
So hey Mr. Scientist, FUCK YOU!!! You insensitive clod!!!
I guess we'll just call that 500mil down the shitter thanks to you. I bet you never even got near a project with that much funding, you little wage slave not worthy of flushing my feces!! So tell me, do they actually let you touch the telescope, or do you just stand there and make press releases to FUCK WITH MY LIFE!!?!?!?!?!
PS: Anyone caring to submit a business proposal on what they would do with a 10k sq ft bunker in central Nevada with state of the air air-filtration/recycling, fibre optic and satelite access with a 10 node Opteron244 beowulf cluster running RH9 AS, please get in touch.
True, but if you want to be that fatalistic about it, why not just blindfold yourself and go play in traffic?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
What a total crock of steaming bovine fecal matter - we have NO idea how often large asteroids have impacted in the past, there are any number of ways the impact craters can be hidden since most of our planet is under water, and glacials have scrubbed large areas of the land masses. And even if we had a perfect record of our past asteroid hits, that has NO bearing on future encounters. There could be a stream of ten 10-kilometer asteroids bound to hit earth in the next 100 years , put on that trajectory by some random event long ago, or there could be NO chance of a major hit for the remaining lifetime of the earth. One in a million, or 1 in 1, WE DON"T KNOW.
It is far, far more likely that our exponentionally advancing technology will destroy us before we've had a chance to leave the nest, and transcend to a safer form (non-bio) minus some of our outmoded evolutionary jungle-brain baggage.
--
Power to the Peaceful
that doesnt cover planetary collisions, what would happen if the moon were to suddenly start going towards the earth, or mars drifting towards us? ;)
or those really huge ass asteroids that are big enough to almost be their own planets (like ceres)
really, they cant put a real estimate on when something's going to destroy the earth.
not to mention the real threat isnt space, the real threat is ourselves, every day someone's on the verge of launching a war on someone else.
humans are the planet's worst fear.
Sarcasm, meet AC. AC, Sarcasm.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
You can calculate the energy release, overpressure radius, and so on. You can estimate the casualties and property damage from a half-kilometer disaster.
My nightmare, though, is having the next Tunguska-sized event happen during the next Cuba-like nuclear crisis.
It only takes a small rock to do a good short-term simulation of a nuclear weapon going off. If that happened at the wrong place and wrong time, it could trigger indescribable horror.
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.
I'm so relieved. I think about this daily. It's much more of a concern to me than going bald prematurely, being impotent, or being intellectually feeble.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Actually, I can't think of anything more terrifying than the extinction of the human species. What's even scarier is that unlike most things that threaten a person's existence (beyond just getting too old), there's absolutely nothing you, nor anyone else can do to prevent this.
Do I lose sleep over it? Not really. But to me it's like contributing to a pension - you may never see it, it won't happen for decades, but you do it anyway. Because when the time comes it will be the single most important thing in your life.
When I add my life to the other 6 billion on the planet, yes, the thought of all of us dying scares me quite a bit.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The article points out that rather than there being 20-30% fewer rocks out there which could hit us, they are 20-30% smaller. So the chances of being hit are not less, just the chances of of it being over the magic size 1 kilometre (claimed to be the size required to knockout civilisation or whatever).
Bitter and proud of it.
One Asteroid proof bunker, with 500,000 years provisions, cable TV and internet.
After watching 'The elegant universe' (<--- torrent links)I can trade in my fear for an continent sized asteroid hitting earth for the more bleeding-edge fear of a new 'Big Bang' occuring. :) No rest for the paranoid.
What an impact. Someone hit me before I come up with more bad puns. Rock the hou - ouch.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
see this national geographic article
if this thing blows in our lifetimes, the midwest will essentially become Mordor...I guess for some hardcore LOTRs fans that would be kind o' cool...
Then again, LOTR trilogy is hella better than any asteroid hitting the planet movie...
humans are the planet's worst fear.
humans are humans' worst fear.
when asteroids used to hit the americas and siberia people made very little of it... for one, humanity's population was tiny, there was hardly any communication between geographically distant places, and people thought weird astronomical events were the signs of god's wrath... nowadays, however, the americas are full of people, vaccinations and medicine have prolonged life and reduced mortality to the extent that the population is booming and filling up the land, people move around a lot and the communication made events that hit places 1000s of miles away seem like they're news we care about, that by the time a next asteroid hits the earth it'll be a major, major catastrophe..
that said though, we needn't worry, 'cos god's angels in heavens up there will be protecting us!
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob -warm.html ...However, some solar scientists are considering whether the warming exists at all. And, if it does, might it be caused, wholely or in part, by a periodic but small increase in the Sun's energy output. An increase of just 0.2% in the solar output could have the same affect as doubling the carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere."
i es _2003_021226-7.html
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d ia nce.html .05 percent per decade, according to a NASA funded study.
1991 - "Global warming --
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/topmyster
Top 10 Space Mysteries for 2003
7. The Enigmatic Sun
If you're looking for a career with a really bright future, become a solar physicist. Amazingly, we still don't fully understand the dynamics of the star we orbit.
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20010801solar
Stormy Space Weather Takes a Toll on Ozone
Goddard Space Flight Center, August 1, 2001
"A new study confirms a long-held theory that large solar storms rain electrically charged particles down on Earth's atmosphere and deplete the upper-level ozone for weeks to months thereafter.
http://spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast22de
Watching the Angry Sun - Solar physicists are enjoying their best-ever look at a Solar Maximum thanks to NOAA and NASA satellites, NASA Press Release, December 22, 2000
"This is a unique solar maximum in history," said Dr. George Withbroe, Science Director for NASA's Sun-Earth Connection Program. "The images and data are beyond the wildest expectations of the astronomers of a generation ago."
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy
Cosmic Cannon: How an Exploding Star Could Fry Earth
19 June 2001
"While scientists have long tried to link supernovae to mass extinctions on Earth, there is no solid evidence. But recent observations of high-energy emissions in space have some scientists suggesting that our planet may in fact get fried every now and then."
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011120sohog
SOHO'S LATEST SURPRISE: GAS NEAR THE SUN HEADING THE WRONG WAY
Goddard Space Flight Center, November 20, 2001
"We are seeing something opposite to what we expected," says Sheeley. "Normally, when this happens, we initially doubt the observation -- suspecting, for example, that the movie is running backwards."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNew
Red Planet Warming, Images Show Mars' Ice Caps Are Melting Fast
Dec. 7, 2001
"We weren't expecting to see something nearly this large," said Caplinger.
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0313irra
NASA STUDY FINDS INCREASING SOLAR TREND THAT CAN CHANGE CLIMATE
March 20, 2003
Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly
"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," said Richard Willson, a researcher affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Earth Institute, New York.
Apparently this Russian UFO reseacher claims that the event was caused by an ancient missle installation which shot down some object before it collided with the earth....
here is an excerpt:
GB: Earlier, off camera, you alluded to some important developments concerning the Tunguska explosion of 1908. For the record, can you tell us why you now believe you know the cause?
VU: It is not so much a case of belief; we know what caused it. It was a meteor, but a meteor that was destroyed by ... let's say, a missile. The missile was generated by a material installation. We don't know who constructed it, but it was built long, long ago and is situated in Siberia, several hundred kilometres north of Tunguska. I can tell you that our investigation has revealed more than one explosion at Tunguska. Let me share something with you. The last time that this installation shot down a meteor was on 24/25 September last year. The Americans ... they have three bases ... they, too, noticed this explosion. [Editor's Ref: See New Scientist vol 178 issue 2399 - 14 June 2003]
GB: Forgive me, but some will say this sounds like science fiction.
VU: Graham, you know that when we talk about the truths that lie behind this subject, we only do so with those who have an understanding of the responsibility that goes with it. And you know that we are dealing with a technology much further ahead of our own-one capable of doing things that we cannot.
GB: Can you be more specific about the location of this installation?
VU: Look for the site of the Tunguska explosion. To the southeast is the very large and famous Lake Baikal. Beyond that, to the north, is a huge and barren territory covering 100,000 kilometres. Hardly anyone lives there. There are no towns or cities. Here is where we located the installation ...
here's a link to the rest of the article....here
JPL's calendar at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/ lists all known asteroid flybys. Why, just today (Nov. 15) there are two. Asteroid 2003 UO12 Near-Earth Flyby (0.048 AU) and Asteroid 1999 XN141 Near-Earth Flyby (0.082 AU).
There, THAT should pretty much crush any sense of security you might have been developing after reading the parent article. If it doesn't, keep in mind that they estimate they've located only about 10% of the potential Earth impacters, and lately they've been finding them just AFTER they've passed by. No matter when it happens, we might get no warning at all.
"God, Root, what is difference?" -- Pitr, User Friendly
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
They neglected to factor-in the influence of irony which increases the risk in inverse proportion
to the amount by which any sufficiently scholarly study concludes that the risk is reduced.
Try saying that without spitting
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!
Once every 600,000 years? That sounds almost like they're saying the solar system is stationary or that any rocks >1km that could hit us are in orbit around our solar system. The sun has an orbit too, so unless they've looked at all the >1km rocks within range of the Sun's orbit, I kinda doubt their percentages are too accurate.
Then why am I still paying such high premiums for my asteroid insurance?
Table-ized A.I.
...because the Sprint PCS Wireless Web lets you take your eLife everywhere you go!
Not that that changes the odds for the next coin toss but still.
Does this mean hhe human civilization has a cycle of every 600,000 years?
Of all the natural catastrophes that could afflict Earth, an impending asteroid ain't so bad. How about these gems: A dark rougue planet or moon - too massive to have any hope of blasting or moving even if detected early. A chunk of a brown dwarf - dense matter that would shatter us with gravity. Cosmic ray blast - unlike particles from a solar storm, this would hit us at the speed of light, and would be undetectable. We wouldn't know it happened until we started dying at more or less the same time of radiation poisoning. Closer to home, if a huge fissure opens up admitting seawater into the earth's lower crust, the sudden burst of steam could create a massive explosion that would blast apart the planet.
So is this why the alert level the government puts out has gone down from yellow to blue?
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
This is great news! I think I will take that vacation after all.
Either one wouldn't matter because once we were hit by an asteroid or a caught in the middle of another big bang, we'd probably instantly die and have no recollection of ever living.
But what about them there solar flares? If we ain't gonna get pummeled from behind by a big hard rock, how does that keep us from gettin blasted in the face by a big ball o gas? ;)
Un-news
our Sun has released another massive solar flare...
What was your username again? -BOFH
Relax, everyone - the risk of a gigantic asteroid colliding with Earth just got smaller!
Yay! Finally the Department of Homeland Security protects us from something!
Just send a probe to an astroid and have it programmed to attach itself to it. Then, fire it's on-board retro-rocket to "push" the astroid off track.
Life is not for the lazy.
In the same way that the destruction wreaked by whatever bad guy really makes the Final Fantasy series games, and many an anime flick ( most of which feature the end of the world as a minor plot point ) I enjoy watching the Earth blow up in major Hollywood films. If 'Howards End' started out with a laser from the moon splitting the Earth in two, then I would probably have watched it.
The movie Meet Joe Black starts out with Brad Pit being creamed by a couple of trucks. I don't know what Meet Joe Black was about, but I must have watched him get creamed 50 times. It was cool. I will do the same when they have a nice Earth destruction scene in a big budgie Hollywould Flim.
Eat at Joe's.
Ok.. is it just me or is once every 600,000 years still once too many. I mean if just one large asteroid hits the planet aren't we pretty much wiped out?
John Swaringen Geek In The Heart Of Texas...
Niven & Pournelle (Pournelle being a rocket scientist and experienced with large aerospace project management) expected in FOOTFALLs ign-in/ref =cm_custrec_f_glance/002-2617440-6432013
5 072845/qid=1069269558/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-261744 0-6432013?v=glance&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/flex-
we could build and launch an ORION in a year if regulatory restraints were abandoned. Our treaty with SovUnion about atmospheric detonations is effectively kaput, anyway, and given the circumstances, I'd find it appropriate without regard to treaty.
ORION would use specially designed, lo-lo fallout nukes surrounded by plastic, designed to make plasma (not fallout) to push a huge mf-ing pusher plate (which also shields the occupants from the small amount of prompt radiation). The ride on the battleship-sized ship above (attached by huge shock absorbers) would be jerky, but if you gotta go, you gotta go.
BBC Four did a programme on ORION last week, and Dyson's book PROJECT ORION is authoritative, as well as a good read. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/080
I could live with one person of our five billion dying of cancer to save civilisation (or our current facsimile theoreof). I'd even volunteer for the honour, were it selectable (it ain't).
Driving on the I-5 is far more dangerous, yet I manage to accept the risk to go buy milk a couple of days a week.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA