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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.
Will this finally put an end to all those damn asteroid-hitting-the-Earth movies?
Please?
That the dinosaur version of Slashdot released that same story on the Jurassicnet just 48 hours before they left the earth.
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
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.
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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.
(The preceding text is brought to you by the Tin-Foil Society for Public Awareness, have a nice day.)
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>>I mean, there hasn't been a rock that large hitting us in, like, 599,000 years...
>That still gives you 100 yrs, right?
Glad to see the future of science and engineering is in good hands!
> "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
must be metric years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
World leaders would retreat to their shelters deep within the earth where they have been hoarding food, fuel, HDTVs, and Playboy Playmates. They'll start a new civilization consisting of moderately attractive people that don't know how to do anything except lie, cheat, steal, and make a fantastic raspberry smoothie.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
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.
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.
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.
humans are the planet's worst fear.
humans are humans' worst fear.