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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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!

[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.

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 :)

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