City-Sized Asteroid to Pass Earth This Fall

FiniteLoop sends a collection of links about a city-sized asteroid named Toutatis which will approach - but miss - Earth this September. MSNBC also has a story, and JPL and the Near Earth Object program have more information.

Comments

Toutatis for Celestia?

[Allen Zadr]

Where can I get a Celestia add-on for this asteroid?

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[Jugalator]

I'm afraid I couldn't find the path files (3ds model is available though) for this body. However, Celestia 1.3.2 is currently in beta testing, and it now has support for JPL's "Ephemeris" orbital data that might be usable instead of Celestia's .xyz trajectories. There seem to be some interesting stuff in a Google search. Maybe you can download 1.3.2 (I could only find a Windows binary) and read up / ask at the Celestia forums for more help about where to get Ephemeris data, and how to use it.

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[Jugalator]

After posting this, I found a page that might be a start... :-)

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eph

Click "Target Body" and enter "Toutatis". The body will be found, and you can then request the data. The question is what (if any) options to enable for it, etc...

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[TrevorB]

I was about to ask where you could get the Orbiter add-on for the asteroid. I've not heard of Celestia. I might have to check it out.

Does Celestia let you land on the asteroid? Does it let you compute your own interplanetary transfer orbits?

(A warning to the newbie... Orbiter's learning curve is *very* steep, but well worth it. Getting the trans-jovian transfer orbit burn just right was pretty cool. Landing on Io was even cooler.)

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[MenTaLguY]

Celestia doesn't really do anything with orbital mechanics. You just click and zoop around. It's very pretty though.

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[crem_d_genes]

(4179) Toutatis 2453278.07 2004 Sept.29.57 0.01036 8 oppositions, 1988-2000 MPO 6175 (4179) Toutatis

From this link.

The parent page has many links of interest.

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[Hatta]

Yeah, orbiter is amazing. Damn shame it's not portable.

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[jpkeating]

For Celestia I can't say, but you can get ephemerides for most astronomy programs from http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html . Just type Toutatis into the big box near the top, pick your program down below, and click on Get ephemerides.

Re:Toutatis for Celestia?

[troon]

Landing on Io was even cooler

Yeah? Anything interesting up there? What's the weather like?

City sized?

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

Would it have been that hard to find a moderately well known city to use for the comparison? Paris sized? Or Rose Bud, Arkansas sized?

Not trolling...just asking :-)

Re:City sized?

[Caseylite]

A little under 5 square miles, according to the article. Culver City, California Alma, Texas Lexington, South Carolina Pine Ridge, South Carolina Lake Worth, Florida In other words, a small city.

Re:City sized?

[Auckerman]

Taken from the JPL site: "Toutatis is about 4.6 kilometers long"

Re:City sized?

[PopCulture]

Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (4.6 by 2.4 kilometers).

So its probably closer in size to downtown Rose Bud, Arkansas (certainly excluding the busteling suburban Rose Bud outlying areas)

Re:City sized?

[metlin]

Its quite unlikely to be as big as Paris or any other bigger city - the article clearly states its the size of a *small* city.

On Sept. 29, 2004 an asteroid the size of a small city will make the closest known pass of such a very large space rock anytime this century.

The article also says that -

Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (4.6 by 2.4 kilometers).

Therefore, I think a small town would rather be more appropriate than a small city. Most cities today cover atleast tens of miles, if not hundreds. But then again, its relative.

What scares me is the following line from the site -

Researchers can't predict far enough into the future to rule out Toutatis ever slamming into Earth, so it is listed officially as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. NASA says it won't hit for at least the next six centuries.

Six centuries is an awfully short time, and maybe encouraging space programs and building stations outside of Earth is probably a good idea.

Re:City sized?

[jonman_d]

What scares me is the following line from the site...[snip]
Six centuries is an awfully short time...

You've got to figure that if we can, with today's technology, figure out its path for the next 600 years, then by that time has elapsed, we'll probably be able to figure out its path for at least 1000 years. Even if we don't advance that far, 600 years is still plenty of time to figure out a plan for saving the planet (although something tells me that, the way the human race/governments work, we'll wind up waiting until the last 20 years, anyhow).

Re:City sized?

[stevesliva]

It is definitely the size of several dozen libraries of congress and will pass withing a few moon units. However, scientists can predict its path to the less than the width of a human hair, so do not fear.

Re:City sized?

[metlin]

Ofcourse! Actually, you are quite right in the last count.

Figuring out the path is not the issue, doing something about it is. Unfortunately, even if the space organizations did figure out (I do not know if they have already figured this out or not, yet), there is no guarantee that they will make it public for a while.

Nothing better to stir up those religious zealots saying that in FooBar years the world is going to come to an end. And even the saner public would most certainly be quite paranoid if such a prediction were to come to pass.

That is what makes it far worse than actually knowing about it - a large segment of the population may still remain ignorant and oblivious to this. And given the brilliant red-tape that exists in most government agencies, I really wonder if we would be doing anything about it (except, ofcourse, fund a bunch of religious institutions and proclaim that some voice in the sky is going to save us all).

Re:City sized?

[thebra]

Rose Bud! I used to live in Searcy near there. What an exciting time.

Re:City sized?

[wronskyMan]

Yes, but if it hits, how many VW Beetles worth of damage will it cause?

Re:City sized?

[kmankmankman2001]

Hey, it could have been much worse. Just be thankful it isn't Oprah-sized.

Re:City sized?

[penguinoid]

> What scares me is the following line from the site -

>>Researchers can't predict far enough into the future to rule out Toutatis ever
>>slamming into Earth, so it is listed officially as a Potentially Hazardous
>>Asteroid. NASA says it won't hit for at least the next six centuries.

Yes, the solar system is actually chaotic. It is only slightly chaotic, and orbital periods are very long, so I doubt that this is much of a concern.

BTW, if one ever does reach an orbit that will collide with us, we will have something useful to do with all those nukes, no?

Re:City sized?

[0d]

Would it have been that hard to find a moderately well known city to use for the comparison? Paris sized? Or Rose Bud, Arkansas sized?

I believe it is the size of approximately 1000 Libraries of Congress (LOC) or 50,000 Volkswagens.

Re:City sized?

[mcc]

Its quite unlikely to be as big as Paris or any other bigger city

What about Paris, Texas? :)

Re:City sized?

[squiggleslash]

the article clearly states its the size of a *small* city.

Ok, but what's that in Volkswagens? ;-)

Re:City sized?

[peragrin]

Boston?? the actual city of Boston is a tad smaller than that.

Re:City sized?

[josh_freeman]

With my somewhat limited knowledge of orbital mechanics (i.e I've taken classical mechanics and played KSpaceDuel a bunch), it seems the best way to handle this is not to try to move the asteroid on approach, but to propell it further away from earth on it's outward leg of orbit. Say we knew asteroid $FOO was going to strike earth in 2020, 5 orbits from now. we would use far less fuel nudging it faster as it left past Earth (and hence into a larger orbit) than trying to decelerate and/or modify the orbit of a huge rock heading our way.

Of course, we're still trying to move several million metric tons of iron with what amounts to an overgrown bottle rocket, so what do I know?

Re:City sized?

[Fearless Freep]

>(LOC)

Yeah, but LOC count really doesn't mean much.

How many function points big is the city?

Re:City sized?

[nacturation]

Heck, forget about cities... this asteroid is 25 times larger (in two dimensions) than an entire country! That is, if the country in question happens to be Holy See (Vatican City), recognized as a separate country.

Or, it's just slightly smaller than Tuvalu.

Re:City sized?

[dAzED1]

does that mean that the library of congress is 50.000 times larger than a volkswagen?

More importantly, we do all realize that the Volks Folks make more than 1 model, right? Are we talking bus, beetle...what?

Re:City sized?

[maggern]

OH NO! IT MISSES! :-D

Not really necessarry to inform us of the fact that it does MISS earth, cause if it hadn't I'm sure ALL of the media would inform me in the blink of an eye! hi hi

Re:City sized?

[sharkey]

will pass withing a few moon units.

But HOW MANY is a few? A Moon Unit is not very big, particularly on a cosmic scale.

Re:City sized?

[Saeger]

Six centuries is an awfully short time

Hahahahahah! 600 years? Not a lot of time? ... AhhhhHahahhahaahah!!!

I've got your short-term & long-term right here.

--

Re:City sized?

[0d]

I meant to say that 1 LOC == 50 VWs which I guess is more ridiculous than 50,000 now I think about it. I don't really know how an LOC is sized in volume or mass. A single ISO VW unit is, of course, a Beetle.

Re:City sized?

[xargoon]

Damnit, can't you americans adopt SI already! ;)

Re:City sized?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>BTW, if one ever does reach an orbit that will collide with us, we will have something useful to do with all those nukes, no?

I know something useful you could do with a closing italics tag right now!

Re:City sized?

[KILNA]

You've got it all wrong, Libraries of Congress is a data measure not a distance measure, and a Moon Unit is a weighed average of substance-based impairment at the time of naming your child, also known as a Dweezil. Sheesh.

Re:City sized?

[SamSim]

Roughly the same as eight Statues of Liberty, or twelve football fields.

Re:City sized?

[ozbird]

Six centuries is an awfully short time, and maybe encouraging space programs and building stations outside of Earth is probably a good idea.

Six centuries is long enough for me...
That's the problem with kids today (and tomorrow) - they expect everything handed to them on a plate.
Let 'em sweat it for a few centuries; it'll give them something to do apart from polishing their flying cars.
[tongue firmly in cheek]

Re:City sized?

[jeff munkyfaces]

Something tells me that the way the human race/governments work, we'll be lucky to get through the first 20..

Re:City sized?

[sgt_doom]

It is interesting to note that a Nostradamus interpreter (I believe his name was Welch, maybe R. W. Welch) suggested that some of his quatrains pertained to a comet or asteroid hitting the Mediterranean area sometime in the summer of 2004.

Food for thought?????

Re:City sized?

[AnonymousNoMore]

Six centuries is an awfully short time, and maybe encouraging space programs and building stations outside of Earth is probably a good idea.


Maybe this explains why Bush is pushing for a moon base.

Re:City sized?

[zedmelon]

"we would use far less fuel nudging it faster as it left past Earth (and hence into a larger orbit) than trying to decelerate and/or modify the orbit of a huge rock heading our way."

Maybe I've misunderstood what you really meant, but isn't acceleration still acceleration, whether it's applied in the forward direction or the reverse? In other words, wouldn't trying to nudge it "just shy" of Earth be the same as trying to nudge it "just past" Earth (assuming the unaltered impact would hit dead-center, of course)? We'd still be changing the trajectory of the same mass, whether it's back or forward.

Re:City sized?

[sootman]

I could answer you, but I forget how many floppy disks = 1 VW Beetle.

Re:City sized?

[zedmelon]

You're overreacting. Nostradamus was actually referring to this.

Re:City sized?

[dustmite]

If it's heading straight for Earth, you have to deflect it enough to get past the full radius of Earth. If it's heading away from Earth on the previous cycle, you only need to deflect it by a *tiny* amount, and that tiny amount will result in it passing a huge distance from Earth on the next time round. This is simply because the distance travelled after deflection is applied is so much greater, i.e. a 0.1 degree deflection applied to the full length of an entire orbital cycle (sin(0.1) * DISTANCE) (that value needs to be larger than EARTHRADIUS, so the larger DISTANCE is the better). If it's already headed straight for earth, you have perhaps only a tiny fraction of DISTANCE.

Also if you do it on the previous cycle and mess up, you still have more chances. If you do it when it's headed straight for Earth already, you only get one chance to do it right.

Another factor is if you accidentally cause the asteroid to break up, a huge part of it may still hit Earth if it's headed for Earth. That risk is reduced or removed if it's heading away from Earth.

Re:City sized?

[metlin]

Thank you for the link! I have read Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines, where he discusses something like this.

Well, but I said that 600 years is short because -

1. We need to get off this rock at a short notice, not just a few of us but most of us.

2. We would need to either have good space stations that can sustain us (short term) or terra-form a nearby planet (within our reach) or find a way to travel to another sector of the galaxy containing planets that are Earth-like. Remember, we will be going away for good.

3. Assuming that our population merely doubles, and we make spaceships that will take just half of the people away, each capable of 10,000 people (which is quite a reasonably high estimate) - we will need 500,000 ships. Thats an awful lot of resources that will be needed, both energy and material.

4. I have completely ignored the need for us to save such things as historical artifacts and memoirs from the home, etc. This is merely for the people.

The scale for such a transfer would be staggering, and no matter how advanced we are, we will need -

(a) Star Trek like travel (Warp/transporters)
(b) Steady yet reliable source of food and energy
(c) Sufficient space for such an endeavour
(d) Sufficient *time* for such an endeavour

Therefore, no matter what, it will be a really really mammoth task - could atleast take 50+ years. We take years to build a freeway, or a skyscraper. Assuming we somehow have cool technology that could make this even 10000x faster, we will still need atleast 50-100 years for something on this scale to be built.

Hence my argument that six centuries is an awfully short time!

*whew*

Re:City sized?

[secolactico]

3. Assuming that our population merely doubles, and we make spaceships that will take just half of the people away, each capable of 10,000 people (which is quite a reasonably high estimate) - we will need 500,000 ships. Thats an awful lot of resources that will be needed, both energy and material.

Of course, we don't have to save *everyone*. We just need to preserve a small kernel whence humankind will rise again once danger is past.

In this "Noah's Ark", an appropiate cross-section of humans, plus animals/plants will live for years bidding their time.

Such plan exists already. It was tought out during the cold war for fear of nuking by the superpowers.

You can get more details on said plan here.

Re:City sized?

[SEE]

Bah. My bedroom is larger than the territory ruled by one soverign power (not counting its extrateritorial enclaves).

Re:City sized?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why it's funny. Duh.

Re:City sized?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many Volkswagens is that?

I do wish people would stick to the standard units.

Re:City sized?

[sbaker]

Saving individual humans is a lot different from saving humanity.

All we'd need to do would be to send a genetically reasonable sample - then apply vigerous birth control to the population of earth a couple of generations before the big crunch so nobody actually dies when it happens. Life would not be good for the few most elderly survivors - so once the population has naturally dwindled to something reasonable, you pack them off in the last few spaceships.

Re:City sized?

[Zabu]

Nukes would do nothing!
An asteroid the size of Tautatis traveling at cosmic velocities would puncture the earth. It would take less than a second for it to hit the crust after it entered the atmosphere.
Everything withing 150 miles would be burned from the asteroid vaporizing. The blast would follow at almost the speed of light.
You would die from the heat or the blast before you would even hear it.

That is just the impact, all sorts of seizmic activity could occur in the time after.

As for nuclear missle launch, the rockets attached to nuclear missles do not have enough power to escape earths atmosphere, and if they did, they are not designed for space.
Above all of that it would create all sorts of nasty fallout when the smaller size chunks of the nuclear asteroid fell all over the earth.

By the way, they are practically invisible, and we constantly discover new ones flying by.

Re:City sized?

[jwbing]

What really makes me wonder is whether or not a governmental agency would actually tell the public about a projected earth impact. To me, it seems like there is much to lose, and little to gain, from telling the greater public about such an event. I am all for disclosure of information and the like, but I am just not sure how a government would react if they were to find out that Earth would be impacted by a large object in something as short as 50 years or so.

Re:City sized?

[Artifakt]

As Bill Murray once said "I love this plan!". Please send me my nubile females for an immediate rehearsal.

Re:City sized?

[nacturation]

or is it?

Re:City sized?

[fucksl4shd0t]

A single ISO VW unit is, of course, a Beetle.

Only if it's unspecified. If the model is specified, it generally refers to the size of the model as built during the '80s, but it's not very often we get the model specified, hence the beatle default.

Re:City sized?

[JuggleGeek]

From the article : "Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (4.6 by 2.4 kilometers)." I'd call that the size of a small town, not a small city.

Re:City sized?

[starsong]

I've been to Culver City, but where on earth are California Alma and Texas Lexington?

Re:City sized?

[grozzie2]

An asteroid the size of Tautatis traveling at cosmic velocities would puncture the earth. It would take less than a second for it to hit the crust after it entered the atmosphere.

You really need to check the facts before you say things like this. Orbital velocities are in the range of 17,000 mph, and solar system escape is on the order of 28,000 mph. These numbers are close, and I'm to lazy right now to dig up exact numbers, but, google will find it for you if you want to split the hairs. Since the asteroid in question is on a solar orbit, by definition, it's velocity will be at/below 28,000 mph. Now do some simple math.
28,000 mph divided by 3600 sec/hr = 7.7 miles per second.
Atmosphere is generally given to be 60 miles deep.
60 miles divided by 7.7 miles/second = 7.79 seconds

Soo, in the worst case, velocities approaching solar system escape, and a vertical impact, transition time from atmosphere entry to surface impact (ignoring the friction and deceleration from the atmospheric entry) will be AT LEAST 7.79 seconds. A trajectory that is not vertical will increase that time in atmosphere. To achieve your 1 second from entry interface to impact, the item would have to be travelling on the order of 216,000 mph, and arrive on a perfectly vertical trajectory. This combination of trajectory and velocity will pretty much rule out any early detection of such a beast incoming.

As for nuclear missle launch, the rockets attached to nuclear missles do not have enough power to escape earths atmosphere

Again, quite wrong. Ballistic misslies RELY on escaping the atmosphere to achieve ballistic trajectories. What they dont do, is achieve orbit, because that wont result in 'dropping on the target'. Most are capable of achieving orbit by simply lightening the payload.

Re:City sized?

[b4rtm4n]

You could also factor in earths orbital velocity to give the closing velocity of the two bodies.

Not that a few more kph would matter in this circumstance.

Re:City sized?

[Vellmont]

Why would you teraform a lifeless rock and move billions of people to it if you can just move the asteroid a bit and avoid it hitting the earth? 600 years is plenty of time to develop the technology to do this, and enough time to do it slowly (minimum energy expenditure). I've heard some ideas that merely changing the light reflectivity of the rock would change its orbit.

Re:City sized?

[ragnar]

Having worked at several Government facilities, I very much doubt their ability to keep such information under wraps, but I agree that it would only be addressed in the 11th hour. As for your reference to those of faith, it couldn't hurt for people to pray a little more often. Most religious people don't regard their faith as existing to save the earth, but rather to enrich and save the souls of those who are living.

Re:City sized?

[AGMW]

... if you can just move the asteroid a bit and avoid it hitting the earth?

OK, here's a question. If we can move it, couldn't we move it into a suitable orbit for mining? Maybe not another moon for us (as that might have tidal consequences), but capture it somehow.

Re:City sized?

[Short Circuit]

I'm more interested in whether they'd keep the launch of a solution secret or not. There's too much risk that someone seeking the end of the world wout attempt to disrupt/destroy the launch.

Re:City sized?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most are capable of achieving orbit by simply lightening the payload

That's be easy. Just remove the Slim Pickens from each one.

Re:City sized?

[avgjoe62]

That's because the usual journalist's unit of comparison for space rocks is VW Beetles, as in "Scientists say the space rock is about the size of 2000 Volkswagen Beetles." Thye just weren't ready for the city size comparison...

Re:City sized?

[Cally]

Forgive me devil's advocating here but... you do realise the average lifetime for a species on earth is about 1 million years? You realise that, like _we're all going to die_ anyway? Perhaps we should start a monster project to sweep the solar system clear of any potentially hazardous objects. That way we can be sure that nothing will prematurely end the reign of the cockroaches who will take over after humanity exterminates itself.

Re:City sized?

[Zabu]

The reply to your comment is right.
Lets say the 7.7 miles/sec for the asteroid hits earth along its orbit(I don't know the validity of this, but giving the benefit of the doubt). Earth is traveling at around 18.2 miles/sec. That makes the distance between them shrink at about 27 miles per second. So it is more like 2 seconds to break the atmosphere and hit earth, but it is more likely not to actually make contact. It would probably just burn the earth for miles.
This is assuming that it is morning at ground zero of the impact site, a maximum
Interesting Link

Re:City sized?

[I don't want to spen]

You mean in 600 years, everyone reading this could be dead?

Re:City sized?

[CDLewis]

Nothing better to stir up those religious zealots saying that in FooBar years the world is going to come to an end. And even the saner public would most certainly be quite paranoid if such a prediction were to come to pass.> No, if such a prediction were to come to pass, the saner public would not be quite paranoid. They'd be quite dead.

Re:City sized?

[itsnotthenetwork]

"600 years is still plenty of time to figure out a plan for saving the planet..."
The planet doesn't need to be saved. The life on this planet however.....

Re:City sized?

[SEE]

I didn't say "country", I said sovereign power. It has official diplomatic recognition from 99 countries, which is more than can be said of some places with populations and governments (the Republic of China, for example.)

Re:City sized?

[zedmelon]

I rest my case.
Maybe I've misunderstood what you really meant
:(

You're 100% right. I mistook what he said for "Nudge it past the stern; that'll be easier than force it over the bow." Thanks.

Re:City sized?

[Alsee]

tidal consequences

Chuckle. It's a speck of dust a few miles across. The moon is in the ballpark of a few billion times the mass, and it generates a tide of 4 feet or so. The only tidal effect this would have is if it collides with us :)

But to answer your question about moving it, a single 1 MPH nudge adds up to around 8800 miles movement (and an avoided collision) given a 1 year lead time. A steady acceleration of 1 MPH per 6 months has the same effect.

Getting it into orbit, even using the moon for a fancy reverse-sling-shot capture, will take a few thousand times more energy. Not impossible, but it's a vastly larger scale of engineering. But the big economic hurdle isn't even getting it into orbit. It's just too damn expensive to get anything up to orbit or even down from orbit.

If/when we build a space elevator then that sort of project becomes interesting.

-

Re:City sized?

[Eccles]

The thing to use a rock in orbit for is not for mining (save possibly for very rare materials), but as a space station/assembly and re-launch site. It might even have material we could use for rocket fuel for those re-launches, you could set up a linear accelerator, etc.

A small captured moon could be really handy.

Re:City sized?

[troon]

Orbital velocities are in the range of 17,000 mph, and solar system escape is on the order of 28,000 mph.

I've always wondered - what's to stop something arriving from interstellar space very fast? I'm talking like well over 100,000 mph, giving us problems detecting it in time to do anything?

Familiar territory

[Caseylite]

Someone call Bruce Willis!

Re:Familiar territory

[jwitch]

because we need him to change the path of the asteroid that will miss so that it misses. Oh wait.. hang on...

Re:Familiar territory

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Send Bill Gates !!!!

He'll put some holes in it....

Re:Familiar territory

[Caseylite]

Not holes, windows. Oh yeah, nevermind.

Re:Familiar territory

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohhhhhhhh I get it. Like in the movie, right? Hah. Good one. Wait till the guys at the yard hear about this.

ITEM!--Horatio smokes Boot!

Re:Familiar territory

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and be sure to start rotating the space station *before* they try to land!

Re:Familiar territory

[Sethus]

Rofl, b/c its not landing on Earth, why not call the rest of the crappy hollywood actors too :D Like.... Rosie O'Donald!

Re:Familiar territory

[fucksl4shd0t]

Forget Bruce Willis, we need Dave Lister!

Re:Familiar territory

[Anonymous Coward]

...and someone screw Liv Tyler.

Re:Familiar territory

[Erbo]

Someone call Bruce Willis!

...and cue up some Aerosmith while you're at it...

Ironic name

[AdmiralNacho]

"The only thing us Gauls have to fear is the sky falling on our heads"

Re:Ironic name

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing us Gauls have to fear is the sky falling on our heads

...by Toutatis!

Re:Ironic name

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that Asterix and Obelisk come from France and are hugely popular there, coupled with the fact that the asteroid was discovered by French astronomers, and it's probably less ironic and more of a sly nod to the series.

Re:Ironic name

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm...why don't we just wait for the asteroid to surrender? ZING!

Re:Ironic name

[Anonymous Coward]

These astronomers are crazy!

Re:Ironic name

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Ironic name

[Black Rabbit]

I can't believe it took this long before somebody made reference to Asterix!

Catch that puppy

[nizo]

I always thought it would be cool to catch one of these asteroids and plunk it into a nice orbit for scavanging or using as a huge horkin' space station. However nudging it into orbit would be bad if you misjudged and plunked it down on someone (which in turn could be a great way to get rid of somebody you don't like and make it look like an accident, but that is another story).

Re:Catch that puppy

[Neil Blender]

I always thought it would be cool to catch one of these asteroids and plunk it into a nice orbit

I'd be pretty scared of anything that could change the moons orbit.

Re:Catch that puppy

[jamonterrell]

Tie a very long very large cable to it in a couple million years in order to move the earth slightly away from the sun, thus adjusting for global warming.

Re:Catch that puppy

[jwitch]

That would be a good plan. Put a naquadah-heavy asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

No wait... that's been done already

Re:Catch that puppy

[tunabomber]

President Bush: Well, a city-size asteroid has landed on Fallujah. It's so sad but so conv- I mean what are the odds!?

Re:Catch that puppy

[0xC0FFEE]

You just got me thinking... I think the greatest use for an asteroid in orbit would be to take advantage of the gravitational attraction it provides to catch and lump together space debris. That would be a really neat solution to the problem.

Re:Catch that puppy

[jwitch]

Give me a leaver long enough...

Re:Catch that puppy

[penguinoid]

It would take an awfully long time to catch it. You would have to use the slingshot effect to slow it down several times, and to do even that would require an awful lot of rocket power to do. Probably best to use an ion engine to aim it and slingshot it from mars to earth where it gets caught (you can slow it down by aiming it so it cuts in front of a planet and the planet's gravity slows it). However, it would take years to reach earth from mars.

It would be great for mining though, as material in space is very expensive.

Re:Catch that puppy

[rmiller021]

Stargate is a great show!

Re:Catch that puppy

[SamSim]

Better yet, you could put it in a geostationary orbit and lower a space elevator from it. Then you could mine minerals from the rock and ship them down the elevator, incidentally generating a vast amount of energy/electricity as the mass falls into the Earth's gravity well.

Re:Catch that puppy

[Jim Starx]

If the asteriod is capable of entering earth's orbit without messing up our orbit with the sun then chances are it doesn't have enough gravity to do that...

Re:Catch that puppy

[snp-7-3]

New war on Iraq "strategery?"

Re:Catch that puppy

[tanksalot]

Interesting thought. I would be careful though. even considering if you did not cause a collision, what about things like tides and weather patterns that could be disrupted? On the other hand, the risk might be worth all of those ressources.

Re:Catch that puppy

[Alsee]

I mean what are the odds!?

Well, this *is* Slashdot. You *know* someone has to work out the answer :)

Lets see... the entire Earth is about 197,000,000 square miles (509,600,000 square km). A bit of Googling turned up a 6 meg jpg map of the Fallujah area. It's roughly 5 square miles (13.5 square km).

The odds of a direct hit are a bit better than one in fourty million.

Of course we don't exactly need a direct hit. When it comes to a few GIGATONS of rock slamming into the ground at 50 times the speed of sound I think the horseshoes and handgrenades rules apply, close counts.

Playing around with an impact effects calculator and some reasonable assumptions, it appears such an impact would level Fallujah out to a range of 390 miles (630 km) with 140 mph winds (225 kph).

That gives a devestation area of 481,000 square miles (1,245,000 square km). One quarter of one percent of the entire surface of the earth.

Final result: one in four hundred chance of leveling Fallujah at random.

-

Sure. It'll miss.

[Anonymous Coward]

But, they fail to mention that it is of such size as to have sufficient gravity that when it passes, it will rip the oceans from the face of the earth and carry them off into space.

All you doubters are gonna be mighty thirsty. It's going to be a hot dry 2005!

Re:Sure. It'll miss.

[Fearless Freep]

So...will this throw off the Gravity B measurements?

Re:Sure. It'll miss.

[Mekkis]

To quote George Carlin:
"Near miss? That was a near hit!"
*BO0oM!*
Awww, look... it nearly missed.

Re:Sure. It'll miss.

[Gulik]

But, they fail to mention that it is of such size as to have sufficient gravity that when it passes, it will rip the oceans from the face of the earth and carry them off into space.

Oooh! Oooh! I get to be Thundarr!

But miss!?!

[LqqkOut]

> Will approach - but miss - Earth.

ACK! "But Miss" sounds like a negative statement. I, for one, wouldn't feel the least bit sad if we're excluded from the city-sized-meteor-strikes-planet team.

Re:But miss!?!

[mt v2.7]

Hey, this could be useful. Imagaine if it were to just plow through of Canada and bounce back into space.. ;)

Re:But miss!?!

[LqqkOut]

I'm glad I'm not Canadian, you insensitive clod! ;)

Re:But miss!?!

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

"will approach but miss earth"

A guy named Will approaches only the winner of the Miss Earth beauty contest.

Hmmm

[sv25]

All of these misses... Geez, the universe sure does have bad aim!

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

All of these misses... Geez, the universe sure does have bad aim!

Yeah, the Universe is male and the Earth is a toilet bowl...

Re:Hmmm

[sczimme]

Do not taunt Happy Fun Universe(tm).

Re:Hmmm

[stuktongue]

Yes, Kahn, still alive ... old friend. But like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target.

Re:Hmmm

[infinite9]

Sheesh! Tell that to the moon!

Re:Hmmm

[Mateito]

> Geez, the universe sure does have bad aim!

And, worse, he never puts the toilet seat up.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

its just a warning shot...

Re:Hmmm

[nharmon]

http://www.khaaan.com/

Re:Hmmm

[chamblah]

No other asteroid so large is known to have come so close in the past

What about the supposed astroid that hit and wiped out the dino's? I don't count that one as a miss.

The Sky Isn't Falling!

[Anonymous Coward]

Theh sky isn't falling! News at 11.

Re:The Sky Isn't Falling!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And yet- haven't these people ever heard "familiarity breeds contempt"? Or the parables of Chicken Little or the Boy who Cried Wolf? At the rate we're going we'll finally have a true asteroid strike coming down- and it will hit before Congress can appropriate the money to NASA to avert the disaster.

I for one am getting tired of "yet another miss"

It's coming right for us!

[DrugCheese]

Would they tell us if it was going to hit? Why wouldn't they? Why would they?

Re:It's coming right for us!

[fishy jew]

I think it's a very interesting question.

If "they" tell us, they can be sure that the whole world is going to break down: riots, suicides, etc... pretty much a total collapse of social structure.

The reasons not to? First of all, it's mean (unethical). Second of all, what if letting the problem be known could potentially help solve it?

I think that, in this case, if I were "they" and it was absolutely known and confirmed that impact would kill everyone on the planet, I would go ahead and let the news out. Let everyone have some fun before they all die at the same time...

Re:It's coming right for us!

[Telastyn]

Well, the most likely situation is that *someone* would tell us. It only takes one, and who's going to care if they get fired for telling people the world is going to end in a few months?

Re:It's coming right for us!

[cexshun]

Hmmm. An interesting question. However, with all the civilian observatories out there with university astrophyisists(sp?), one would imagine the information would be leaked if it was going to hit. You know there's be some hippy assistant to a university astronomer saying, "The good people of Earth deserve to know!" And, with all this publicity, I'd say every telescope in the world is trained in on it right now. And, even if they kept it quiet, it'd be hard to miss something this size and proximity to Earth, even by an amateur astronomer.

Re:It's coming right for us!

[Anonymous Coward]

if I were "they" and it was absolutely known and confirmed that impact would kill everyone on the planet

I would put ALL resources into building a moon base to my exacting Austin Powers specifications before its arrival. Then in the last few days I'd let everyone know about the asteroid and the moon base.

Attention Babes, the line for the moon base shuttle starts here. Fat chicks need not apply!

Re:It's coming right for us!

[kabocox]

And, even if they kept it quiet, it'd be hard to miss something this size and proximity to Earth, even by an amateur astronomer.

What would be bad is if the amateur astronomer agreed and didn't release the news. How large a bribe would needed to keep them quite? How many people look up at the night sky and pay attention? Could you tell that a little tiny dot was coming at us? Could you tell that it wasn't an airplane or helicopter?

I can't. During daylight I could tell that it was an airplane. At night time, it would have to block out the moon for me to notice, which would mean it would be a little late.

Re:It's coming right for us!

[mpost4]

Don't know don't care. If it going to hit we all are dead anyway, better to die doing what you should be doing, and meet your maker with a clear consence, well I guess this would not apply to the true athests [wonders how many curent athests would sudently find religion if it was going to hit, on the other side, I wonder how many religous people would lose their religoun]

Of cource I am the kind of person that would if found out it would hit, go out about 2 hours before it should hit and watch (hay if I am going to die lets watch it come, of cource I probably be pray for some merical to happen at the same time)

Re:It's coming right for us!

[antic]

If we were to be hit by a massive asteroid, do you think anyone would care about a bribe?

"Oh gee! $60m! Hmm, what should I buy fi..." *BOOM*

Re:It's coming right for us!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tracking asteroids aren't usually on our turf. Besides, sooner or later amateur astronomers with a computer will do the math and find out the secret.

I'm sure that going public with that kind of information today will be un-American and Patriot Act (I, if ever II) will make it illegal.

-b

Re:It's coming right for us!

[Ingolfke]

Of course we're not going to tell you... there's only so much room here in this secret shelter... oh wait... doh!

Re:It's coming right for us!

[Hatta]

Big deal. It'll burn up in our atmosphere and whatever's left will be no bigger than a chihuahua's head.

Re:It's coming right for us!

[Feanturi]

Read Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It's a kick-ass book about what might happen if we saw a comet coming right for us, and what might happen if a big chunk of it actually hit us. Read it, it's cool.

Re:It's coming right for us!

[RoyalCheese]

And, with all this publicity, I'd say every telescope in the world is trained in on it right now.

So this publicity is a deliberate ploy to stop us watching the OTHER part of the sky!!! OMG! We haven't even got 600 years.. ist coming.. Aaaghh!

Re:It's coming right for us!

[auggie2001]

Spelling Nazi alert: consence, athests, curent, sudently, religous, religoun, cource, hay, lets, and merical. Thanks for playing!

Re:It's coming right for us!

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Yes, exactly, why would they (the idiosyncratic "them")?

Depending on the severity of the strike, the response will always be governed by Elitist Cataclysmic Logic:

SAVE US FIRST AND SCREW EVERYBODY ELSE.

Any strike from an object detected by telescopes will be particulary severe ... you can depend upon at least a 10MT explosion in the lower atmosphere. But with objects sized like Toutatis, the strike will be a groundripper in the 100s of MTs.

Such an event means that stock portfolios are likely to tank.

I mean, seriously, stop laughing for a moment and think it through. The globalist elite don't stand by and let their wealth be decimated; if something even 10% of the size of Toutatis were coming, the effect upon the people of Earth would be fierce. People's involvement in the economic and social structure would severely compromise the highly artificial existence of the authority of the wealthy.

Since real-world catastrophes are likely to adversely affect the parasitical existence of the global elite, then with something as large as Toutatis I can only expect attempts at a news blackout (and a disinformation campaign, which is even more effective) for a while until the point is moot (i.e. the thing is so close that even small, un-confiscated telescopes and binoculars can see it, or it hits).

To use a for-example, let's say Toutatis is coming to hit us. The elite would hear about it pretty early, since the larger scopes are run by institutions and academic elites, and those are strongly connected to "them". Since Toutatis would likely strike ocean and cause thousands of billions of dollars in damage from the tidal waves, the elite will immediately put a lock on the knowledge.

To do so, the acacdemics (certainly notorious for eruptions of dissent) would have to be controlled and discredited. The major scopes in the world will be put under lock and key simply by contacting other government entities. In fact, the act of "let's turn our scopes upon Toutatis to track it to confirm the rumor" would be the plain-view method of justifying this takeover. Various government and elite agents will show up and simply use their authority to put a lock on the data.

Concurrent with the start of this control campaign, will be the disinformation one. False data will be generated by several sites through their controlling agents, to confuse the correct data from other sites. It will also serve to counter sites that escape control, like from the actions of some nutbag academic who thinks he's serving the "greater good" by collecting and reporting the correct data.

And with the disinformation campaign, the issue of interal dissenters will also be addressed. More people producing conflicting data is great for that, but the issue gets even more clouded when agents step forward and confess to the fraud. With enough of this kind of thing, the public won't know what to think ... which is the entire point, since a confused and uncertain public tends to not act at all.

After that, things get more militant. Smaller scopes will get into the game, and by then their naivete will get the better of them, letting the police, military and intelligence services get into the act (purely on orders, and we all know how much injustice happens on the basis of "I have my orders") by visiting and confiscating their scopes by one means or another. The equipment can be taken or broken; the operators can be arrested; and the operator can be enlisted in "confirmation efforts" which would just be an attempt to keep them quiet by controlling their output data.

Well, this kind of thing can bubble along quite merrily for ... months. Perhaps a year. And faced with armageddon, months of notice can make all the difference for the survival of the elite. Underground bunkers can be readied; resources can be swallowed up into them at large rates (paid for with money that

Re:It's coming right for us!

[DrugCheese]

Of course you're right. If not may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow.

Re:It's coming right for us!

[tanksalot]

If we yell as loud as we can "It's coming right at us!!!" ... then can we shoot it with nukes anyways? Seems like resonable self defense to me.

We should be safe...

[solarlux]

The asteroid will only psas within a distance equal to 4x that of the Earth to the moon...

But what are the odds it could hit another asteroid to knock it off its current path and onto a Earth-bound trajectory?

Re:We should be safe...

[nil5]

there are no odds, since what you are asking is not a measurable function. basically the only source of uncertainty would be some cataclysmic event that nobody knows about anyway, and thus there's now way of knowing how "often" such an even would happen. Essentially it is probability-1.0 that it will miss. That is, there is no uncertainty and no odds. The trajectory of an object in space is deterministic. What would make it random? Randomness only occurs when there are uncertainties. Assuming that you know all the nearby gravitational sources, solar wind, etc. then you can darn well predict exactly where the adsteroid is going. The solar wind can probably contribute to uncertainty, since we don't know exactly its strength at all points in space, but then again its effect on the asteroid is probably negligible since it already has so much momentum.

This is something people need to realize. Calculating odds is really just masturbation with numbers.

Re:We should be safe...

[Fearless Freep]

God does not play dice with the universe... ...He plays billiards

Re:We should be safe...

[solarlux]

What are you smoking? Yes, the probability is slim but a straight-forward analysis could derive it. We know the average number of asteroids in the orbit, we know their average speed, we can calculate the momentum difference required to achieve the necessary trajectory adjustment, and we can calculate the odds of making an adjustment that sets it in a collision course with Earth.

Re:We should be safe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretically, yes, orbits are deterministic. In practice, they aren't. First, there's no analytical solution to the general N-body problem, which the solar system most definitely is. Second, because of this, orbits are chaotic (if on very long time scales), and since we don't know the entire state of the universe, there's no way we can predict with 100% confidence where an object will be to an indefinite point in the future, even with an infinitely precise numerical calculation (which we don't have). Though we can be very very confident in our calculations, we can never say with 100% confidence that an event is absolutely impossible.

The main reason why this is important is that our knowledge of an object's trajectory is initially rather vague. Due to the distances involved, getting precise velocity, mass, and position measurements requires considerable time. Over time, our estimates of the orbits of a body improve, until eventually we can extrapolate to hundreds to thousands of years into the future with great accuracy (barring some unforeseen catastrophic event which, as you mention, can't be factored into the calculations because it's, well, unforeseen). That's why, if you follow one of these stories, the odds go from something like 1 in 100 to 1 in 10000, to virtually nil.

City-sized?

[morcheeba]

On Sept. 29, 2004 an asteroid the size of a small city ...
Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (4.6 by 2.4 kilometers).

Well, most small cities are about 30 feet thick (about 10 feet of plumbing underground, plus a two story building above-ground), so I'm not so worried.

Cause Mishaps?

[Kjuib]

Is this going to set stuff off? The Ocean Tides? Car Alarms?

Re:Cause Mishaps?

[PhuCknuT]

no, no, and no. It's going to be a million miles away and it's only 2 miles wide, it's gravity would be damn near nothing even at it's surface, let alone a million miles away.

Toutatis was formerly known as...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Anna Nicole, but was recently renamed.

Re:Toutatis was formerly known as...

[Anonymous Coward]

She was the size of a small city, at one point.

Space Rendezvous

[trebizond]

I think we should go land there instead of heading to Mars. It's a heck of a lot closer and it won't be this close again for several centuries. Imagine that asteroid walk. It would be so cool.

Re:Space Rendezvous

[tsunamifirestorm]

we know a lot of stuff about the surface and gravity of foreign planets but almost nothing about meteors and especially this particular meteor. landing on a meteor would be a lot harder than mars.

The real quetstion

[thebra]

is to nuke or nudge.

Prediction: Yet another asteroid....

[Xenkar]

Yet another asteroid threatening the earth movie shall be released before September 29th, 2004 to instill fear into us all. I don't think it'll be a movie you'll see in the theatre, it will instead be one of those crappy made for TV movies with awful computer generated graphics.

We will of course see several showings of Armageddon on FX.

Re:Prediction: Yet another asteroid....

[pilgrim23]

Movie? Try book: Lucifer's Hammer by Pournelle and Niven. or add in Alien Invasion to Asteroid and: Footfall by the same authors. Highly recomended reading.

City?

[jeffy210]

Are we talking Podunk or NYC? Could I get this in Library of Congresses??

That's no....

[Nursie]

Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide

That's no city I know, that's tiny. I mean, obviously it's big for something that could crash into the earth, but still

Also, why is Obi-wan kenobi's voice in my ear saying "That's no small city......."

Re:That's no....

[DR SoB]

Amsterdam is close to that size..

Re:That's no....

[Neil Blender]

That's no city I know, that's tiny

In the US, a city is defined as any incorporated community with a legally defined government. They can be pretty much any size.

NUKE FIRST!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask questions later.

Re:NUKE FIRST!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Nuke the asteroids first.

Not people, on the other hand. . .

Re:NUKE FIRST!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the only way to be sure.

Oooh! A giant asteroid!

[Guildencrantz]

Any bets on how many Cool-Aid chugging nit wits will kill themselves this time?

~~Guildencrantz

Seem familiar.. Did they run out of names?

[douthat]

We've seen Toutatis before:

1989, 1992, 2004

http://www.iki.rssi.ru/solar/eng/toutatis.htm

Oh! it looks like this headline will come every four years... just enough time for people to forget :)

Check it out

Re:Seem familiar.. Did they run out of names?

[Sn_wC_t]

I think if this comment came once a day, it still wouldn't have as many headlines as SCO!

"you there, obey the fist!"
"I was the turkey. the whole time! it was meeee!!"

Close enough....

[NarrMaster]

... to zero to be, for all intents and purposes, negligable. If you feel otherwise, buy some lottery tickets.

Re:Close enough....

[solarlux]

I agree it would be slim odds, but nevertheless, I would wager that its finite and calculable.

This demands a BTAF strip!

[Walkiry]

As in Bob The Angry Flower:

http://www.angryflower.com/astero.gif

Cheap new ISS....

[isotope23]

Too bad we cant capture it and put it in a lagrange point.

Makes more sense to do it that way than shuttle all the crap up from earth....

Re:Cheap new ISS....

[Anonymous Coward]

>Too bad we cant capture it and put it in a lagrange point

Bin Laden? Ohhhh the Asteroid...

Re:Cheap new ISS....

[dsanfte]

Do you have any idea how much energy would be required to steer/stop an object of that size? It would be unimaginable.

Re:Cheap new ISS....

[sbaker]

Well, let's see. (Apologies for rough math!)

It's roughly a cylinder 2.9 miles long x 1.5 miles in cross-sectional diameter. That's a volume of about 21 cubic kilometers...21 giga-cubic-meters. A cubic meter of basalt rock weighs in at 2800kg under earth gravity...so we are up to something like 5.5 tera-newtons of mass.

We know that:

Force = mass x accelleration
dist = accelleration x time x time / 2

What saves you when you are trying to move something like this is that 'time-squared' term. Doubling the time over which you push on the rock quadruples the distance you finally move it by. This means that a tiny accelleration applied over a long time is the way to go (not a multi-megaton nuclear blast applied over a millisecond).

The rock has a huge mass - but the force you need is the mass times the accelleration - so that tiny accelleration times that huge mass gets you into the realm of reasonably small forces...but you have to plan on applying them for many YEARS.

To deflect this rock by a couple of earth radii, (say 10,000 km) over 100 years, needs a tiny (but continuous) accelleration of .0000000000001 meters per second per second - and even for a rock that big, that's only about half a newton/meter of force - that's *nothing*, a car engine can do a couple of hundred Newton/meters.

So - the most gentle of pushes - if applied over a 100 years is plenty.

This also eliminates any risk of smashing it to bits - and gives you plenty of time to correct any mistakes, refuel your motor, etc.

Of course if you leave it until the final year before impact before you act, you need 10,000 times as much power (still do-able with enough 'bolt-on' rockets I think - but maybe you could break it up with that much force).

If you let the politicians argue about who'se going to pay for it until a month before impact, you need a million times as much power and it's obviously too late.

That's why we need LOTS of notice if one of these brutes coming close. 600 years is enough - but I'd definitely get very nervous if it was only 100 years away.

Re:Cheap new ISS....

[hashwolf]

I'm quite sure someone at NASA has already 'imagined' that.

Coming this fall???

[TopShelf]

OMG, is there enough time to make the TV movie???

2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Are they sure it's completely flat?

Re:2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and full of stars.

Re:2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide

[shadowbearer]

It's the original prototype of Rama. There were a few small errors made during manufacturing, when it was decided they switch their base measuring units over.

It was sent off to our solar system anyway, as a warning to primitive space faring civilizations to triple check their numbers.

SB

Re:2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide

[isorox]

It's a gigantic Frisbie. The reason its elongated is it's travelling near the speed of light.

Where is chicken little

[foidulus]

When you need him. I cannot live without my sensationalist doomsday reporting! What is it with this fact-based rational approach to asteroids!
Bruce Willis save us!

Slashdot asteroid stories and jokes never get old

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Willis! SCO charging per collision! I LOVE IT

Doubters!

[shawn(at)fsu]

Foolish savages, this is no meteor but an alien space ship disguised as a meteor.

Finally my brothers it has come to take us home. No put on your Nikes and kill yourselves.

It sounds so stupid and yet it worked for that Heavens Gate cult...

Commet

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we put GWB on it?

SPELLING FLAME

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool-Aid
Kool-Aid.

nit wits
nitwits.

Re:SPELLING FLAME

[Guildencrantz]

DOH!

Kool-Aid you got me on. HOWEVER:

Nit \Nit\, n. [AS. hnitu; akin to D. neet, G. niss, OHG. niz;
cf. gr. ?, ?, Icel. gnit, Sw. gnet, Dan. gnid, Russ. & Pol.
gnida, Bohem. hnida, W. nedd.] (Zo["o]l.)
The egg of a louse or other small insect.

and

Wit \Wit\, n. [AS. witt, wit; akin to OFries. wit, G. witz, OHG.
wizz[=i], Icel. vit, Dan. vid, Sw. vett. [root]133. See
Wit, v.]
1. Mind; intellect; understanding; sense.

which would be the origins of nitwit before the independent words were smashed together. As it is I just prefer using the word nit independently.

~~Guildencrantz

Re:SPELLING FLAME

[kmh071]

Maybe they forgot something when they left and hitched a ride back to pick it up??

I, for one ...

[Triumph The Insult C]

welcome our speedingly fast galatic dust and ice overlords

Re:I, for one ...

[certsoft]

welcome our speedingly fast galatic dust and ice overlords

Ummm, that would be a comet, not an asteroid.

run...

[billimad]

take your pdas to high ground.

Thats all very nice ..

[Retep Vosnul]

.. But what city are we talking about ?
And

whats the zip code ?

Wow...

[sczimme]

Just like presidential elections!

(I kid, of course: there's no way to escape election hoopla - carefully distinguished from useful content - for at least 2 of the 4 intervening years.)

Re:Wow...

[douthat]

I can just see it. Every election year, God holds this thing over our heads and says "Don't fuck up"

God of War

[sssmashy]

Asterix and Obelix fans may recall that Toutatis, a name frequently invoked by those indomitable Gauls, is in fact the ancient French god of war, growth and prosperity.

Invoking Toutatis during battle was supposed to bring about certain victory for the pre-Christian French warriors. Which is why it is such an appropriate moniker for a comet that appears just once every 500 years... ;-)

Re:God of War

[zboubi]

Also note that the Gauls often feared that the sky might fall on their head. Let's just hope they were wrong !

Re:God of War

[automandc]

Or, as Chief Vitalstatistix would say:

"By Toutatis! The Sky is falling on our heads!"

Re:God of War

[infinite9]

Of course, being a French asteroid, we can be sure that it would never hit us on account of
the enevitable asteroid strike.

oh hell, I have karma to burn...

Of course, being a French asteroid, it will never hit us, just smell bad as it goes by. :-D

or, similarly...

Of course, being a French asteroid, it will never actually hit us because it would simply surrender once we declared war.

Re:God of War

[This is outrageous!]

Behind the name :

By 1989, I had already started numbering Apollo objects using gaulish gods. One which I had not used was Toutatis since I thought it was an invention of Goscinny and Uderzo, authors of the well known comic book series "Les aventures d'Asterix". There are several dozens sites about this comic book series, you may want to look at few of them :

• Stephane Riviere Asterix's page
• Page on asterix in different languages
• The international Asterix homepage which contains many more links to Asterix pages elsewhere

One of their constant saying is "By Toutatis", another one is that their only fear is that the sky may fall onto their heads.
I discovered my ignorance of gaulish culture when I learned that Toutatis was ( or had been ) a real God. I also learned that the citation in Asterix was not a joke, but that it had been reported by some historians of Alexander the great who had met some gaulish warriors ( who had once invaded Italy and Great Britain ).
One of the first thing we learned about Toutatis was its record low inclination. This meant that it is indeed ( in a remote future ) a good candidate to fall onto our heads. The name stuck almost immediately at the telescope when I proposed it. Toutatis, also sometimes spelled "teutates" is a totemic deity, to which human sacrifices were made.
Don't be misled, very few french persons do know about the cruel god Toutatis, but most will talk to you about Asterix and his friends if you come to swear " By Toutatis ! ", provided you get the right (i.e. french) accent...

Re:God of War

[Bender Unit 22]

just what I was thinking when I read the headline, so I guess the near miss really means that it will almost miss us..... :D

Re:God of War

[Gulik]

Toutatis, a name frequently invoked by those indomitable Gauls, is in fact the ancient French god of war...

The French have a god of war? Too ... many ... jokes ... brain ... melting ...

Re:God of War

[Hektor_Troy]

That would be a Freedom asteroid to you, you insensitive clod!

Re:God of War

[himself]

>
> Of course, being a French asteroid, we can be sure that it would never hit us
> on account of the enevitable asteroid strike.
>
Haven't you ever been to Paris? If there's one thing the French _can_ do, it's strikes, right when they're most disruptive!

Gravity

[fimbulvetr]

Isn't there enough mass here to affect the tides?
2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide is quite a bit of area, especially if it's condensed.

Does anyone know if this will make a difference?

Re:Gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it won't affect the tides enough to notice, not compared to the wind anyway.

Re:Gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you condense area? Can you condense asteroids like milk?

Re:Gravity

[f97tosc]

Isn't there enough mass here to affect the tides? 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide is quite a bit of area, especially if it's condensed.

Quick order of magnitude calculation: Radius ~10^3 times smaller than moon -> ~10^9 times smaller mass than moon if comparable material.

Also closest distance is 4 times greater than moon and gravity scales as distance squared so the tidal affects of this thing ought to be of the order 10^-10 times as strong as those from the moon - in other words impossible to notice.

Tor

Re:Gravity

[fimbulvetr]

Hmm. Let me school you, boy.

Ref: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=condense& r=67
condense

\Con*dense"\, v. i. 1. To become more compact; to be reduced into a denser form.

Nitrous acid is gaseous at ordinary temperatures, but condenses into a very volatile liquid at the zero of Fahrenheit. --H. Spencer.

2. (Chem.) (a) To combine or unite (as two chemical substances) with or without separation of some unimportant side products. (b) To undergo polymerization.

Here is the MAIN point: reduced into a denser form

So I'm inferring, that to condense something means to make something more dense. Yeah, like that.

I apologize for your lack of schooling, but I do pay my taxes.

Re:Gravity

[VAXcat]

Although gravity varies with the square of the distance, tidal effects vary with the cube, so the tidal effects wolud be even smaller than your estimate.

Don't worry...

[jared_hanson]

A recent attempt to fuse the tectonic plates failed and caused the oceans to drain into fault lines. We are keeping the oceans for ourselves!

and it's almost menhir shaped, too.

[millia]

Toutatis.
instead of sending up bruce willis to mine into it and blow it up, we need to send up obelix to make it into the world's largest menhir. don't know how he'd get it down to use as decoration for a cottage, though...

Re:and it's almost menhir shaped, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

> don't know how he'd get it down to use as
> decoration for a cottage, though

Who cares!
As long as it ends in an orgy of sanglier et du bon vin, something tells me that Gérard Dep...uh, I mean Obélix, wont mind!!

zeke

Yup

[fiannaFailMan]

The dinosaurs are extinct cos they didn't have a space programme.

Re:Yup

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

How do you know they are extinct? Maybe they had a space program, left for another plnet, and let the Earth be hit by the asteroid. There'd've been enough bodies of already dead dinosaurs for us to find.

Re:Yup

[madcow_ucsb]

Whoa. You just blew my mind.

Re:Yup

[rpj1288]

No no no, you've got it all wrong. It was the dolphins that left!

Re:Yup

[Lord_Slepnir]

THey're not extinct, they're just hiding behind your funiture.

Re:Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you they are from Earth? Maybe they're a space-faring species who just happened to use Earth as their burial grounds.

Re:Yup

[LiSrt]

actually there was a ST voyager episode where they met humanoids descended from dinosaurs (iguanadon I think) who left earth millions of years previously

Re:Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, they left right before the impact, settled in the "delta quadrant", to be discovered (sort of) 60 million years later by the crew of the "starship Voyager", who barely escaped being exterminated by a 60 million plus year old dino bureaucracy which didn't wish it known that they had ever shared a planet with (ugh) mammals.

I know how they feel though. I wish it weren't known that I come from the same planet that produced Star Trek Voyager.

Re:Yup

[b4rtm4n]

And they stole the plot concept from Dr Who (The Silurians, The Sea Devils).

Come to that the Dr Who plot concepts were mostly *influenced* by earlier works too.

Re:Yup

[dario_moreno]

on that line of thought, Toutatis could be the remains of a spacecraft the dinosaurs built from meteorits ; that would explain an orbit passing close to Earth and the odd shape it has.

Re:Yup

[smatt-man]

I for one welcome our new Dinosaur overlords and their superiour technology.

Re:Yup

[ArsonSmith]

"So long and thanks for all the fish."

Re:Yup

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

And I, for one, say a hearty belated goodbye to any dinosaurs who planned to overlord me.

Re:Yup

[wcrowe]

But they're not extinct.

There are dozens of them chirping outside my window each morning.

To put things into perspective...

[Saeger]

A "city-sized" asteroid is about the size of:

• 0.01 Texas'
• 2000 Rock of Gibraltar's
• 5000 Library Of Congress's
• 10000 Empire State buildings
• 20000 Football Stadiums
• 150000 Houses
• 300000 Semi Trucks
• 2300000 "New Beetle's"
• 2500000 VW Bugs
• 30 Oprah's || CowboyNeal's

(unit conversions came out of my ass just, like most stats)

--

Re:To put things into perspective...

[Keighvin]

Actually it's 25 Oprahs. Wait, now it's 823. ARGH, now it's back down to 24!

Re:To put things into perspective...

[Anonymous Coward]

sad, grammar nazi is. :(

Re:To put things into perspective...

[GPLDAN]

Oprah follows a quantum prediction formula E(a,b) = P++(a,b) - P++(a,b) - P++(a,b) + P++(a,b)

Re:To put things into perspective...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I know it was just random numbers, but it'd actually be 0.000016 Texases.

Also, plurals are never formed by adding anything involving an apostrophe unless the thing being made plural is an acronym or special symbol (in which case you also underline).

Planet sized rock to pass our asteroid...

[tttonyyy]

...depending on your frame of reference. Perhaps they're just relieved at missing our planet? :)

Obviously I've been spending too much time playing this.

Re:Planet sized rock to pass our asteroid...

[3fingers]

depending on your frame of reference perhaps they are just relieved not to have their planet crushed by our massive asteroid

City In The Sky

[Eberlin]

Sooo, anyone feel like creating a small web design firm with a freakishly obnoxious evangelical name? Something like maybe Stairway to Heaven...except that's taken. Gateway to Heaven? E-machines to heaven? Ah yes, Heaven's Gate or something like that. That's not taken.

To express solidarity, we'll all wear the same shoes, ok? I mean how are we going to be convincing if we don't wear the same shoes? Screw that up and companies will outsource to India for sure. So we'll all wear the same shoes...got it?

Next thing...and this is solidarity here we're talking about. Castration. As geeks, it's not like it's of much use anyway, right? It'll be alright -- we'll hang out and watch Star Trek or X-Files reruns or something. No need to be rejected by women. Besides, that organ is of no real use anyway...it's just a distraction that keeps us from thinking straight.

If you're interested, join us in the hall for some apple sauce followed by a quick nap. Be sure to take our standard-issue purple blanket. Then we can all dream about that large chunk of rock that's going to do a fly-by on Earth (nudge-nudge, wink-wink).

With this venture, we'll turn this outsourcing tide for sure!

Bottom of the seventh...

[MosesJones]

And another swing and a miss by the Kuiper belt, the Kuiper belt is batting a .0000001 ERA against small blue planets over the course of this aeon. Of course the last hit that wasn't called foul was a grand-slam homer which cleared the field for a couple of seasons.

Tides?

[MacDork]

I guess it would depend on speed and mass. Too fast and it's gonna orbit further out than the moon. Won't be much of a base, since we haven't been back there since the 70s. Too massive and we have a tidal problem. The surfers might like it though :-)

Re:Tides?

[nizo]

Yeah it would need to be a reasonable size (i.e. not too big). Maybe blast a decent sized chunk off of one of these astroids and play with it rather than the whole thing? Needless to say the planning would be pretty intense, but it seems like it could be well worth the effort.

It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Atari JPL'd Asteroids!

Actually

[ziondreams]

Actually, it appears every 4 years.

Religion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop beating around the bush. How do you really feel about religion?

Re:Religion?

[metlin]

:) That brought a smile to my face. And to answer your question, well not too much!

However, it is quite funny that my comment was merely an observation of how eschatological religions would react to a situation like this, and the fact that it modded down once again proves that religious zealots abound this place.

It is the truth, religions and religious zealots would proclaim something or the other and cause mass uprisings, and that is probably one good reason why even if the space agencies knew about such a thing, they should not let it out.

And the last statement was merely an observation - with the current administration being right-wing conservative, and the religious climate in the rest of the world, no matter what comes to pass, people will use "faith" as an excuse and throw money at religious godheads and godmen.

I do not see any nation (well, maybe with the exception of China) where people will rather not spend money on religion than on real solutions - that is what pisses me off. If half the faith and the funds were directed towards legitimate purposes, it would atleast make the world a better place.

Re:Religion?

[aardvarkjoe]

the fact that it modded down once again proves that religious zealots abound this place.

So you don't think that the fact that your post was offtopic flamebait had anything to do with it?

Re:Religion?

[metlin]

My post talked about a situation if an asteroid were to be headed for Earth, what's likely to happen?

It was quite pertinent in discussing how inaction might be a consequence and a probable reason for why it maybe so.

It was perfectly on topic, unless you look at it from the perspective of an offended believer.

Neither did I mention any particular religion, nor any religious beliefs - I merely highlighted a particular reaction of eschatologist religions.

Its not flamebait unless you really think that my judgement of people and religions somehow does not fit in with the reactions in the real world, which again becomes judgemental and quite untrue, given the way religions work.

Re:Religion?

[hesiod]

> the fact that it modded down once again proves that religious zealots abound this place.

So what does it say now that it's at +5?

Re:Religion?

[DigiShaman]

All take a stab at this.

Religion is a self-control form of governance. In other words, the majority of the human populace looks to a higher being/s as the director in moral and ethical values. So even if you had a government devoid of any religious ties, setting foundation of morals and ethics becomes troublesome in the formation of law.

Let me ask you a question. Would you rather have government based around right-wing religious zealotry, or leftwing liberal fanatics?

That was intended to be a trick question. The reason being, is because US citizens want balance between morals/ethics, and reasonable logic. So you will always have a shift in votes between electing democrats and republics. It's a natural cycle that defines American past, present, and future.

Aw, shoot.

[Commander Doofus]

a city-sized asteroid named Toutatis which will approach - but miss - Earth

And I was all set to use this.

time to stock up

[mabu]

on more duct tape!

Almost...?

[JustDisGuy]

Any other near-Earth asteroid as big as Toutatis would almost surely be spotted decades or centuries before any possible impact.

LOL - we've catalogued what... 10% of N.E.O's? At least it's anti-FUD...

mods on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

offtopic?

Where's the restroom, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

City-Sized Asteroid to Pass Earth This Fall

Well, that certainly explains all of the sh*t going on around us.

Chances are small.

[Gadzinka]

So, they say that it will pass Earth this fall, and that chances of it hitting Earth are incredibly small. Like 1000000:1. So in the summer they'll say that chances are more like 10000:1. By the time it will be week or two till the pass they'll say the odds are 100:1.

Wait, where did I read this? Right, it's about time to refresh this cute Niven piece ;)

Robert

Re:Oooh! A giant asteroid!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I call dibs on the free nikes.

Hit the presidents house

[Anonymous Coward]

Batta!
Batta!
Batta!
Swing Batter.

Earth missed? You can check it!

[tricaric]

Anybody with a Linux, Windows or a MacOSX machine can check it using ORSA.

Enjoy!

Near-Hit Tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

If there ever is an asteroid that's probably going to hit us, I say right before it hits we all go: "Mmmmmmmiss! Miss! MMMMMMMMmmmmiss!"

I misread that as...

[madmarcel]

I glanced at the headline and thought it said:
"Asteroid-sized City to Pass Earth This Fall"

Doh!

Oh well, as long as I don't see any baby-elephant paratroopers wearing high-heel platform shoes...we should be ok :D

Reckon We'd Hear About it

[Greyfox]

If it were going to hit us? They probably wouldn't tell anyone, since they can't do anything about it anyway. You'd just see a suspicious number of politicians planning to spend some vacation time in "our underground bunker in the mountains."

Re:Reckon We'd Hear About it

[geekoid]

We could help survivability by moving away from the coast.

Re:Reckon We'd Hear About it

[/dev/trash]

Anyone with a halfway decent telescope will notice *something*

Gotta keep your eye on the ball, son!

[Fantastic Lad]

Problem is, Upper Management knows there's a problem, but since they don't like it when people panic and stop attending their local salt-mines, they make a point of keeping events like this at a very low profile.

I imagine it will be more difficult to do this as things continue to heat up.

-FL

"won't hit for at least the next six centuries"

[billstewart]

Don't worry. According to the article, "NASA says it won't hit for at least the next six centuries." So there's enough time to let Bruce's nanotech-built clones make "Die Hard 300" before they need to go asteroid-hunting again. Well, ok, at least for _this_ asteroid...

relieved

[paul248]

I thought it said "City-Sized Asteroid to Fall on Earth This Pass"

A more practical thought...

[NotQuiteReal]

Why don't you just make a million dollars without having to pay taxes, or carve a boat from a block of wood?

In case you don't know how to do either of those, I'll tell you [regards to Monty Python, etc]

1) Make a million dollars. Don't pay taxes.
2) Get a block of wood. Carve away all the bits that don't look like a boat.

Nothing personal, nizo, I am just whoring for a funny moderation, but basically what you have just said is slight variation on a slashdot meme:

1) ?
2) use the asteroid for cool stuff.
3) profit!

Re:A more practical thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of a Bach quote...
"There is nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself."

Hey! It's Mr. Peanut!

[Anonymous Coward]

And just before the November election, it will suddenly be on track for a collision with America's heartland, Dubya will avert the disaster in the nick of time, and we will re-elect him as our hero.

Research opportunity

[DustinB]

"...it will zoom by our planet within a million miles, or about four times the distance to the Moon."

It would be cool if they could plant monitoring devices and instruments on it and then collect the data when it comes back around in four years.

Well, whadda ya know...

[ILL Robinson]

It's dumbell-shaped and looks just like an Arnie Bobblehead Doll.

Someone get Hollywood on the phone!

Too bad we can't put rockets on it

[Anonymous Coward]

and steer it to L4 or L5 for materials.

letdown

[pizza_milkshake]

a city-sized asteroid named Toutatis which will approach - but miss - Earth this September

hey, you can't get everything you want.

Actually, the sky IS falling.

[Fantastic Lad]

Denial can be sweet, but I find it better to simply not get in a fluster about the reality of a situation and instead just deal with it.

The fact of the matter is that there are Big Freekin' Rocks falling out of the sky, and there are going to be more of them, and bigger ones, as the next few years progress. Cyclical catastrophe is part of life on Earth.

But don't sweat it. You live many lives, so the fact that this one might end in a big ball of fire shouldn't worry you too much. Enjoy the show.

-FL

By Toutatis...

[FashionNugget]

"By Toutatis! May the sky never fall on your heads..."

hah

[EngMedic]

now we have to reassure obelix that no, the sky is not falling, by toutatis! *ducks*

not like it'll hurt him much anyway, he fell into the potion when he was a baby.

What might happen if it hit

[the pickle]

For all the people worring about massive worldwide destruction, have a gander at the Asteroid Impact Simulator

Assumptions:

-- the asteroid would be travelling at a "typical" velocity on impact, or about 17 km/s
-- the asteroid is primarily composed of dense rock, rather than solid iron
-- it impacts Earth at about a 45-degree angle
-- it hits land, not water (actually not too likely, considering Earth's surface is 75% water)

...then you're looking at some pretty serious earthquakes and lots of broken windows within a 1000-km radius, but the worst damage would be confined to about a 250-km radius.

Of course, this also assumes that the asteroid wouldn't break apart in the atmosphere. This thing isn't the most stable, solid asteroid ever -- the space.com article even makes mention of how narrow its "waist" is, and that it might simply be two large chunks that collided gently, sticking together because of gravity. If that's the case, it would almost certainly break apart and its impact wouldn't be nearly as severe.

It would take a much bigger space rock than this to wipe out humanity.

p

If it hits Los Angeles

[Ralph Spoilsport]

And you're here with me in San Francisco, this is what would happen, according to the impact calculator:

Thermal Radiation:

Time for maximum radiation:
3.29 seconds after impact

Visible fireball radius:
8.4 km = 5.2 miles
The fireball appears 2.4 times larger than the sun

Thermal Exposure:
1.19 x 105 Joules/m2

Duration of Irradiation:
77 seconds

Radiant flux (relative to the sun):
1.5

Seismic Effects:

The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 161.0 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 9.1 (This is greater than any shaking in recorded history)
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 805 km: IV. Hanging objects swing. Vibration like passing of heavy trucks; or sensation of a jolt like a heavy ball striking the walls. Standing motor cars rock. Windows, dishes, doors rattle. Glasses clink. Crockery clashes. In the upper range of IV wooden walls and frame creak.
V. Felt outdoors; direction estimated. Sleepers wakened. Liquids disturbed, some spilled. Small unstable objects displaced or upset. Doors swing, close, open. Shutters, pictures move. Pendulum clocks stop, start, change rate.

Ejecta:

The ejecta will arrive approximately 436.0 seconds after the impact.

Average Ejecta Thickness:
2.7 cm = 1.04 inches

Mean Fragment Diameter:
1.4 mm = 0.0561 inches

Air Blast:

The air blast will arrive at approximately 2683.3 seconds.
Peak Overpressure:
39729.6 Pa = 0.3973 bars = 5.6416 psi
Max wind velocity:
73.5 m/s = 164.5 mph Sound Intensity:
92 dB (May cause ear pain)

Damage Description:

Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse. Glass windows will shatter. Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.

So: In a nut shell:
the asteroid smacks LA. A great cheer is heard round the world - that idoitic show Friends is finally off the air, and now nature is here to make sure it never sees re-runs. A fitting punishment, much like that space byport problem meted out for Really Bad Poetry. So, all in all, the erasure of Los Angeles isn't such a bad thing, in the greater scheme of things - no more Meg Ryan movies, Bruce and Demi vapourised - aaaah - not so bad at all!

The problem is:
on the horizon would be a largish fireball, and things here in SF would get really warm for about a minute or two. Then 2 minutes and 41 seconds later, an earthquake hits, the likes of which makes 1906 look like a joyride. Then about 5 and a half minutes later gravel comes flying out of the sky at supersonic speed. Then about 45 minutes later the wind hits at 165 miles per hour, pretty much scouring the bay area of anything left alive.

So, while it would completely wipe LA off the map (YAY!!!) and leave a crater 35 miles wide ( |{3vv|_ !!! ) it will first lightly toast (boo!) then pulverise with hypersonic gravel (EEEK!!) then shake to pieces (Bad. Reeeally Bad) and then blow away (Suckage!) the Bay Area.

Therefore, it is incumbent on the Bay Area to find a way to stop such a rock from hitting the earth, because, as we all know, such disasters only hit two cities: Tokyo and LA. And given that Tokyo is being continuously reduced to rubble by those giant lizards, Moths and Turtles, it's the rocks we have to watch out for.

RS

Re:If it hits Los Angeles

[Dirtside]

I've never quite understood the strange enmity that many Bay Area residents have toward L.A. The only thing I can think of is some kind of envy, because nobody in L.A. gives any thought, positive or negative, to San Francisco. :)

Re:If it hits Los Angeles

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Oh, no no no - if Hollywood was located in Atlanta, I'd want to see Atlanta vapourised, and I'd be singing the praises of your fine Southern California metropolis.

Of course, if it hit Atlanta, (and given it's roughly the same distance from both of us) the results for us in CA would be:

A massive earthquake (but we're used to those, right?) and then 23 minutes later, tiny bits of grit ripping us to pieces as they fly through the air at supersonic speed. But at least the air blast would only be 22 mph.

See? Except for the supersonic sand blasting, not so bad, dontcha think?

;-)

RS

Re:If it hits Los Angeles

[Silburn_Luke]

Does anybody in LA actually think though?

Regards
Luke

What would be left after 60 million years?

[jmichaelg]

Your post got me to thinking - if the dinosaurs had been sentient, what evidence would they have left behind that they had built cities, space programs etc.? Would a reptilian Vesuvius survive for 60 million years? Would we recognize it as such if we found it?

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[dustmite]

Your post got me to thinking - if the dinosaurs had been sentient

Aren't you mixing the concepts of "sentient" and "intelligent" a bit? It seems quite plausible (and perhaps even reasonable to assume) that many less intelligent Earth animals than us (e.g. dogs or pigs or elephants) are sentient, but they don't have the intelligence required for creating complex industrialised civilisations.

Hmm .. if we assume they had built cities or perhaps even small villages, how much evidence of those structures would remain today? Probably nothing if they had reached about the same level of technological advancement that humans were in the year 1900. Even big things like pyramids will probably be long gone (unless buried?). Now we have things like plastics and huge landfills, yet even most modern plastics degrade in "only" tens of millions of years. If humans vanished off the face of the Earth today, I think our buildings and other structures will be long gone in 60 million years, even a long-developed area such as London will probably have been reclaimed by trees, plants, grass etc. However, we will definitely have permanently altered virtually all of the planet's ecosystems, that will be evident. And certain spots where there are high densities of pollutants (e.g. plastics or chemical pollutants) will probably still have higher densities of those things, leaving evidence of their locations. The crumbled rubble of huge cities like London or New York will, if buried over time, probably leave some sort of permanent layer of sediment with "interesting" chemical make-up.

So that's a weird thought, if dinosaurs had reached 1900-levels of technology, and lived in cities and villages and had a global trade system, there might actually be virtually no evidence of it now. Or maybe I'm wrong, haven't thought about it much.

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll do the thinking for you:

Well, since their fossilized bones *do* remain, other stuff would have had a good chance of leaving evidence too.

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[ColaMan]

Well, presuming that they advanced to (or beyond) a bronze age, they'd need minerals that you'd most easily get by mining and refining, and the evidence of previous mining of a mineral deposit would be easily spotted by a geologist 60 million years later (a lot of strata disruption,shattered rock indicating the use of explosives, trace mineralisation with no "body" in the centre... etc.)

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[armb]

Arrowheads and axes made of flint or obsidian don't decay, and we don't find them with dinosaur aged fossils. So unless they went straight to 1900s technology without a stone age earlier, it seems unlikely.

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[NineteenSixtyNine]

Somehow, I don't think a T-Rex would have much use for a bow and arrow.

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[dustmite]

Perhaps you should have done a bit more thinking. Fossilised bones have a much better chance of lasting than brick or mud houses, and even fossilised bones are incredibly rare. The majority of human villages that have existed have not even left evidence a few thousand years later, let alone 65 million years.

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[dustmite]

You're assuming that their civilisation would be like modern Western civilisation. Why would they necessarily be doing mining on such a scale as to need explosives? Would they even need that many minerals? I mean, we generally don't, only minimally so for industrial uses, and who is to say that dinosaurs would have cared about jewelry? You can have farming, villages, housing and trade without minerals, and with only a minimum of metals (yes you can, study history). African civilisations have been forging metal tools for thousands of years without explosives. Study human history a bit, there have thousands of different types of civilisations and civilisation infrastructures, and we've only recently used explosives for mining. Look at the evidence left behind by most vanished human civilisations - it's pitiful, normally amounting to a few remains of buildings and some pottery, and not much else, if there is anything at all - and these are all less than 10,000 years old - only 0.01 percent of 65,000,000 years.

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[hesiod]

> I don't think a T-Rex would have much use for a bow and arrow.

Toothpicks?

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[hawkfish]

Aren't you mixing the concepts of "sentient" and "intelligent" a bit?

Indeed. These folks have a model that could take it all the way back to the Cambrian explosion.

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

You're sure those came from human civilizations only 10 000 years old?

They could well have come from ancient prehuman civilizations, which may be even more likely if the force that ended the dinosaurs offset the C-12/C-14 balance so as to confuse radiocarbon dating or something...as a matter of fact, humans or human-like beings may have lived on this Earth before our race and destroyed evidence of themselves and an older Universe in some giant technologically-advanced cataclysm, causing our pitiful science compared to theirs to see the Universe and Earthling life as formed in its shorter timespan....

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[ColaMan]

I was meaning - minerals , not in the sense of diamonds etc , but iron ore , bauxite, lead carbonate etc. You don't *need* explosives for mining, but the general strata disruption is still there, no matter how you get the wanted stuff out. And it's easy to spot a mined-out deposit if you map it. 19th-century explosives were crude , but were gaining widespread use in mining... and I thought the parent was looking for a possible early-industrial dinosoar civilisation?

It's true though, a society that only uses clay pots and wood is not going to leave an impact that would be easily seen 60 million years later. But plenty of plants easily leave fossilised imprints... so you'd expect that there would have been *some* record found by now, especially if you take "early industrial" as "fairly large, spread out population"

Re:What would be left after 60 million years?

[wcrowe]

Hate to pop your bubble, but I can answer the question: Dinosaurs DID NOT build cities, space programs, etc. How do I know? They didn't have opposable thumbs.

Can't build much without being able to grasp something securely.

Increased NEO / asteroid frequency...

[bergeron76]

Is the apparent increased frequency in NEOs/asteroids a result of more media coverage / awareness, or a larger issue?

Maybe I'm being naive here because I've seen too many movies, but don't most metor showers / asteroid belt "entries" begin with a few close calls, followed by a few "minor impacts", and then a total BARRAGE of hits?

If it's not obvious, I'm just a 3rd party observer and I'm highly uneducated/informed about matters of astronomy (and astrology).

However, I'm concerned by the recent frequency of near-earth misses that have been reported. Are they just being reported more often because we have better technology now, and can discover them easier; or is the report frequency actually _increasing_?

If the latter, wouldn't a higher frequency of "near-misses" signify a BFIP (Big Friggin Inevitable Problem!?)...

Re:Increased NEO / asteroid frequency...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's mainly because we have better technology, and are actually looking. NEOs aren't very interesting to professional astronomers, whose telescopes are usually focused on the most remote ass end of space. Amateurs actually discovered most of the comets/asteroids/bits of rock flying around, until NASA started their Spaceguard program (named after Arthur C. Clarke's fictional idea) to catalog 90%+ of the NEOs that intersect the Earth's orbit.

It is true that meteor showers and things begin slowly, then ramp up to a peak, and then decline. However, this is because meteor showers are usually caused by something like a comet tail or a debris field, which tends to have a concentrated central portion. There isn't likely to be a ring of rock, with ever-bigger near misses followed by a possible collision, because it'd be rather easy to spot, simply by following the debris trail back into space. NEOs are somewhat hard to spot (because they're dark and relatively small), but our technology can certainly pick them up years in advance, as long as we're looking in the right direction.

It's more likely that we would be taken unawares by a rock flying out from the sun-side of the solar system. Telescopes don't work too good when they're aimed straight at the sun. :)

The non-futility of pre-doom bribes

[Baron_Yam]

If I'm going to die six months from now, it'd be nice to have $60m to play with until then, instead of continuing to work off debt.

$60m could probably get me a nice house, servants, guards, and a good-sized harem... so if you see any inbound asteroids, please put me in line for bribing!

Re:The non-futility of pre-doom bribes

[Galvatron]

If you're going to die in a few months though, couldn't you just go into MORE debt knowing that you'd never have to pay it off? I suppose you couldn't go into $60 million worth of debt, but at least a couple 10's of thousands should be no problem. Of course, if you ANNOUNCE that the asteroid is coming, then no one will lend anyone money, so it's kind of a catch-22 I guess.

"Pass Earth This Fall" you wish

[buserror]

Isn't that calling for trouble to get them near earth "this fall" ?

Toutatis

[Trogre]

Somebody call Asterix. If this thing hits, the sky really will fall on our heads.

Use it!

[njchick]

Or wait for a few centuries and then use it. For instance, use another close approach to Earth to send Toutatis to one of the the Mars' polar caps so it would help with terraforming. Only asteroids that come close to planets are relatively easy to redirect by pushing them a bit.

Mod up

[Billly Gates]

I was just looking for the link for the astroid simulator.

Folk, even an astroid the size of a small city is no joke and should be taken seriously.

Its far away but still I think investing our space resources towards asteroid prevention would not be such an unwise move.

Also the impact simulator only simulated a land hit. What about a sea hit? %90 of the worlds population live near a coast line. The Tsumai as a result would be unheard of!

Scientist have discovered sea sediment in British columbia in freshwater lakes over 20 miles away from the ocean. This shows that it has happened before. Several creates and not just the one that killed the dinosaurs are around and evidence of massive tsumia's cover earths history.

what happens to the orbit projections....

[zogger]

...if it gets close enough to the moon that gravitational forces (handy term that) to accidently split in half? I read in the piece it's odd shaped and like a dumbbell shape of sorts. Suppose it's very thin and wimpy through the spindle, and maybe cracked from previous impacts? Again, according to the article it is thought it has sustained a lot of previous damage. Or even just another odd but still whopper big piece busts off of it, along those lines.

Just wondering how much that would throw off their calculations. Has anyone done any "what if?" style calculations based on it's shape now and losing some of those pieces you can see in the pics? Near as I can see they are going on a default assumption it will stay the size and shape and mass it is now, despite it's vigorus tumbling and etc. And according to what I read, it really hasn't gotten close to any other large gravitational attraction for a long time, not as close as it will get this fall anyway.

Just a-wondering is all....

"unit conversions came out of my ass"

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, you've gotta see a doctor about that

How did the asteroid *eat* the Earth first?

[Anonymous Coward]

It must have been like a python eating a horse or somesuch.

wishing upon a star

[form3hide]

i kinda hope it hits us.

The spin information sounds bogus.

[sbaker]

Tne linked paper says:

Instead of a fixed north pole, Toutatis' axis of rotation wanders around in two separate cycles of 5.4 and 7.3 Earth-days. Stars seen from any location on the asteroid "would crisscross the sky, never following the same path twice,'' Hudson says.

But I'm pretty sure that any combination of constant rotational velocities about different axes can be considered to be a single constant rotation around some new axis.

So this thing may be spinning around some crazy diagonal axis - but it must still have a constant axis of rotation - and stars seen from any location would appear to go in circles.

If this thing is rotating in the way they describe - with no constant 'poles' - then there must be some continuing source of energy changing it's rotational velocity on a continual basis. It's hard to imagine how gravitation could do that to any significant degree because on the scale of planitary gravitation, all points on the asteroid are almost exactly equidistant from the mass of the star, planet or moon.

So what could possibly make this thing spin like that?!?

Little green men with manouvering thrusters? Outbursts of gas erupting from it's interior? (nah - surely it's too small for that)

There is something very fishy about this.

OT: request for knowledge!

[B5_geek]

Howdy all,
Reading this article got me thinking about how often we hear about these 'near-misses' well odds are we had just as many 'near-misses' for the last 100 years.

Well I witnessed a very unusual event about 21 years ago.

I was "camping" in our back yard with a school-chum (we were about 10 years old at the time) and late in the night (11pm - 1am Eastern) We saw in the south-west sky (Southern Ontario near Detroit, MI) a bright orange object. (Bright orange because it was obviously in the semi-shadow of the Earth, bent light thing)

It was about the size of a soccer-ball (held 4' away) and very high in the sky. We saw it BOUNCE twice and disappear over the western horizon.

No flames from the atmosphere, but it was covered with impact craters. (It looked like a mini version of the moon) Very cool stuff that I will never forget.

Who/Where/How can I bring this to (vague information and all) to find out exactly what it was? I don't remember hearing anything about it in the news the next day, but I was probably more interested in GI Joe.

I knew this day would come...

[Brando_Calrisean]

I have always dreamed of Two Tattis heading straight for my face.

Wait.. how do you pronounce that again?

Another example of perpetuating fear in US

[drdk]

Reading the MSNBC link I was struck (sorry) by how much unnecessary fear-mongering the article is laced with. Perhaps I've been sensitised ala Michael Moore, but:

- the article starts out by citing "A minor rumor has hatched on the Internet that a large and deadly asteroid will strike Earth this fall", thereby setting the scene for FUD. One would thus assume that the point of the article is to cause fear rather that objectively state facts. Ok, they immediately follow it with "Astronomers know of no such pending doom" but the adrenalin has already started flowing.

It goes on to say, "While not dangerous for now, asteroid Toutatis is incredibly strange." (my emphasis). [Dramatic chord (A minor 9th)] So we're led to believe that there's a bit of uncertainty about this big rock. True, but let's put it in perspective for heaven's (sorry) sake.

It goes on: "That's close by cosmic standards for an object that could cause global devastation." and "No other asteroid so large is known to have come so close in the past, though accurate tracking of space rocks is a fairly recent, high-tech skill that still leaves wide margins of error for many objects."

At least here they try to downplay it, but then that darned Aminor9th chord gets played and we're back in the adrenalin-ridden FUD again.

"Other asteroids in the size range of Toutatis have surely navigated that window, too, but were unseen in eras when the skies were not scanned so fully as today." - yes, keep it flowing!

One wonders if the objective of reporting in the US is to perpetuate consumerism, religious fervor, or just plain insularity.

This is true

[Galvatron]

San Francisco has a big inferiority complex with respect to Los Angeles. Just like Brown has toward Harvard, or the rest of the world has with the US.

Reality mirrors fiction

[doubleadesign]

I just finished (listening to) "The Hammer of God". Very "on the topic". It was a great listen, especially on the drive home. Book Description In the year 2110 technology has cured most of our worries. But even as humankind enters a new golden age, an amateur astronomer points his telescope at just the right corner of the night sky and sees disaster hurtling toward Earth: a chunk of rock that could annihilate civilization. While a few fanatics welcome the apocalyptic destruction as a sign from God, the greatest scientific minds of Earth desperately search for a way to avoid the inevitable. On board the starship Goliath Captain Robert Singh and his crew must race against time to redirect the meteor form its deadly collision course. Suddenly they find themselves on the most important mission in human history--a mission whose success may require the ultimate sacrifice.

Re:Reality mirrors fiction

[MrPink2U]

This is the one with Steve Buscemi right? Steve Buscemi rocks!!!

Thanks

[NotQuiteReal]

My daughter is learning various musical instruments. That will be inspirational.

I hadn't heard it before. lol.

it's called Delta Vee

[way2trivial]

and, strangely, with massive astral objects, one EXTREMELY WELL COMPUTED bit of force
(knock it with a feather) actually could make it happen.

if you wait till it's next to the earth to park it, yea, a really INTENSIVE amount of energy is required.

but, if you do the math perfectly, you can get it to park itself with a really light tap..

(fuckup the math, and it does crash on the planet)

What's the big deal?

[LoudMusic]

People act like this is a really big deal and get all worked up about it - ok maybe it's mostly the Media. But it's not like this doesn't happen all the time, or hasn't been happening for the past billion years. The difference now is that we are paying attention.

All kinds of scary bad stuff happens all the time. Perhaps more people should pay more attention. Maybe then it won't be so scary bad.

we are gonna die!

[PhuckH34D]

yeah... we are gonna die... again.

Yikes!

[ThresholdRPG]

With "The Day after Tomorrow" coming out in two weeks and having just read "Lucifer's Hammer" 3 months ago, I cannot help but react to news like this with a bit of paranoia.

How good are we at accurately projecting the trajectory of such objects?

Is there any web site that tracks how well JPL has done at predicting the paths of other celstial objects? How often are they wrong? When they are wrong, how WRONG are they?

Perhaps having a wife and a kid also adds to the paranoia here, despite knowing rationally I shouldn't worry about something like this.

Teaching...

[ballpoint]

For physics sake, dude, get your dimensions right.

weighs in at 2800kg under earth gravity ?
5.5 tera-newtons of mass ?
half a newton/meter of force ?
car engine doing a couple of hundred Newton/meters ?

weight (a mass under acceleration) is measured in Newton (kg.m/s/s, not kg)
mass in kg (not in newton)
force in Newton (not in newton/meter)
torque in Nm (Newton times meter, not Newtons per meter)

Explain what the torque of a car engine has to do with moving an asteroid, unless you have found a place to stand on and use Archimedes' lever ?

Target practice!

[Hogbert]

One of these near-miss asteroids _should_ be used for real life evaluation of asteroid nudging.

1) Plan beforehands, reserve ammunition
2) *kapow*
3) Analyze and learn.

A stone like this would provide excellent material for evaluating different methods; is it better to nuke the stone, mount a rocket or do something else.

Hogbert

Re:Target practice!

[bhima]

You what do you tell people when you nudge it in to a orbit that causes an earth impact?

Whoops! My Bad! and Sorry won't help much...

Spaceballs...

[thrill12]

..or doesn't it just look like the MegaMaid body, floating through space ?

AARGHHH!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

THE END IS NEAR --Auger

Toutatis

[ripcrd]

What the f*** is that? Sounds like Tatas. I'm going back to bed.

Moo

[Chacham]

Miss?

"Miss" implies intention to hit. It's nice to know you and Al Gore personify asteroids.

Let's use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's use some rockets and robots to make it a mobile, and natural ISS.

how about "magsailing" a rock to safety?

[perfessor multigeek]

Well, given that this thred was started by a superconductivity guy, it seems only natural to ask, how about inducing an itty bitty (relatively) current across said asteroid if it is indeed mostly iron (some aren't, ya know) and try to get the induced magnetic field aligned to get it to shift path within the solar system's ambient fields? After all, we're talking about a LONG period of time and a tiny shift in direction. I'm too lazy to do the numbers, but seems to me that rockets of any sort might be a needlessly brute force approach. (And yes, I *did* just reread Flynn's Lodestar .)

Rustin

pre-Christian French?

[Royster]

Invoking Toutatis during battle was supposed to bring about certain victory for the pre-Christian French warriors.

Surely you mean the pre-Christian Celts. The Gauls were a celtic tribe who were later kicked out of present day France by the Franks and pushed to the margins of Europe: Ireland, pre-Saxon Britain, Brittany and Gallicia in Spain.

Dubya on a rock

[perfessor multigeek]

Can we put GWB on it?
Sure, but only if we use "nucular"-powered rockets to get him there.

Far better would be to put the word out that oil executives looking to donate money were up there. Then maybe we'ld get Rove or Cheney to make the trip.

Its not an asteroid, its a space ship!

[fain0v]

Vodka and "apple sauce" for everyone!

Well if he can't hit us...

[claudiac]

... probably we can help him, no?:)

Money

[Anonymous Coward]

people will use "faith" as an excuse and throw money at religious godheads and godmen.

afaik the only money given to religious institutions are for social and charitable reasons not religious ones per say. The only money really being given directly to purvey religion is from the pockets of citizens that choose to give it themselves, not that the government has dictated, and that money is also directed at charitable things.

Maybe your skepticism should be redirected

Re:Dinosaurs

[Progman3K]

>How do you know they are extinct? Maybe they had a space program, left for another plnet, and let the Earth be hit by the asteroid.

Where is their technology in the fossil record then?

They didn't just invent oil, did they? ;-)

Still, you have a point; dinosaurs ruled earth for a hundred million years, right?

You figure we've been around for less than 2 million by some estimates and "ruling" the planet for even less than that.

So maybe you're right, with a hundred million years of evolution and the resultant technology, the dinousaurs teleported themselves, their belongings and their technology away just moments before the asteroid hit.

The bad news is they'll be back soon and when they see what we did with the place, well... Let's just say Godzilla would be a picnic, comparatively.

another one for the Tinfoil Hat Files

[barakn]

This might have worked before the internet, but when somebody thinks there's a possible strike, the news gets out within hours. This is due in large part to the huge numbers of amateur astronomers who are often relied upon to do follow-up observations.

Re:another one for the Tinfoil Hat Files

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Congratulations for proving my point. Calling something "tinfoil hat" is another mechanism for disinformation.

In an armageddon strike, all bets are off. As an outstanding modern example, America assaulted Iraq purely for selfish reasons. It only stands to reason from that, that the elite will do anything possible (including murdering amateur astronomers which you hold so dear) if Toutatis were actually coming to hit us. They can do anything right out in the open, as long as they put the proper spin and uncertainty on it. (Sounds like quantum physics, doesn't it?)

For example, suddenly telescopes can be officially declared "missile spotters" for "domestic terrorists planning on downing airliners at airports". Regardless of the absurdity of the declaration (astronomical telescopes are poor aiming devices for shoulder-fired missiles), public distrust will be sown. Since 'scopes are put out in backyards where they are visible, they will encounter suspicion ... which will be (note well) reacted to by the 'scope owners themselves before they even place them out in the yard. Confiscation efforts can proceed in tandem for the most egregious amateurs who insist on "finding out the truth".

If you don't think that's possible, stick an Almanac on your dashboard and drive around.

The entire point is to keep the public confused for months to allow the elite to operate without dealing with price hikes, shortages, riots and other such impediments to their attempts to save themselves. This is all a game of delay, not justice-will-be-served ... like what SCO is currently doing. Although as much time as possible would be desired, months is all the elite can expect, and with hundreds of billions to invest, they can get a lot done in those months before the truth hits one way or another. Then the bunkers will convert to the "shoot unauthorized visitors" mode and the rest of us -- like ninnies, having trusted our elites -- will have to wait out Toutatis.

The Internet will only ADD to the disinformation campaign. It's not the velocity of information that determines such things; it's the fact that disinformation itself works extremely well with a depraved populace (as America examples so well if you'd check the news lately). Face facts. At least half of America believes Iraq was involved in 911. America is very good at even disinforming itself. It's not hard to steer such a ship of state towards a reef for however long a delay is required.

In closing, your point is invalid, and you've a lot more reading to catch up on. The Internet is only going to make it worse, since the stakes will be the highest imaginable to the people benefiting directly from collective ignorance and impotence.

Re:another one for the Tinfoil Hat Files

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you discover our evil plan? What's your real name and address? Somebody will be at your house tomorrow morning to kill you.

Re:another one for the Tinfoil Hat Files

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Your kind of response continues to MISS THE POINT.

The point is to bring so much conflicting information into the fray that people become paralyzed with uncertainty and indecision. It's the only way to keep a secret actually secret nowadays. Instead of body armor, use fog.

Hence no one will show up at my door looking to kill me. It is important for the entire disinformation picture to have dissenters and exposers. Anything I say helps the fog that hides the truth. Our conversation helps that too.

The only thing that a person can really do to find out the truth is stop trusting and start investigating themselves ... by getting a scope and check it out themselves. Assuming they are skilled enough in tracking an astronomical object, their own eyes can't lie to them.

P.S. You're a boob. Read some books for a change of pace.

Live in china if.....

[DigiShaman]

China is a very nasty place to live and prosper. The future looks very bleak with the CCP controlling the nation. A few examples: Very bad human rights (They punish people who practice unofficial religion in public areas), Polution is far worse then in Western civilizations, and corruption runs rampent.

Communism has and never will work because it leaves a vacuum of power that is not elected by it's populace. Read up on evolutonary psychology and maybe then you will understand how human nature and established forms of goverment work hand in hand.