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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.
The Machines will have to worry about it.
Well its close enough time to start looting!
Hopefully Bruce Willis will still be around...
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.
...maybe if we all lean to the left...
FLR
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/
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.
We have to wait 24 years ... damn I'll be 54 !!
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.
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.
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".
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!
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
It's a problem of motivating people to non-immediate problems. Like environmental issues, these are not things that engage us now. OTOH terrorism and SARS puts people in an acute panic. With something like asteroids, environmental damage people have to start working on problems now even though there appears to be no good reason to do so.
So getting back to your question, why post about this and why make people aware of a looming future threat? Because hopefully, physicists, mathematicians, and engineers out there realize that this is quite important and might take part in coming up with solutions that could (yes) save earth. And maybe people will make the connection that humans striving for space travel, exploration, and colonization of space is also an activity that can save our ass -- rather than waste precious precious money.
And everyone else can realize, damn, life may well be shorter than we all expect, and be grateful that they and everyone else they know is still alive.
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"
I think what he was getting at was that its already been determined if we'll be hit, we just don't know and can't know the answer yet. We can only judge it to a certain accuracy, giving us a certain probability. In reality though there is a definite answer that we just don't know. However, the grandparent is wrong in that when you get to the quantum level, things really are impossible to figure oout.
Regards,
Steve
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."
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
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.
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
Use the info from this site over here to make your own doomsday scenario with this chunk of happy fun rock.
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.
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.
Am I seeing this right?
It looks like it's up to a 4, now.
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.
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
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....
By the way, it is 36 letters long.
Well, you can figure it out. The impact time is roughly 9:30 UTC which is about noon in Alaska. It's coming from outside the earth's orbit, so whatever is on the other side from Alaska is the target. I make it somewhere between Iraq and India, give or take half a planet.
...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
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 --
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
"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
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.
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.
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 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.