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?

[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.)

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?

[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?

[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.

Familiar territory

[Caseylite]

Someone call Bruce Willis!

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.

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

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:We should be safe...

[Fearless Freep]

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

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.)