Slashdot Mirror
Introducing Asteroid 2004 MN4
Numerous readers wrote in with bits about a potential asteroid collision: "The recently discovered asteroid 2004 MN4 is currently listed as having a 1/233 chance of hitting the Earth. It is 420 m across and if it strikes the Earth it will release an energy of 1,900 Megatons of TNT (the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, Tsar Bomba had a yield of only 50 Megatons). It is also the only asteroid that currently has a Torino scale value of 2." So, in summary, there's a 1-in-233 chance of the worst disaster in recorded history happening on April 13, 2029, and a 232-in-233 chance of nothing happening. Have a nice day! Update: 12/24 22:14 GMT by M : The rock is now rated a 4 on the Torino scale, or a 1-in-62 chance of impact.
Not to alarm people further, but April 13, 2029 is also a Friday the 13th!
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
April 13th, 2029 is a Friday!
Ouch.
The Machines will have to worry about it.
Well its close enough time to start looting!
this would be the best birthday present ever!!!!
Hopefully Bruce Willis will still be around...
Are you sure this isn't Rama?
Civilization as we know it sucks anyway.
* Bets on 233-doom. *
GO ASTEROID!
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
I don't really think there's too much point in getting concerned just yet. There are many asteroids that we can't track until they've already passed us, so worrying about a 1 in roughly 300 chance of an asteroid hitting us in 30 years time isn't really a major problem yet. Personally, I'd like to see some sort of government funding for machinery to detect a greater number of asteroids which are potentially on a course for us. Otherwise, our fate is just in the hands of luck.
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
Hmmmm, I wonder how many doomsday cults will be created around this.
...maybe if we all lean to the left...
FLR
Plenty of time to do something about it. However, if I know politics, it'll take until 2028 before the politicos fund the mission and NASA will have about 6 months to put together a mission....
I for one welcome our new asteroid overlo...
Oh.
Never mind.
Reminds me, I've got some shopping to finish...
Thanks for all the numbers, but using this page is more fun ... (no HTML, it's short enough to cut and paste)
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
... when do we start looting stores and rioting?
To put these odds in terms us slashdotters will understand, the odds that this asteroid will hit earth are better than the odds of rolling a '20' with a twenty-sided die 2 times in a row.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
Rainman?
We have to wait 24 years ... damn I'll be 54 !!
Lets throw a party!! I'll bring Mojitos! but we'll still need chex mix!
---
Oh how i wish I could meta-moderate my days away.
Nothing happens by chance. Chance is simply a statiscal tool to rate probability of things observable. If you disagree, please explain to me by what power comes chances causation?
Well, John Young (from a previous story about the risks of being a single planet species) is going to have a field day with this.
http://space.balettie.com/Young.html
Guess it's time to update those "how likely we are to die" stats.
Although maybe not, considering this isn't of the 1km and above weight class.
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa
Ouch.
Any moment now, Michael will be receiving a request/subpoena from Apple legal, asking him to divulge the identities of the "numerous readers" that leaked this highly confidential information about "Asteroid".
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
It was bound to happen some day...
We'll just cast force-bolt on that meteorite when it gets too near and knock its tragectory away from earth...
What is the point of posts (and news items, etc.) like this? I suppose someone will argue, "So that we can prevent such a cataclysm!" To me, it seems very unlikely that we could prevent all -- or even any -- of them. It also seems like a wonderful argument for throwing more billions and billions of dollars down the MIC toilet.
Clearly we need to start now to develop deep habitable mines to ensure the survival of our way of life. We must carefully select a few hundred thousand of those who should be protected at all costs.
A special committee would have to be appointed to study and recommend the criteria to be employed, but off-hand, I should say that in addition to the factors of youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills, it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included, to impart the required principles of leadership and tradition.
Naturally, they would breed prodigiously. There would be much time and little to do. With the proper breeding techniques, and starting with a ratio of, say, ten women to each man, I should estimate the progeny of the original group of 200,000 would emerge a hundred years later as well over a hundred million. Naturally the group would have to continually engage in enlarging the original living space.
a 1/233 chance of it hitting earth sounds like fairly good odds to me, considering odds of other asteroids... I want to be concerend for another 24 (close enough) years...
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
what a relief at least we wont have to go thru the year of "the end of unix time".
Damn. There goes my 25 years of no-claims-bonus.
Meta will eat itself
That's the day I was going to retire.
Stupid, stupid asteroid.
Call Bruce Willis and tell him to start the preparations. :)
Seriously tough 1/233 chances should not be too much of a concern right now. As we monitor this object we as it gets closer we should get a better idea of the chances and in 30 years we will have new technology to hopefully deflect this thing...Happy Holidays Slashdot by the way
Yes! I now have a 1/233 chance of predicting the Darwin Awards for 2029.
You see, the smart will evacuate the target impact area, and the "Award Winners" will flock to the area for the event.
Damn, I just hope *I* can resist going... after all, it *will* be an impressive show. We're talking 1.9 gigatons!
It is a lot better than lunar materials because of the low gravity hold on its own mass. It is also a lot better than asteroidal belt material because of the short round-trip times possible, which goes straight to the bottom line in terms of rate of return.
Seastead this.
You know they ALWAYS make it sound less probably to avoid widespread panic.... damnit, I wonder if my iPod will survive the apocolypse?
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
probability: a measure of how likely it is that some event will occur; "what is the probability of rain?"; "we have a good chance of winning"
The asteroid has a chance of hitting the earth. asshole.
In Korea, only the old people get hit by asteroids.
If you look at the animation, it shows the one possible earth hit position, but to me, it looks like 2 or 3 of those very near earth positions have the potential to hit the moon (then factor a gravitational swing around the earth...)
Pool anybody? Off the moon, bank off North America, left ocean!
"This is not a problem for anyone and it shouldn't be a concern to anyone, but whenever we post one of these things and ... somebody gets ahold of it, it just gets crazy" ...From the CNN version
Along with the obligatory Simpsons quote..
Kent Brockman: Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?
Professor: Yes I would, Kent.
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
Just think of how many times slashdot can repeat this story in the next two decades!
This
"So this is it, we're going to die?"!
welcome our 1900 megaton overlords.....
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
Just think, if we could put a rocket on it now, we could change the trajectory of the asteroid by a tiny tiny fraction, but multiplied over 24 years, would put the asteroid far away from earth.
Of course, we'd probably screw it up, and it would impact earth in 22 years as a result.
China, where asteroids are always positive
No, it's a 1/200 odds which means the odds of rolling a 20 on a 20 sided die and a 10 on a 10 sided die.
So it's more like rolling hit die and then damage.
Acutally as defenders we probably get a savings throw also to account for the asterior being deflected by the atmosphere or being destroyed by orbital debris.
The government will do anything to weasel out of its promise.
Never tell me the odds!
Any chance it could hit the IRS? /runs off to spend willy-nilly
There is government funding. See Pan-STARRS and LSST. These surveys will find millions of objects, and thousands of PHOs.
about where and how they come up with these 'odds'?
Would this be one of those instances of '95% of all statistics are made up'?
I mean, it seeams if he could get a somewhat reasonable graps at the trajectory and distance of the asteroid thy could get a fair guess about probability of impact and location of impact, but how do they arbitrarily convert a guess into a number ratio?
I guess I'd just like to see the math on how they come up with these numbers.
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
The problem is that there are at least 232 OTHER asteroids that have only a 1/233 chance of hitting earth.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Gigli was almost enough to destroy the U.S. by itself. An asteroid should be no problem.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
where is the mass hysteria, i want my hysteria!!!
anyway, time to start that cult!
1 in 233 is 0.004 and some change. That's a .4% chance of us getting hit.
Honestly, if that was in the post's title would any of us be reading this right now?
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Christ was born in 4 BC, he was crucified and Rose at age 33. When he was 33, it was 29 AD, or 2000 years before this 1 in 233 impact date!
*click**beep**beep* Scotty, One to Mod up!
Merry Christmas from Slashdot. Don't forget to check your bed for horse heads in the morning!
I like muppets.
Taking a contrary view, a strike (in an unpopulated area!) could be the best thing possible.
... but unlike pandemics and wars this is an event that can be predicted and possibly averted. Today spending, oh, $20 million/year to fully fund continuous monitoring of earth-crossing orbits would be difficult for politicans to justify. But with a serious scare within our lifetimes the political landscape would change.
The media has focused exclusively on major strikes, but they're so rare that no politican or bureaucrat can spend serious money studying them without ridicule.
What's forgotten are the far smaller - and far more frequent - minor strikes. Think about strikes that happen once every 5000 years or so. No government will take a serious look at an event that happens once every 5000 years... unless it causes significant devastation and something could be done. A 1900 MT bomb (using numbers mentioned elsewhere) would cause significant "local" devastation (on the scale of state or small country) and would affect the country for a generation (and the entire world for years from the dust cloud thrown up).
Do I hope we'll actually have a strike? Of course not. But a good scare (or better yet a strike on a dark moon that briefly casts shadows on earth) would force attention on the risks of minor strikes.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Standing
on a mountaintop in northern Siberia under the rapidly descending bulk
of asteroid McAlmont, with a calculating expression and a baseball bat
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Bruce Willis - aka: "Harry S. Stamper" in "Armageddon", and "Corben Dallas" in "The Fifth Element" - The man who defeated a world ending asteroid by blowing it up in space, and the man who defeated a huge ball of ultimate evil from colliding with the earth and taking over the universe... will be 74 in 2029.
[TOO OLD]
Mark Hamil - aka: "Luke Skywalker" - One of the people responsible for defeating the evil emperor and destroying not one but TWO death stars... will be 78 years old in 2029
[TOO MARK HAMIL--I mean OLD]
Arnold Schwarzenegger - aka: "Major 'Dutch' Schaeffer" - The man who defeated the predator and governates the state of california... will be 82 years old in 2029.
[Definitely way TOO Arrrrnold and OLD.]
I just don't know where to turn now... all the big heroes I grew up watching are getting old. Hollywood seriously needs to get to work before 2029 or we're all doomed!
"We're gonna need a bigger boat." - Jaws
Actually, isn't that the projected release date of Duke Nukem Forever? And you thought YOU had it bad! *sob*
Awesome! Just what the granola nuts and tree huggers have always wanted - the possible destruction of the human race! They should be rejoicing in the streets! Now they won't have to be hypocrits by driving the very cars they complain we shouldn't drive and live in the very wood houses from trees they say shouldn't be cut down!
tongue in cheek of course.
That gives all of us Slashdot readers about 25 years to lose our virginity, it might be tight...
This is one of those witty signatures that you'll remember.
We knew about this one back in the 1997 I believe. I'm a bit curious if it's really taken this long to get to the media.
Plus, I believe there are very methods to delay asteroids (whether we're at that technology advantage yet, I don't know). Such as putting white paint on one side to push it off course.
But hitting earth is not the same of hitting anyone, what kind of effect will have if hits i.e. the pacific ocean, or the middle of sahara, or just exactly over the white house? Maybe we just get lucky.
By then, if we havent blown ourselves up already, we should have ways to combat such predictable and trackable threats..
No worries..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
An oil industry think tank encourages consumers to purchase low efficiency gasoline powered vehicles. In the event of a collision the thicker atmosphere will deflect the asteroid.
Damn somebody needs to learn statistics -- and that statistics must fall under a unitary bound.
The odds of the referenced asteroid are 1/233 hitting on the given day. The odds that the cataclysmic even will not happen on that day is NOT 232/233. There are other sources of the even on the day other than the newly known object.
the worst disaster in recorded history happening on April 13, 2029
Well if that does happen, it will be three days before my 41st birthday. Wonderful.
Which part of the earth will it hit anyway. I dont think it will directly affect the whole world, beside the atmospheric affects, which can be dealt with, as opposed to dealing with the asteroid directly.. for example starting growing mushrooms...
I'd wanna emigrate to the country directly opposite of the impact, start a business and buy farms (critical for survival). Also important will be buying of important real estate, for example if its hitting the oceans, buy higher land areas in Bangladesh and start building apartments. Heck just buy the land, let others build apartments close to doomsday.
Shares of companies researching food sources that do not require sunlight, or low light will jump...
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It's more like 1/2 if you ask me. Either it will hit us, or it won't.
Use the info from this site over here to make your own doomsday scenario with this chunk of happy fun rock.
And before you mod me down go read the comic strip, then you'll understand (and then you should mod me up!):
http://angryflower.com/astero.gif
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Isn't 2029 or somewhere around there the time that psychics and Nostradamus type people have been saying the world it going to end?
Aren't some cults based upon this too? Hmm...
1. Start cult
2. ???
3. Profit
(And by "???", I mean let members drink poison koolaid in Nikes, then take their money)
Seriously though, I seem to remember reading about a bunch of people and groups that all think the world is going to end somewhere around 2030 or so. This just adds fuel to the fire.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Friday the 13th, April 2029.
This is awesome! I always wanted to die in a catastrophic giant ball of fire.
Back in my day, we watched T.V. by candlelight.
Quoting probabilities isn't worth a thing unless you're prepared to put your money where your mouth is.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Did I just fire 223 bullets, or 224? Do you feel lucky punk?
Those odds are alarmingly high, and if we plan on doing something to save ourselves from possible doom we should start now! Perhaps we should alert the media, they love sensationalistic stories and most people do too.
The other option would be to wait 24 years and see what happens. In my opinion that is utterly stupid.
Cheers,
Adolfo
I, for one, will welcome our new asteroid overlord.
(let the flames begin)
they should really consider nameing the things after the the date of impact. i nearly shit myself when i glanced at the title. but seriously people, it was and still is inevitable. no use bitchin about it, at least not for a decade or two anyway. after a few years of observation we will be much more sure of its trajectory. you know after years of hearing my pastor say that this was the last generation, i am gonna be pissed if he was right. /rant
anywho, the asteroid is not what we have to worry about. as the time draws near what do you think the people of the world are gonna be doing? twiddling thumbs? hardly, if a impact is comfired the shit will hit the fan in terms the economy. i mean think about it, what happened the week after 9-11, the stock market plunged like 700 points. why...? becuase people thought it was going to so they pulled out. if this starts looking bad we could be in trouble long before the the astroid hits us.....
I want the ELE asteroid, and I want it NOW!
--- Ban humanity.
which is when the UNIX 32 bit time representation wraps round - I doubt that anyone will survive. Think of all the coding effort that that will save and the Y2K type panics!
If this rock is of sufficint size and its orbit near enough to take advantage of... why not us this as an anchor for a space elevator?
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
I haven't been keeping track, but there have been a number of articles previous to this one either saying an asteroid WOULD hit Earth or would have a small chance of hitting Earth. Less than a month later, though, the statement would be revised to "no chance" of hitting Earth. I guarantee this will happen by the end of next month. And even if it does hit Earth, the size is not enough to cause much climate change and the chances of hitting an urban center are small, considering how little area cities take up in the larger scheme of things.
Now, I realize that it's one thing to track an object from earth, and another to track something that's a light year or farther away. But it would still appear to be a straightforward task: get enough pictures that you can tell where it is and where it's going, and interpolate.
So what's the bottleneck here? Poor imaging? Not enough photos? Bad angles? Something else?
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
And to add an eerie prophetic note:
Won't this be approximately 2000 years after the crucifiction of Jesus? Give or take the rounding errors attributed to various sources? It will even be within 2 weeks of Easter!
Maybe we will get lucky, it will hit Jerusalem, strike an infinite supply of oil and solve several problems at once! Now that is optimism!
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Anything that gets this close to the Earth probably has a chance of hitting the moon.
So, what happens to all the dust that's kicked up? You often hear about the effects of dust if such an object hits Earth, but isn't there a risk of moon dust getting kicked up in orbit around Earth and cooling Earth?
I don't know about anybody else but I've missed the impending doom and sense of anticipation since we've missed all our other dates at an apocalypse. The various dooms from the Millenium were very entertaining. Now I have another date to circle on the calendar. Yeah.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
How will putting people in deep habitable mines protect our "way of life" ?
Last I checked, my way of life definitely does *not* include deep habitable mines. It doesn't even have any shallow habitable mines. I can't remember any kind of mine, actually. Pretty mine-free over here.
So, in summary, there's a 1-in-233 chance of the worst disaster in recorded history happening on April 13, 2029, and a 232-in-233 chance of nothing happening. Have a nice day!
I'll be on the moon, gesturing, "Missed it by *that* much...."
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
So the odds of disaster could be as high as 1 in 23. Fortunately they could also be as low as 1 in 2320.
Along those lines, the estimated mass could be out by a factor of three too. And the size by a factor of 2.
(above post should read "chances less than .004" as slashcode must have stripped my 'less than' sign)
they changed the odds and the Torino Scale to 4. are we screwed yet?
Those are the same odds of Longhorn comming out on that date.
( or me getting a date ? Auch..... )
I'll do it this afternoooon. Yes mother... no mother... Mom! I'll do it later!
good thing we have a quarter of a century to slack off, I was falling behind in my slacking with finals and all.
www.olin.edu
Am I seeing this right?
It looks like it's up to a 4, now.
Somehow, I think the government will still require me to pay my taxes on April 15th.
Maybe I could get an extension...
Bush has a missle defense system that will save us.
I hate to pick nits, but there's actually either a nearly 100% chance of a disaster or a nearly 0% chance of a disaster. It's our limited ability to measure accurately that makes us unsure which is the case.
Torino Scale:
Events Meriting Concern (Yellow Zone)
Level 2: A somewhat close, but not unusual encounter. Collision is very unlikely.
The scale goes up to 10 (A collision capable of causing a global climatic catastrophe. Such events occur once per 100,000 years, or less often), so 2 seems pretty good!
The summary makes this asteroid sound extremely dangerous, did I miss something?
And where are our mighty military heroes currently planning the appropriate array of boosters to attach to this meteor to cause it to land in the middle of Bagdhad?
You forgot to reverse the polarity!
What continent is it going to hit? I mean, since they know when it might hit the earth, can't they be a little more specific so i know where to move to?
Ask slashdot: NASA asks: How can we save earth of being hit by an asteroid?
As someone said... I propose send Ben Afflec NOW for good and "save us".
You need to take one more step.
2 + 0 + 2 + 9 = 13
1 + 3 = 4
See? No big deal.:)
Laws are for people with no friends.
Sat afternoon, the risk assesment was upgraded to Torino 4, the first time ever this has happened, and the chance of impact increased to 1 in 63 based on a re-analysis of the June discovery data. over 160 observations went into the latest orbit analysis. That's worth paying attention to.
To put it in another perspective, it's close to the odds of being dealt pocket Aces ("pocket rockets", "American Airlines", "bullets") in Texas Holdem.
Celebrate the finer things in life
Thankfully, we the USAnians will not have to deal with this disaster, our empire having crumbled due to massive misuse of power. And again, thankfully the Chinese have their shit together more than we do. Hopefully they'll figure out how to blow the fucker off-course.
I know someone said something along these lines, but I think Mr. Affleck and Mr. Willis will be available. Along with Mr. Tyler. In 2030 it's not just in Soviet Russia that Asteroids play YOU! It'll be all over the world.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
im gonna die one day before my 47th birthday.
Happy birthday to me...
The NASA website has updated this badboy to Torino Scale 4.
We keep getting these stories every few months/years about how such-and-such asteroid has a 1 in a few hundred chance of hitting us. Granted, it's random and has no memory (if 4 1-in-5 things haven't happened, that doesn't mean the 5th one will), you would think, after enough of these stories, something will actually hit the Earth.
According to the NASA odds table, and the Torino scale rating 4, not 2, for that April 13, 2029 impact. Worrisome.
... an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain ... -- T. Jefferson
....the human race is dying...
Sounds like a job for [ insert superman sound effect here ] the U.S.A. !!!
The Torino scale for this impact is now rated as a "4"--about 1% chance of hitting us, an upgrade from previous estimations. Still not likely, but now more likely.
--
$tar -xvf
lets not forget 'natural selection' means 'selection via amount of cash'.
so a "new world" with only the bush, bin laden families, this place doesnt seem so bad after all!!
Rock on!
Are you kidding me? He was the one who failed to stop a nuclear attack on US soil! I wouldn't depend on him.
Its now up to 4 on the Torino scale, and the probability of impact is up to 1.6% or 1/63. Thats pretty damn scary considering the extend the damage would be.
The bad boy now is listed as having a Torrino scale value of 4 with a 1/63 chance of hitting the Earth. This was based on recent observations. A score of 2 was a record high. Now we've skipped 3 and gone to 4. If it gets to 5 it will be considered a Threatening Event.
cos landing on friday 13th, in the year 2029 ( where as someone pointed out = 2+0+2+9 = 13 ) , M = 13th in the alphabet counting from a to z, and n = 13 if you count from z to a. :)
the 4 is the number of times they squeezed 13 into it. sounds like geeky humour to me personally
Now where is clever nickname when you need him? :P
I'm 80 i'll be dead by than. Don't worry it'll be quick and painless
Wow, now at 1/62! Lets see what happens xmas day..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
after the 24 years have past, how many will be still left? 20? or maybe still 24 ! Learn from the past, look for instance at nuclear fusion, flying cars, ...
I'll take those odds anyday.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Torino Scale
Level 4: A close encounter, with 1% or greater chance of a collision capable of causing regional devastation.
Alright that is getting a little scarier
Given the time available, it ought to be possible to accumulate a nice prize purse, to be awarded to whoever can put a device on this object that will let it be steered into a parking orbit somewhere handy and available for ... well, whatever.
Maybe a Free Hardware Foundation would be able to open source access to space, given a good start like that.
Paraskevidekatriaphobia
Tell me, is there a fear of sadisticly long words... 23 freaking letters long.
Homer: "So there's a commet. Big deal. It'll burn up in our atmosphere and whatever's left will be no bigger than a Chihuahua's head."
Bart: "Wow, dad. Maybe you're right."
Homer: "Of course I'm right. If I'm not may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow."
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
"Do you have Asteroids?"
"No, but my dad does. Can't sit on the toilet some days."
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
by 2029, it might not be the worst disaster in history anymore...
or else!
I recall reading in a book once that the size of the impact crater from an asteroid is about 20 times the size of the diameter of the asteroid. So: 420m across * 20 = 8400 m (8.4 km) wide crater 8.4 km, seen better, seen worse....
If this is a 2 on that scale... What does 10 mean? "Stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye?"
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
Question: For any given projectile, would it generally be preferable to be on the ground or in an airplane at the time of impact? How about deep underground in a bunker? On the ocean floor in a habitat? Or aloft in an aircraft specially designed to withstand a sudden pressure differential?
Or would in a spacecraft orbiting above the atmosphere be the best location?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I don't know why but I think 2029 A.D. will likely be a very bad year for Los Angeles :o
Show some respect you insensitive clods.
If we can place a solar sail on the thing by 2010, how big would it have to be to alter the orbit? Five years to develop and deploy that technology sounds reasonable, and even a small ammount of drag over 19 years should alter the trajectory by a significant ammount, right?
On second thought, solar sail is probably the wrong tech. How about a robot that grinds up the asteroid and shoots the particles forward at high velocity like a retro-rocket? They could be solar powered of course, and we could deploy several of them. The only real challenge there is that the asteroid could be difficult to grind up, so the robots would have to have lots of spare drilling bits.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This event has really made me think .....
Here we are, with an asteroid coiming towards us, and we have a bunch of fools called Al-Qaeda who are trying to injure the only civilisation (the West) who can fend this thing off.
Note to Al-Qaeda and their supporters - *** ASTEROIDS DON'T CARE ABOUT RELIGIONS ***.
This REALLY puts things into perspective.
If this thing is to be "fended off", it will be the West who does it. That means that however much the Muslim world may dislike the West, they must give their support to us in this endeavour.
It's that simple.
team.. Where is bruce willis when you need him
Hey, check your slide rule! It's not 30 years. It's 25 years.
Because if we sit around waiting for the UN to make a fscking decision, we'll all be charred to a crisp before anything is done about it...
Now I can keep my computer with the 32-bit clock! I won't have to worry about it rolling over... Nice! :)
The World would be better off if it falls on a ranch in Texas...
Now, there would be some problems. First, as you change the orbit, there's the chance that you'll chage the target country from Outer Bleen to Inner Bleen, upsetting the inhabitants. Then, as you manuver the rock, you're going to probably annoy someone else. The ability to direct such a rock would constitute a "weapon of mass destruction."
I'm guessing positioning the thing for "aerobraking" in the Earth's atmosphere would make some folks nervous, too.
Ok, so this wouldn't be a project where you'd want to mix up your feet and meters or have someone say "oopsie!"
The shame is, humans don't have the brains or organization to take advantage of this opportunity. If this hunk of space junk is going to hit the Earth, I'm not sure we will move it in time. We certainly can move it. I just don't think we'll get our act together.
I wonder who'll be the first to suggest that an impact will be a good thing since the dust may greatly reduce global warming?
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Not in all likelihood. The probability of this happening is 232/233.
Note that a Torino 4 is a 1% or greater chance of regional devastation. Even if it does impact, depending on where it hits, there's still a possibility it won't be the worst disaster in human history. (I wouldn't be betting on it at that point, but the chances are not negligible.)
hollywood would be happy to hear this and to capitalize on our hopes and fears. but i'll be waiting for the torrent.
Only thing is that damm SH guy put it up in space !
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...the number 4 is pronounced the same way as death (which is why Japanese people hate living on the 4th floor etc). :)
so we are doomed after all
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
You know, sometimes I'm not convinced the humans are worth saving. I mean, sure if your a human then you'd kinda like to stay alive, so would I. But just like the tree falling in a forest with no-one there to watch - does it matter if a planet of life is destroyed in a galaxy where none of the aliens seem to be looking. Besides, I'm not inclined to concern myself with things that I cannot affect (Like the flow of conversation on /. ).
Perhaps the Pastis is getting to me, it is xmas eve after all.
Respect copyright - the GPL relies on it.
I'd like to compare the danger reported here with that of the recent earthquake in Australia.
Asteroid: It is 420 m across and if it strikes the Earth it will release an energy of 1,900 Megatons of TNT (the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, Tsar Bomba had a yield of only 50 Megatons).
Earthquake: Geoscience Australia said an earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale releases energy equivalent to about 10,000 atom bombs like the one that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War II.
I dunno, this asteroid threat doesn't sound like anything particularly worrisome, unless you happen to live right where the thing falls.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
Seems the most likely date of impact is t full days before your taxes are due!
Erm. 1 in 2 would be exciting. 1 in 5 would be interesting. 1 in 10 might get my attention. 1 in 62 is dull.
Just for reference, the odds of winning most instant ticket lottery games (the little scratch off things) is usually around 1 in 4 for most of them, and they're still not a good bet.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
you can see the animation of it at NASA here
although the java app seems a bit innacurate as it doesn't seem to get close until 2104 for me
Yea lets upgrade this one to a 4 so we can lean on
the budget and get us a big ole fat grant from the govt.
Got Code?
Posted by michael on 2004.12.24 18:30
The recently discovered asteroid 2004 MN4 is currently listed as having a 1/233 chance of hitting the Earth. [...] It is also the only asteroid that currently has a Torino scale value of 2." [...] Update: 2004.12.24 22:14 GMT by M: The rock is now rated a 4 on the Torino scale, or a 1-in-62 chance of impact.
Am I the only one that finds this amusingly similar to "Lucifer's Hammer" by Niven? The odds growing day by day? Go read the book.
Robert
PS In the book odds were growing day by day, up to one, and impact. And then it was starting to get interesting.
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
There's only a 50 percent chance. It is either gonna or it ain't gonna. Everything boils down to a binary decision.
With a fragment diverting to Canada.
You plan to have Ben Affleck and J-Lo make another movie has been found out be the Galactic council of goodness.
If such plan is continued with, you will be destroyed as an example to other civilizations.
That is all.
qngduor3kfgh
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
but that would probably lead to war with the US,China, and Russia.
who is with whom would be interesting.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You forgot to reverse the polarization!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Impact Velocity: 17.00 km/s = 10.56 miles/s"
from the JPL link:
Vimpact 12.59 km/s
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
choppyou get a 1000 man army, and about 10 of the men will chop their own heads of in the first action.
Your post just reminded me of that.
I love Christmas, but I hate what it does to my gaming schedule.
Soon, my kids wil be gaming, and I will introduce the tradition of a christmas eve day game.
ha, that will teach them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since we're discussing asteroids today, here's a link to a 3d asteroid blasting game that my project partner and I made recently for class, using OpenGL. Its not feature complete, and it doesn't show anything for the ending, but its playable.
Download away!
No data, no cry
start preparing for your own survival,and the survival of your family.
It doesn't have to be arduious, just learn how to survive, make shelter, and create a rotation of food and water.
That alone will increase your odd of surviving beyond the initial impact tremendous.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the homing device I attached to the asteroid last month.
The shareholder is always right.
Level 4 on the Torino scale means:
Current calculations give a 1% or greater chance of collision capable of regional devestation. Most likely, new telescoping observations will lead to re-assignment to level 0.
Amateur astronomers, please do your part to reduce the probability of impact by taking new measurements of the asteroid's position every night until the probability of impact is less than 1.0e-06. You can track your collective progress using this chart, which shows the current probability at 1.6e-02.
The shareholder is always right.
In a few million years, the sun will burn up all its fuel... humankind is ultimately doomed no matter how you look at it.
The Nationwide Asteroid Threat Level is:
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
Looking at the likely trajectories, Earth is on the fringe of them. OTOH, the moon's orbit sweeps deep into the possible paths. Anybody care to speculate how much easier it would be to change the orbit of the moon and what would happen if it caused the moon's orbit to decay?
Moon ball in the big body of water....
We're being taunted by the powerful. They have their agenda, and it doesn't include you and me. Signs are being waved in front of our noses daring us to do something about it.
Do you know what they invented? One of the simplest originators of force, called electronic charge. It makes possible electronic control. That's electronic control of our minds.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Can anyone out there mention ONE single "everyday item" that resulted from particle physics research? One
At least the space program has had kajillions of things arising from it.
One in 233 sounds safe, but people win the lottery all the time. Go figure. That means if most people have odds of missing, there are still people around with odds of getting hit. We need to find these people.
Wait a sec. That doesn't explain the probability does it? Let me see if I can understand it.
Suppose it will hit but we aren't advanced enough to know for sure. Then as it gets closer, the probability for a collision will appear greater and greater, moving from milestone to milestone: 1/233, 1/200, 1/100, 1/50, 1/25, 1/10, 1/4, 1/2, 1.
What in the world is a 1/2 probability of collision? It seems that with such a dire prediction it would behoove astronomers to give us a probability of 1 or 0.
Predicting a collision is made difficult by the errors that are possible - the asteroid is far and fast. It may be influenced by other objects we don't know about. It is small and may miss by a hair. It may gain or lose mass. It may undergo reactions that alter its movement. As I understand the probability is based on the amount of error in favor of a collision/miss, as opposed to an experiment where the earth and the asteroid are placed in the same situation 233,000,000 times and 1 * 10^6 collisions occur to one significant figure.
I suppose that measuring the movement of the asteroid over the course of a few days yields a large set of possible trajectories, and 1/233 of them are collision courses. What would be interesting is the variation in parameters from one collision course to another. Are the collision courses clustered very closely? A low probability of 1/233 leads me to believe so. Collision courses that are not clustered help us by allowing us to use only a minor disturbance to change a collision course into a noncollision course.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Even getting an instrument package _onto_ one of these objects would be interesting. Add a little ion engine and enough computation to lock onto some target stars, dig in, push, watch, re-aim, figure out how to line the thrust up with the center of mass, despin it over time for consistent solar power. Then hope to find solutions that would eventually settle it into say a Lagrange point, not too close.
Have Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and the other Jennifer Lopez do voice acting in a Gigli/Pokemon crossover sequel. Call it Giglipuff: The Weather Balloon Pokémon. Launch it at the asteroid and watch the sparks fly.
On the bright side, if this hits we won't have to worry about global warming flooding out all the people in Bangladesh, because the Tsunami will get them first.
what sig?
I think being full of oneself is hard wired in the human psyche.
Respect copyright - the GPL relies on it.
You're a twat. As is the other AC (if that's not you again) suggesting that some of it go to Canada.
Go USA! Go USA! Go USA!
Once you've got your jingoistic warmongering self-gratifying chants out of the way, consider this;
If France hadn't sided with the revolutionaries then the British would have held control of the Colonies. You wouldn't have the country that you are so proud of today.
10% of casualties during the Normandy invasion were Canadian. And a bigger percentage than that were Brits. There were a few Free French too as I remember.
The French haven't forgotten your country's contributions to their freedom. But as with many of the guts'n'glory movies coming from Hollywood, you seem to have forgotten everybody-elses'.
(the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, Tsar Bomba had a yield of only 50 Megatons)
A big difference between meteors and nuclear weapons, I presume, is that a meteor strike probably won't involve tons of radioactive fallout that'll poison vast areas. It'll surely kick up lots of dust and debris, but at least survivors won't have to be afraid to breath.
Two links that will answer your questions. Look at the pretty pictures describing the cloud of probabilities.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html
An interesting page to play with is here: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
I think it would be very bad if one were living close to Yellowstone and having the impact close to the caldera. Put in the values for 2004MN4 at a distance of 50 km. Assume it is a density of 2600 kg/m3, hits the lake of 30m depth and at an angle of 50 degrees. The effects are quite devastating without having factored in the effects on such an impact on Yellowstone's caldera.
Now, if you put in a density of 6000 kg, it gets really interesting!
As a resident of MN, I state that I had nothing to do with asteroid 2004 MN4. At least not yet.
You state, "a 2- or 3-sided die made by my suggested method..." Excuse me, but what plane of existence do you live in? Are you are saying one could grind a glass marble into a plane one molecule thick and call it a die? There is no such thing as a two sided die. The minimum number of surfaces of a regular polygonal solid is four. Please show me a three sided die, or especially a two sided die that has no depth (or thickness).
I'm sure the U.N. will sanction it as soon as they complete a study.
Hiroshima = 15 kilotons
So 10,000 hiroshima bombs = 150 megatons.
The Richter scale is logarithmic in energy; each point represents approximately 31-fold increase in energy. 1,900 megatons of TNT corresponds to your Richter 8.6 earthquake plus another 0.7, or Richter 9.3.
That would make it #2 on the largest earthquakes of the 20th century.
Of course, the energy release of an asteroid strike may have a very different effect than the energy release of an earthquake. And everybody on earth will have decades of warning (for this asteroid at least).
I lived through a Richter 7.0 earthquake. The building I was in stood up, but it was condemned afterwards.
Let's transfer all our liberties to the government NOW so they will have to power to save us from this dreaded missle from outer space. I for one am 'skeered shirtless.
Save MN4!
Save MN4!
Save MN4!
that this thing will hit the moon? I didn't hear anything about repercussions of a lunar impact.
:S ....
Could this thing cause serious damage to the moon and/or its orbit?
What about a bank shot? From the ultra-modernized-fantastical animated GIF (like, wtf?) it appears as though the asteroid will impact at EXACTLY a 90 degree angle to the moon's orbit of the Earth...is that right? Doesn't make sense to me anyway (what's the probability of that??? C'mon!...I know the article says "The Moon's orbit is also shown, for scale.", but if it's not accurate, what are you guys (I'm Canadian) paying NASA for?)
It looks like this possible lunar lander could find its mark on the 14th, but the goofs don't let it run long enough. I'd have gladly wasted the extra 15k of bandwidth to see that
Maybe god is taking aim....
I'd pay big money to see someone spraypaint "We are 0wnz jou" in big bubble letters on the side.
Inject.
Well, I'm glad that for the next 25 years, we will have good telescopes to use, like Hubble, which have allowed us to see details of OTHER GALAXIES. Certainly we could use such equipment to help pinpoint whether asteroids would hit us early enough to do something about it.
Oh, wait. We won't.
Hubble requires routine maintenance. It contains manipulable spinning gyros used to absorb its angular momentum so that it can point in one direction and get a good image. Without them, it would quickly become a tumbling piece of scrap metal. Since these parts move, they wear out. Hubble currently has just enough operational gyros to work for just a little bit longer, but a certain administration doesn't think it's worth maintaining anymore. I guess it's more important to fund homeland security than homeworld security.
I'll give Bush credit for not having blown up the world yet, and I suppose that in this light, our nuclear weapons could be used in a good way.
Odds of 1:233 for one that gets a little close and everyone is worried...
I saw one that was, a) big enough to see--outline, surface, craters and all, and b) was grazing the atmosphere, 18 years ago. No one was worried about that one. In fact, no one wanted to know about it.
What was scary was that no one cared, not the media, not NASA, not our local astronomers, not even MUFON and Peter-whatsisname at UFORC--not even Art Bell. No one. Never saw or heard anything about it since.
On that night I also discovered that "black as night" really means a muddy brownish-gray.
me. --a by-product of public education
You, sir, have a career as a budget analyst for congress in your future....
So what's the point of filing your tax return? Either way, you're still fucked.
/bin/laden would LOVE for this thing to land on the U.S.
So here's an interesting question... has anyone yet determined WHERE this thing might impact? I know
"Extended warranty!? How can I lose?!" --Homer Simpson
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Yeah, it's really as likely to hit as I am to becoming a millionare, but still, published odds like 62 to 1 aren't going to make people feel good. That's about mid-odds for a nag running in the Belmont. I liked 233 to 1 much better.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
"It was announced today that an asteroid the size of 4 football fields could come close enough to strike earth in the year 2029 on Arpil 13th. We believe that the Al-Quieda terrorists behind this plot are hiding on the Pakistan India border and are certain they will be brought to justice, and democracy will prevail through out the middle east. There is nothing to worry about at this point, since in 2029 it won't be this administrations problem... Any questions?"
The Property of One's : "The Oneitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the one." - S.B.
Before we start trying to destroy the asteroid with a "bomb" shouldn't we find out exactly what its made of? It will make a huge difference to how we respond (do we try to knock it off course with a nuke or gently push it with a mass driver/ion drive/solar sail) dependign on whether it is a big ball of iron, a loose pile of rubble (or even a mass of hollywood film critics).
/ main/index.html) even if it means a delay of a few(?) months while we calculate and find the best launch window? I'm assuming the delta V is achievable since the asteroid seems to be in an earth orbit crossing orbit.
Since we have a probe designed to do exactly that sitting on a launch pad for a January 12, 2005 launch why not use it on this potential threat rather than planned comet? Wouldn't it be much wiser to redirect Direct Impact (URL:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact
With a 1/62 chance of hitting earth and a Torino rating (now) of 4 I'd much rather use our probe on this potential threat than to determine the composition of some random comet! 25 years may seem like a long time but the longer we wait the harder it is to push this "flying mountain" out of harms way.
Sorry to respond to my own post but I figured the slashdot audience might find this interesting.
First I looked at the graphics provided on this web page URL:http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html. Note how in the animation the asteroid seems to hit at the time when the moon is almost directly in line with the sun. Then I ran the solar system simulator URL:http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ to see what face of the planet will be pointing towards the sun and moon at this time. It appears as if the western hemisphere is spared.
Of course this is horribly imprecise but it brings up a question: if the asteroid is going to hit BUT NOT THE USA will the USA bother to mount an effort to stop it?
First I looked at the graphics provided on this web page URL:http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html. Note how in the animation the asteroid seems to hit at the time when the moon is almost directly in line with the sun. Then I ran the solar system simulator URL:http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ to see what face of the planet will be pointing towards the sun and moon at this time. It appears as if the western hemisphere is spared. Of course this is horribly imprecise but it brings up a question: if the asteroid is going to hit BUT NOT THE USA will the USA bother to mount an effort to stop it? By the way, this is a repost of an earlier post (1 of 2 of mine). Please take a look under the Ben Affleck joke. I also suggest redirecting the Direct Impact probe on Jan. 12 so that we use that to determine the composition of the asteroid.
First I looked at the graphics provided on this web page URL:http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html. Note how in the animation the asteroid seems to hit at the time when the moon is almost directly in line with the sun.
Then I ran the solar system simulator URL:http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ to see what face of the planet will be pointing towards the sun and moon at this time. It appears as if the western hemisphere is spared.
Of course this is horribly imprecise but it brings up a question: if the asteroid is going to hit BUT NOT THE USA will the USA bother to mount an effort to stop it?
By the way, this is a repost of an earlier post (1 of 2 of mine). Please take a look under the Ben Affleck joke near the beginning. I also suggest redirecting the Direct Impact probe (launch date Jan. 12) so that we use it to determine the composition of the asteroid (and not the random comet it is currently targeting).
Finally, I'm not sure it would be a good idea to be directly opposite the globe from the impact site. The seismic shock waves may come to a focus there with some unpleasant results. (I think impact craters on some of the moons circling jupiter and saturn have shown this).
Does anyone remember the concern in Sept 2002 when an object dubbed "J002E3" was initially believed to be an Earth-crossing asteroid or previously-unknown moon was discovered? [ref: Slashdot, Planetary Society, CNN] It turned out to be the Apollo 12 3rd stage rocket body. The mistake was made because an object as bright as it was, if as reflective as a rock, would have been huge. But it wasn't a dark rock - it was a shiny metal cylinder. It had been re-captured into Earth orbit after decades in solar orbit.
Probably every lunar probe and manned mission has sent a rocket booster into solar orbit as space junk. While probabilities of a 2004 MN4 collision in the future are computed, astronomers with the proper data should also try to project it back to see where it was during the Apollo era. Check if it may have come from Earth.
Actually, I'm pretty sure astronomers are already projecting 2004 MN4's orbit back in time to see if there were any other observations of the object before. So this is something else for them to check.
...it was just Santa's bag of gifts. It's gone now.
Even if it were headed at the US I doubt that unless we have some capable alien friends we'd be fucked too.
Additionally, we really don't need to know the composition of this particular asteroid is. We already know its density; exact composition doesn't really get us any new insight as to what the damage is going to be if/when it hits. At this point, the best thing to do is to watch and wait. As nasa says themselves, this is probably a nothing event; life will go on, and the asteroid will buzz by harmlessly. If it does it, most likely it'll create large waves, but not mile-high walls of water which would destroy miles of coastline, or it'll hit on land in some unpopulated area and stir up dust. Any way you look at it, there's probably no reason to panic.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Why is my idea so hard to understand?
... it's for sale in most gaming shops.
... or having the character of regular or semi-regular polygonal solids. Hence, my proposal.
... but it is still a functional 3-sided die.
A functional 100-sided die is already marketed using this idea. It is essentially a plastic marble with 100 flat spots on it. Of course, between the flat spots we have the necessary and remaining round portions of the sphere. Round areas + flat areas = total sphere surface. Right?
I had thought that that was perfectly obvious. D&D players should be familiar with the 100-sided die I described above
A sphere itself is its own 1-sided die. It always produces 1 result.
To produce the 2-sided die, just grind 2 flat spots on your plastic sphere. Of course, they'll have to be positioned equidistant and equatorially, which will mean it will be almost impossible to actually roll it to produce results 1 or 2. But if you grind deep enough flat spots (logically, the extreme will simply be a coin) then it should work. Of course, you may as well just use a coin at that point.
The 3-sided die made from my method will suffer the same problems. You must grind the spots deep enough -- hence severly deforming the "sphere" -- to make it much more likely that a roll will result in a flat spot resting point rather than a round spot. In fact, I saw a 5-sided die just last week, whose shape kinda-sorta ended up as a ground-down sphere. (BTW, a 7-sided die I was shown was a real marvel of clever die construction. It was NOT based upon the sphere, but rather on a cylindrical pentagon (cross-section) which obviously rolls onto 1 of 7 faces (5 rectangular and 2 pentagonal).)
Still, the sphere idea is a bit geeky. It would quite a bit easier to make cylinders as the die base instead of spheres. All you'd have to do is grind down "n" equal faces on the cylinder to form a random number generator of "1 to n". The odds of the cylinder coming to rest on the endpoint are very unlikely. Some modern D&D die designs have just this feature, and so naturally use points on their ends to deter this.
But gamers don't want to roll cylinders. They want to roll DICE -- spherical in nature
P.S. A 3-sided die is nothing difficult. I came up with one in my teenage years when I started playing D&D. Think of a football. It is made from stitched-together "football" shapes (kind of a "rounded diamond" shape), usually in 4 sections. Just make a solid (suspiciously cylindrical-looking) with 3 of those shapes curving to meet each other, as if a football had been constructed with 1 panel missing. Just like the 4-sided "pyramid" die often used in gaming, the "football" d3 would fall upon a face while the opposing "mountain peak" shows the resulting number. The d3 would likely oscillate upon the curving bottom face a bit, but will unambiguously determine a result of 1, 2 or 3. Sure, the surfaces are curved, and the resulting die won't qualify as the polygonal solid we grew to love in geometry classes
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
His two-sided die starts as a sphere which then has sections formed by two parallel planes equidistant from the center of the sphere removed.
In the extreme case, yes, it would be a plane one molecule thick. Think of a piece of paper that has the number 1 written on one side, and 2 on the other. That's his d2.
The d3 is slightly trickier - it starts as a sphere which has three sections described by three planes equidistant from the center of the sphere. If we name the planes A, B and C, and extend them beyond the bounds of the sphere, they would intersect in such a way that AB, BC and CA were all parallel. In addition, the sections of the sphere described by these planes would all be of the same mass and form, and lines drawn from the center of each plane to the center of the sphere would exist on a common plane and be at angles of 120 degrees with their neighbouring lines.
Unfortunately, throwing this die would generally not produce a result, as it would tend to settle on one of the two remaining curved surfaces.
I found an online tool to compute estimated positions of the 2004 MN4 asteroid according to the known estimates of its orbit. See http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db?name=2004+MN4 .
I ran it backwards in 3-month intervals looking for times that 2004 MN4 has last been near Earth. By this data, there was a very near pass by Earth around April 16-19, 1967.
So I looked through a catalog of lunar launches. The NASA lunar probe Surveyor 3 was launched April 17, 1967.
This alone is not sufficient to prove that 2004 MN4 is a booster from Surveyor 3. (Logic still dictates that the scenario of 2004 MN4 being a threatening asteroid is still a possibility on the table.) But with a coincidence as shown in these numbers, Surveyor 3 must be considered in any investigation into 2004 MN4.
I wonder how many people will go ballistic if this :|
DOES hit earth
I know it's Christmas... You mixed up the radius with the surface of the disc. If they calculated a chance of 1/200, then the disc around Earth the Asteroid passes through should be 200 times earths cross-section. Then R^2 pi/r^2 pi should be 200, so R/r be ca 14 (thank God not 13 -- btw, the number of 233? Sounds like someone might be joking).
If the Asteroid had a significant diameter, then probably that would have to be included; so if it would be Mars-size, then anything in a disc of r_earth + r_mars would be a hit.
I posted this on my personal web site at http://www.kluft.com/~ikluft/opinions/2004mn4-surv eyor3.html . If there are any updates, I'll put them there.
Hm... I think you answered to the wrong post. I was just wondering if one could rule out some orbits, because they would have meant that a collision should already have taken place. I've already seen the cloud, and I suppose most of the uncertainty here comes from the unknown parameters of the asteroid right now. It's just as easy to back-step as forward-stepping and then it would be possible to check if at least a few of the possible orbits would have resulted in a previous collision. A few of the approaches in the page I linked to are almost as close as the one in 2029, if I'm able to interpret the distance numbers correctly.
Ever hear of NEAR-Shoemaker?
We landed a probe on an asteroid, and it transmitted and received data for 16 days. That is MORE than enough time.
We have enough lead time to build a modified version - we swap out the scientific instruments in exchange for a USAF "physics package". All we have to do is land the probe on the asteroid, activate the physics package, and this cosmic party crasher will go away.
for the notice of the new space highway construction posted in the basement toilet under the seat cover? i mean, really, shouldn't we be WATCHING there? gods, i need my towel!
If you don't round, you get 1:42, which might make the HHGG fans happy.
At least the energy (in MT) has gone down from 2210 to 1490.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
to 1 in 42
Or should the USA mount an effort to stop it? I mean Europe has the ESA, China is working on a space program, Japan has a bit of a space program, an of course Russia does as well. You know this may be a good time for the US to not be the worlds Policeman... No the US will try and help if it can.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This guy has done some interesting analysis and I'm hoping he's on to something!
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Impact probablility was updated to be one in 45. Stone diameter was downgraded to 390 meters.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html
yikes
Impact probability has been updated.
Impact Probability: 2.2e-02: 2.200000000% chance of Earth impact or 1 in 45 chance or 97.80000000% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth.
People to worry there is no reason. Do not panic because of nonsense. If this asteroid also will fall, on effect it will be like to Tunguska's meteorite.
Not that we really need any more proof that the US hegemony is a threat to the continuation of a (relatively) peaceful human existance on this planet....seriously, anyone care to stage a coup in America as a service to humanity?
On a serious note, I have a young son who I would rather see grow up in a world that wasn't totally trashed.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I once rolled a 20 on a 20 sided die SIX times in a row! I guess that means that thing is headed straight for me! My advice, evacuate SW Michigan.
BTW - Any good games in this area? Just recently moved to Battle Creek, MI and can't find a good game.
im not worried at all http://space.com/scienceastronomy/asteroid_risk_04 1224.html
here it states
If an asteroid the size of 2004 MN4 hit the Earth, it would do considerable localized or regional damage. It would not cause damage on a global scale.
LOL