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2004 MN4, Even Higher Probability
phreakuencies writes "Worried since the recent post about the MN4 2004 asteroid, I added a bookmark to its 'impact risk' section at NASA. The asteroid started as having a 1/233 probability of hitting earth. Later it raised to 1/63. Daily computations made on 25 Dec raised its chances up to 1/45. Optimists can now say it has a 97.8% probability of missing earth." And Veteran writes " NeoDys offers the 'Orbfit' software package (source code released under the GPL) which can be used to get a pre-release view of the situation with Asteroid 2004MN4."
The way I see it, we've got about 24 years to party before the world ends. Have another glögg!
Seriously, if it hits 5 or greater on the scale, then we'll have reason to really worry. In the meantime, it's sufficient to just watch and see what happens. As phreakuencies pointed out, right now there's a 97.8% chance of absolutely nothing happening.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Which will come first, 2004 MN4 asteroid, or
Duke Nukem Forever?
At first I thought it says " it has a 97.8% probability of hitting earth"
Good thing i read it over again.
Just to reassure you
http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/impact/
The impact comes out as somewhere between 450MT and 1.6GT, depending on speed and composition
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
Come on, bring on the jokes about Nuke Dukem Forever. :)
'nuff said
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
If this trend continues, expect an impact in another 4629 hours, or about 193 days!
It's going to be one hot summer...
;-)
You know in all those movies where some guy, sometimes just an amateur scientist, sees something in his telescope/seismograph/thermometer/disease-modeling -software that all the high-up professionals miss, and rushes in to warn the government?
That doesn't happen.
So kick back and relax in the knowledge that, even if a global catastrophe is imminent, there's fuck-all you can do about it, except make yourself a quick drink.
The coolest voice ever.
I don't see a conspiracy here, and do think we will be missed, but given how much they hyped previous possible events with less statistical support it is curious they aren't doing follow ups. Could just be that it's Christmas, and things in the science departments are on autopilot.
If this thing stays greater than 1/100 by Monday, expect the papers and television to start picking up on it again. There was a close encounter today with 2004-vw14 (something like 5 lunar orbit distance), and the kooks where on the net prophesizing doom (even though it wasn't all that big a rock). It may take some years to really get a bead on where this thing is going, likely going up and down in probability.
Expect no fewer than a dozen Death-Cults if it stays in double-digit probabilities. Do the Darwin Awards cover Death-Cults?
Letter To Iran
Am I just sick, or do other people find the possibility of this thing hitting to be pretty damn exciting? The chaos, the devestation, the panic, the collapse of all social systems... jeez, that would honestly be one of the coolest (And last) things to ever happen in most of our lives. The timeframe is nice too... many of us that are currently in our late 20's, early 30's will be wiped out before things start going really downhill for us (physically), but we'll have enough time to get a decent bit of fun stuff done too. Bring it on!
I don't respond to AC's.
It's important to note that if the chances of impact are 1 in 45, then the chances that future observations will exclude the possibility impact are 44 in 45.
The two events "asteroid hits us" and "we can never exclude the possibility of it hitting us" are equivalent: the first happens if and only if the second happens. Therefore the two events have the same probability.
So the "don't worry" part of the above sentence is pointless: the second half sentence is a mere reformulation of the first; there is no reassuring "extremely high" probability that future observations will correct the number downward.
Let's get the terminology straight here.
Chance is measured in percent. Probability is measured as a decimal or fraction between 0 and 1, with 1 being 100% certainty. Odds are measured as a ratio such as 1,000,000 to 1.
I, for one, will give 100,000-to-1 odds that the favorite, earth, will survive 2004 MN4. Paypal accepted.
That's not necessarily true. It depends on the characteristics of the error.
If the errors are Gaussian, if the nominal trajectory (i.e. "it misses the Earth by X+/-Y km") is accurate, but imprecise (that is, X is correct, but Y is large compared to X) then the probability of impact will decrease as the precision is improved (i.e. as Y decreases) because the "Earth impact" possibility moves farther out on the fringes of the observation, and the area doesn't shrink fast enough to compensate for this.
Of course, if the errors are flat (all solutions are equally likely - actually, if the PSF falls off slower than the area shrinks) then you're correct. I'm pretty sure that they're Gaussian, or approximately Gaussian, though. So the only way the probability could be increasing is if the nominal trajectory's impact parameter is decreasing - that is, closer impact.
From the last post about this, I went and read up on the whole thing. I went to the beautiful CGI script where you input asteroid size and velocity and all that, and assumed I was 100km from the impact.
I had to up the asteroid size to 1300 metres and a velocity of 14kps of dense rock colliding with porous rock before I could interpret the results as something that would suck for me (2nd degree burns on my body from the fireball).
There would be no major earth effects of such an asteroid hitting Earth, so it said.
Compare these stats against our current fearsome asteroid.
In one thread I saw someone refer to this as possibly a human-extinction event. I have a hard time believing that once I actually bother to go check this out. It'd sure suck for everyone within 100km of the impact site but for everyone else, I guess we'd have about the same effects as a major earthquake to deal with.
fifth sigma, inc.
Yeah, Han and the gang are going to trick Darth into moving the Deathstar right into the path of it. Then the DoD will claim it to be a Two for One event.
Considering the 2004 US Presidential Elections, it'd be pretty damn ironic if it hit Ohio.
Wonder how the Christian fundamentalists in America would spind THAT.
That calculation has a 1 in 1 chance of being wrong.
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
Pfft. Before that can ever happen, I think we all know that the Stargate team would be able to send the asteroid into hyperspace for just a few seconds, coming out on the other side of the planet (and thus missing it).
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
Imagine how much technology boost all the related stuff will receive. If the Moon shot (the pure publicity stunt) generated so much progress, imagine this.
By the time we will know it is going to miss by 500km, we will already have cheap reliable interplanet travel and will be able to melt/mine/whatever the asteroids. Cool.
Dude, Stargate isn't real.
In all seriousness we all know Captain Kirk will find a Klingon bird of pray, fly around the sun to go back in time to get some Wales and snicker bars, then fly out to the asteroid and offer the Snickers bars to the asteroid to get it to not destroy us, while scotty cooks up some wonderful roasted whale to celebrate the saving of the earth.
...we're looking at very little of the sky *at one time*. I don't think it takes much amateur equipment to spot something which would be missed by "normal" study, which usually involved spendning forever looking at one tiny fixed part of the sky to gather enough light/EM to make a clearer picture than the last one (i.e. mapping space).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...but I sort of hope it is found to have a much, much higher likelyhood of hitting earth, so much so that's it's almost certain to occur.
Why? Simply because it would post such a great challenge for humankind. It could well bring much greater cooperation between countries, cooperation of a level presently unheard of.
Certainly, I'm not hoping it actually strikes earth, merely that people work together in order to stop it.
Just be glad that Bush won't be the president at the time. If it did hit, in US soil no less, then he'd start pouring billions per month into NASA for the development of spacecraft to fight the alien 'terrorists' who threw that asteroid at America.
First thing Monday morning, talk to bank about refinancing house with a 25-year balloon mortgage.
Crivens! At least we now know why to welcome our new absinth overlord that day.
"Nae Kin! Nae Quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!"
You know what? I think we need sometime else besides the Torrino scale.
With all those asteroids, it's always the same game: high probability at the start, it goes up or down and after 2 weeks, we've got some numbers that really mean something, but the problem is that during this time, people start freaking out because they would like to hold to some true numbers, not just "probabilities that are bound to change".
So, what we need to communicate with even more weight than those torrino scale numbers is a "measurement progress percentage" and tell everybody "if it's not 100%, don't worry yet". That way, with the always updated percentage number, the masses can reliably hold to something, and know that "progress below 100% means that what we know is not reliable".
Actually, for the current incident, we don't have this number, so I really won't wonder if some people will be freaking out over the next few days.
Astronomers: full exposure it the name of the game! Tell us how long it will take to measure the path, and where you are currently standing!
Thank you.
Pushing it a fraction off course should make the difference depending on where.
Do powerful countries will prefer to do nothing to avert making a mistake that could possibly send the asteroid on their head?
What could possibly do a small country in africa if nobody wants to help them?
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
The ISS is what it's name says, an international space station. Russia is doing the lifting now. US may be more sophisticated, but Russia seems more robust.
The most intelligent scientists in the world? Have you been quizzing them? I was not aware scientists had a ranking system. Thanks for making me smile!
Here some calculations I made via the Earth Impact Effects Program.
My Parameters: Diameter 390m, Density 3000kg/m^3, Impact Velocity 11 km/s, Angle 45 degrees, Distance from Impact 25 km (sounds acceptably close but not "hey, it hit me on the head" close - if you are closer than that... though luck.)
If it hits Rock:
Final Crater Diameter: 4.87 km = 3.02 miles
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 5 seconds. Richter Scale Magnitude: 6.6
But watch for the air blast... Max wind velocity: 186 m/s = 416 mph - Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.
If you are at least 100 km away, you will still feel the earth shake and hear the air blast, but little damage will be done.
To sum it up, sorry, nope, humanity won't get extinct if this one hits us, and you won't be too affected unless you are rather close to it (100km) or if it hits water (Tsunami anyone) and you live nearby on the coast.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
"What's everyone so worked up about? So there's a comet, big deal. It'll burn up in our atmosphere and what's ever left will be no bigger than a Chihuahua's head." - Homer Simpson, 2F11, Bart's Comet
"Me personally think that a hit that would posse good odds of destroying the world would be a great thing for world unity and get the whole planet to work as one to solve the problem, and maybe from that we can learn something."
Ronald Reagan had similar ideas, from what I recall, about the potential unifying power of an invasion of space aliens.
It might make a good script for a B-movie actor like Reagan, but in real life you'd just have destruction and chaos. And maybe not just from the asteroid - people who think they're doomed often behave in a nihilistic manner.
There are numbers besides the Torino scale. The press doesn't use them because they're not as easy to explain. A value of 4 on the Torino scale explicitly means that the public should not be at all concerned or even really aware of the possible impact. It is meant to attract the attention of other astronomers so that more measurements can be done.
As far as a measure of progress, here's a simple one. At 100% progress the probability of impact is either 100% or 0%. Intermediate progress is the width of the window in which the impact might occur. If this window narrows to such a point that it does not include the earth, you get a 0% probability. If the earth is bigger than the entire window, you get a 100% probability. Anything else means there is more work to be done. The rate at which the window narrows will depend on the orbit of the asteroid, but that would give you a rough idea of when you'd be 100% sure.
If you are really curious, the locations and time of every observation that contributes to this is available online. It's interesting to note that more observations were done today than any other day. This is a direct result of the object being identified as an object of interest on the Torino scale.
Not so! Most of the Earth's surface is OCEAN. That means there's a 2/3 probability it will hit the ocean.
Oh, great. Just what we need. Even FEWER blue states. Terrific.
Actually, I read something about knocking the moon out of Earth's orbit, viz "Space 1999", on one of those bad Sci-Fi science sites some time back. In a nutshell, the amount of energy required in a single blast to force the moon out of Earth orbit would infact vaporise it. The article didn't go into great detail about what the knock on effects with the remains would be, although disruption of tides would be a given. Then again, maybe not... If the impact was within a certain energy range then although the moon would be come molten and a large quantity of ejecta would be blasted into space, the vast majority of the mass would, although molten, still maintain its orbit.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
We'll get some real big speakers and broadcast their voice. The accents will be so inscrutable, that we'll confuse the asteroid into reversing its course.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
words and ideas from Stat 101.
What word did I use from Stat 101? PSF (point spread function) is from astronomy. It's what a high-statistics point source looks like on a CCD.
All the other words and ideas are just from error propagation. That's from my undergrad physics lab.
But in reality, you have no idea what models were used to calculate the estimates
It's on the page. 99% of the uncertainty is within 3 sigma. No extended tails, which means it falls off fast enough that you can say that yes, the solution is pulling towards "Earth collision."
Exactly. Nudging it by a tiny fraction of a mile per hour with 20 years to go will make it clear Earth easily. 1 mph is more than enough with only 1 year to go. Actually, 1/2 mph is more than enough with 1 year to go, assuming you force it to go in the direction closest to missing the Earth, which is to say, nudge it max of half the diameter of the Earth in 1 year.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There's a potentially big (pun not intended) downside to using a nuclear warhead: it could break the asteroid into smaller pieces, and the "shotgun impact" from a broken asteroid could actually be more devastating than a single impact.
:) ) mining this asteroid after it arrives at the L1 zone.
A better solution is to assemble an large ion rocket in space, then dock it with the asteroid maybe in 2025. Fire off the ion rocket to run for maybe 30-40 days non-stop, and it may change the orbit of the asteroid enough so it misses the Earth at a relative safe range. Maybe by then we'll have even better ion rockets, and the possibility exists we might even slow down the asteroid enough to place it in the L1 zone between the Earth and the Moon. Given the fact that asteroids have very high quality mineral content, someone could make a financial killing (pun not intended
Kerry got the second most, ever. More population means more of everything.
It's like when they trot out the old, "Home ownership is at the highest level..." when the economy is so weak they can't drum up any other stat.
They did that this time around.
"Impact Probability
The probability that the tabulated impact will occur. The probability computation is complex and depends on a number of assumptions that are difficult to verify. For these reasons the stated probability can easily be inaccurate by a factor of a few, and occasionally by a factor of ten or more."
What they don't say is whether the inaccuracy means more or less risk - or both. I assume on either side.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You have just been hoaxed I bellieve.
Just look at the URL closely. this has got to be a joke on slashdot.
neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ip?1replace the 1 with whatever you like and voila, instant impact probabilty to scare your freinds with.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
An s-type consists of nickel, iron, and magnesium - and an m-type - oh, my - what a motherlode one of those would be!
We can't do anything with materials in orbit right now because we don't have any materials in orbit right now.
We don't lack for methods of microgee refining (many experiments have been conducted) but we do lack for machines that have been designed to do it... currently.
With a sufficently large supply of raw materials we can substitute brute force what we currently do via expensive materials currently lifted to orbit - radiation shielding and structual materials, for example. Certainly many key components of a space station would continue to be needed to manufacture on earth, but the bulk structural materials of the ISS could be fashioned in space using in-situ materials - if we had those materials.
Imagine how much faster our space presence would grow if we didn't have to ferry up food and oxygen, just people and advanced devices.
Setting up a whole manufacturing industry in space is a long term investment, and I agree that few would make such an investment... but with the potential payoff in trillions, some will.
Lastly the cost of sending things down is a lot cheaper than sending things up, but you are probably right - most materials we make in space will stay in space.
check it out here.
that must be the lamest cgi script i've seen in my life...
Assuming that the thing hits us, we have LOTS more to worry about than only whether we personally get 2nd degree burns from the core fireball. Even if it hits on land, there will be a fairly wide zone of ejecta debris (hot rock) falling, starting fires, etc. If it hits in the ocean, it will be MUCH worse -- think colossal tsunami, as in several hundred feet. 1500 megatons is not the end of the world, but it is nothing to sneeze at.
If we are lucky enough to have it hit in a very sparsely populated land mass, then we have a big fireworks day, and some lingering weather effects (very red sunsets for years, and a cool decade). That is too much to hope for.
Realistically, whether it hits populated land or ocean, it is a mess. Although you may personally escape the impact or tsunami damage, no one will escape the economic damage, which will take years to recover.
Where will it hit? The time will be 9:21PM in London. It is coming at the earth from "behind" in its orbit. So, a 'direct hit' would be on the equator somewhere along the terminator (day/night line). Of course we don't know enough about the orbit to even know if it will hit, so there is as yet no way to tell where it will hit. Roughly any time zone from about GMT+8 to GMT-3 is at risk.
I'm currently choosing to be an optimist, even assuming that more certain observations confirm this to be on a collision course. My hope is that the global nature of the economic disaster will cause the nations of the world to fund a successful deflection mission, which will be cause for great celebration on that particular Friday the 13th.
"Wonder if it will ease the pain if I tell you that I think most of the citizens of USA is totally okay, perhaps a little too uneducated about the rest of the world, but nobody is perfect."
This is a myth that is caused by the fact that just about everyone knows who the leader of the US is or what the government of the US is doing but most citizens of the US do not know who the leader of there government is. Do you know the name of the president of Mexico, Peru, or the Prime Minister of Australia is? Most educated US citizens know that Tony Blair is the prime minister of the UK and a few other countries leaders. Your right that for the most part the people of the US really do not care who is running other countries. They feel that it is none of our business.
As far as the Nordic countries yea I know that Sweden is one of them as is Norway, and Finland. But to put it in perspective there are more people in several states than in the country of Sweden. Do you know the cultural difference between say Florida, Idaho, Texas, and Maine are? They are very different places and the people while all US citizens are also very different. Most people in the US do not even know how diverse the US is because they do not travel as much as I do. Of course even those differences are being crushed by the media. Yes the same Americanization that people around the world talk about is not really Americanization as much as Californiacation or New Yorkerizing.
I find it funny that people in Europe think the know and understand the US when they really have no clue. The US was isolationist for most of it's history. The problem with that is the people in Europe kept dragging the US into Wars. After WWII the US could not let it happen again so it ended it's isolation policy and pretty much funded the rebuilding of modern Europe and Japan. Then the US spent huge sums of money and time trying to protect Europe until it could stand on it's own again. I think most people in the US see many of the nations of Europe as whining, selfish, and petty. They care more for comfort than for other peoples lives.
This threat is a good example. Most US citizens on the board are thinking "How can Nasa deflect it". While most of the Europeans are thinking "Will America deflect it or let some other country get whacked?". I see no one talking about the ESA spending lots of money to launch a mission. Kind of like Yugoslavia. That blood bath was happening in the EU's back yard but they did nothing to stop it until the US came in and did the heavy lifting. Same thing in Africa. Yea the US foreign policy often causes the US problems. That is because at least we will try to help. And some of the policies that many people in Europe thought where bad plans worked out well. Like moving Persing and Tomahawk missiles into Europe to counter the USSR,s IRBMS. The USSR removed their missiles and their short rang missiles as well. Oh how the Europeans wailed when we did that yet it ended up removing a major threat to them. What gets me about Iraq is everyone seems to forge that Saddam DID HAVE weapons of mass destruction. He did have chemical weapons, he was trying to get Nukes, and he was developing Bio weapons. He did throw out the UN inspectors and that Russia told the US that he was back at it. Frankly I am not a great fan of GW but these are facts and with those I can not honestly say I blame him for going in after 9/11. What it looks like is even Saddam thought he was building WMDs but his own people where feeding false info to him to save their own skins.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The other two Off the top of my head are Germany and holland. Based in the simularity of language.
Gee I guess you are so much more enlightend than americans since you classify Texas as a state of gun carrying red necks. Not superfical at all. And I am sure that summery of one state that just happens to have roughly 3 times the total number of people as the country of Sweden is complete accurate.
THe Marshall plan was very helpful to just about every country in Europe exprobably the Swiss and Sweden. They both where "neutral" during WWII.
No comment on the EU's failure to do anything in Yugoslavia? No comment on the INF treaty? No comment on the EU doing nothing in Africa. Frankly you are right that most of the population of the US could know more about the rest of the world but the rest of the world thinks they know and understand a lot more about the US than they really do. There knowlege is every bit as shallow and superfical as they think the average US citizen's is.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Perhaps the merkins should be a bit less insular, pay more attention and show more respect to the rest of the world so that there is an incentive for the rest of the world to learn more about you guys."
Good heavens. I guess the fact that after WWII that the US rebuilt their enemies nations and restored their independence. The US helped to form Nato and the UN. As far as respect the US does not treat other nations as less breeds as did the English. The "rest" of the world better get a grip on the fact that the US is no longer a young nation. The US is the senior statesman and has learned that sitting back does not bring peace but far worse wars. If all of Europe stood up to Hitler than Dresden would not have happened. BTW Dresden was not the US but the RAF's attack. The US was not into firebombing in Europe. Dresden was a European attack on Europeans. I thought that one of the European pet peeves was that us poor Americans don't know history? The UN are peace keepers and do not go into combat situations for the most part. The US has unfortunately has had to take on the role of peacemakers using force. Of course we have also seceded many times. The Suez, the Egypt/Israel peace accords, the START agreement,the INF, and yes even NATO. Perhaps if you and a lot of other Europeans would look at the US for themselves instead what they see on TV the movies and your own slanted media you might find that the US does tend to act with a reason. BTW the poulation of Texas is over 22 million so as I said roughly three times the size of Sweden.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.