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Asteroid 4179 Toutatis Will Miss Earth, This Time
EtherAlchemist writes "National Geographic News reports in this story that a giant, peanut shaped asteroid known as 4179 Toutatis will pass within 1 million miles of Earth on Weds, the 29th. When it does, it will be the closest any known object of this size (3 miles) has passed near Earth in this century. No worry about impact yet, it should pose no threat until at least 2562. An interesting note: the asteroid believed to have caused Earth's biggest mass extinction is thought to have been between 3.7 and 7.5 miles as reported here in 2001." 2004 FU162 came closer, but is a much smaller object.
When it does, it will be the closest any known object of this size (3 miles) has passed near Earth in this century.
Wow! You mean to tell me it's the largest object to pass near here in over 3 years!!!
OK, one of those things that sounds impressive, then when one thinks a little, isn't all that big a deal...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
So close to not having to pay next months rent
what if we knew for sure we would be hit in 500 years? that's long enough to be none of our problems. so would people say "fuck them" and just leave it to some other generation to sort out, or be willing to pay for a huge programme to deflect/destroy it?
it's a similar problem to global warming, except there are no asteroid-impact-dependent business models funding research and laws like with oil.
... seems the sky missed us this time! ;)
I, for one, would like to welcome our new oven-roasted overlords...
Here's the proof. Free 27" flatscreen TV.
The mean distance between the Earth and moon is 384,400 kilometers. 1,000,000 miles is about 1,609,000 kilometers, so the asteroid will come within about 4.2 earth-moon distances.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Method 1 is novel, but probably wouldn't produce enough of a course change to matter... we'd still die (remember we're unlikely to spot an asteroid until it's way too a late for minor course changes to make a difference).
Method 2 plain wouldn't work. Asteroids aren't solid objects so they can absorb a lot of shock, plus if you managed to break it up all the little bits would have the same total velocity as the original asteroid... death by a thousand cuts.
Not a lot really. We don't really have the technology.
We wouldn't get months probably. Days, perhaps. If we're really unlucky, hours.
That would make one hell of a slashdot headline while it lasted, though.
NASA's NEO (Near Earth Object) program tracks many different objects, though I wish they had a bigger budget, then they could handle even more.
You do realise surely that 1000 small asteroids is a lot better than 1 large asteroid, right? The effect of 1000 small chunks would be greatly reduced due to them burning up faster while descending through the atmosphere. Same total velocity my ass, i'm all up for air resistance.
That is quite the appropriate letter sequence for an asteroid that comes close to earth.
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
1000 pieces of a 3-mile asteroid are each 0.3 miles (0.5km) in diameter. The atmosphere is barely going to singe a rock of that size before it impacts.
Even if were blown to tiny pieces, that wouldn't help. Scientific American had a recent article that hypothesized that one of the worst parts of a big impact is the rebound of billions of tiny fragments into space, which then rain down all over the globe. Each one burns up individually, but the overall effect heats the entire atmosphere to hundreds of degrees, incinerating just about everything on the planet.
Sliced big or small, that much mass coming in from outer space would be a major problem.
Why?
Because a billion tons of gravel travelling at 25,000 miles per hour is just as deadly as a billion ton chunk of rock travelling at 25,000 miles per hour. It's not the rock itself that's the problem. It's the kinetic energy from the object's mass that's the problem. Gravel - rock - it's all the same at 25,000 miles per hour...
The only way a nuke really would work would be if it were small enough to nudge it off course, wihich would mean getting a BIG lead time on it. and that assumes that the asteroid is solid. It seems a lot of them aren't all thet well put together and a nuke would only turn the bullet/asteroid into a shotgun blast, per my previous description.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
But the moon doesn't have an atmosphere or oceans, so most of those things simply won't happen - lots of dust goes ballistic and lands, a chunk of the moon's surface gets vaporized (ok, causing a temporary localized atmosphere of sorts, but not enough to care about), and the dust covers some existing craters, but if there's a new crater on a side of the moon we can see, maybe it'd be deep enough to get some real insight about the inside of the moon.
Certainly lots of business for astronomers for a while. It'd be much more annoying if it hit the far side of the moon where we can only see it from spaceships.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And again another two days later, and yet again after a week. Anyone who survived the impact will be killed by heart failure.
Think of the polls!
"After the impact, I will be..."
[ ] Dead.
[ ] Surviving.
[ ] Cowboy Neal will deflect the asteroid.
"Having only hours to live, I will..."
[ ] Find a beautiful woman and shag her until the earth shakes!
[ ] Post some more on slashdot.
[ ] Read a good book I never had time for before.
[ ] Make sure my backups are in order.
[ ] Position my webcame outside so people on other continents can see it come and watch me die.
[ ] Set up that webcam, find Cowboy Neal, shag him until the earth shakes, then post about it on slashdot, and still have the satisfiction that noone will survive to talk about it.
[ ] Same as above, but then find out the asteroid thing was a hoax.
Does anyone ever run trajectory calculations for a strike on the Moon, rather than Earth? And what size Moon strike would cause problems here? Could the moon eject a chunk in our direction sufficiently large to be a problem? For that matter, what would happen to the Moon in that situation?
Too many questions -- no idea of the impact (pun intended.)
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
...but every time I see one of these stories, I think of some extremely long-lived alien warlord interns having a conversation like this:
Braxxis009A - "Idiots! How many times do I have to tell you anthropods even a trillionth of a degree of miscalculation will cause a complete and total miss! Now reload the Meteoro 2000 Planet Blaster XL with another rock and GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME!!!!"
- Both solar and thermal radiation exert pressure.
- The incoming solar radiation pushes away from the Sun, but the thermal re-radiation from the asteroid pushes away from the hottest parts.
- Asteroids rotate, so the thermal-radiation pressure is not directly away from the Sun but away from the "afternoon" part. The lower the albedo (darker) and the greater the thermal conductivity (lag between peak insolation and peak temperature), the greater the difference between the direction to the Sun and the thrust vector.
By painting the asteroid whiter (or, in theory, darker) you change the amount of heat absorbed and thus the ratio between the thrust from the reflected light (tracks exactly with incoming light) and the thrust from the radiated heat. Given enough time this will let you change the orbit of the rock enough to miss (or possibly hit) what you want it to. This works best with smaller bodies and long (very long) lead times.Sustainability and energy independence essay
If you blow up an asteroid of some arbitrary tonnage, say, a nice round billion tons, the planet is STILL fucked. Why?
Simple, and I repeat, a billion tons of gravel is still a billion tons of rock. Sure: there is more surface area and greater heating, BUT - all you have done is taken a catastrophic impact event of a billion tons of rock hitting several quintillion tons of rock (earth) into a billion tons of rock hitting a few million tons of air. At 25,000 mph, the kinetic energy of a billion tons of gravel will get converted directly into heat. So instead of a giant pinpoint nuke going off, it would turn a larger area of the planet into something like a broiler set on HIGH, and this heat event would last quite a long time, as anything that can burn will burn (explosively). Net effect: we all die.
Also: hitting it with a nuke ASSUMES it will *ALL* be reduced to gravel, and this isn't necessarily true. Many asteroids aren't that well put together, and there is a greater chance that by setting off a nuke on an asteroid, instead of a billion ton rock hitting in one spot, you could as easily end up with, say, four 200 million ton rocks all plowing into roughly the same little patch on earth AND 200 million tons of sand, gravel, frozen gasses, and other crap to turn the place into the solar system's biggest hibachi.
I can assure you what I speak is true - IANAAP (I am not an astrophysicist) but I have friends who are, and they all tell me the exact same thing:
blowing it up only works in (bad) hollywood movies.
You can't live outside the law of the conservation of mass and energy. A billion (or more) tons of rock is still a billion tons of rock, and when it's travelling at 25,000 miles per hour, it'll blow through 100 miles of atmosphere in about (but not a lot more) than a quarter of a second. BOOM. Game Over.
So, to re-iterate for the jillionth time:
BLOWING UP AN ASTEROID REALLY DOESN'T WORK. PERIOD. REALLY.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Upon further consideration, I've come to the conclusion that if an asteroid that big did collide with the Earth ... the complete destruction of all life on the planet would be a small price to pay for finally getting rid of Microsoft.
(It's funny. Laugh.)
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