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?

[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.

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?

[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?

[wronskyMan]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[xargoon]

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

Re:City sized?

[SamSim]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

Familiar territory

[Caseylite]

Someone call Bruce Willis!

Ironic name

[AdmiralNacho]

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

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

[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!?

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!

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.

Hmmm

[sv25]

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

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.

Cause Mishaps?

[Kjuib]

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

The real quetstion

[thebra]

is to nuke or nudge.

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

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....

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?

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

[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...

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

[Lord_Slepnir]

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

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)

--

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.

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.

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:We should be safe...

[Fearless Freep]

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

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."

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

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: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?

[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.)