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2004 MN4 Asteroid Odds Inching Up Again
bfwebster writes "The latest update from NASA now gives 2004 MN4 a 1-in-37 chance (probability of 2.7%) of hitting Earth on April 13, 2029. That's a bump up from the 1-in-46 (2.2%) odds given this weekend and almost a 10x increase in probability from the original 1-in-300 odds announced late last week. Interesting times, indeed."
Would this be Friday the 13th?
Sure enough, April 13, 2029 is a Friday.
Maybe that old superstition was a premonition instead...
Have you read my blog lately?
How long does it have to be observed before we know whether it will hit or not? Will a year of observation give us certainty? The Torino scale is a bit strange, given the way that it combines chance of impact, time until impact, and severity of impact. I would think that a three dimensional scale would be more useful.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Google news's collation of the worldwide media's coverage of this story seams to show that the mainstream serious media is ignoring this story.
UK Laptops
Ok, we now know the probability of the object hitting the earth. What is the possibility of the object hitting the moon?
What impact will the earth have if the object hits the moon?
I can only wonder how high that percentage has to go before we start making plans on how to avoid the posible impact.
Sadly, in the end it will all come down to politics. The president (any president of any country with enough power to do something about this) will want to have certainty before taking the risk of being labeled the greatest hero or the greatest fool in history. And I am not even taking international politics into account.
I guess that it all depends on how high we value life itself.
Cheers,
Adolfo
Did anyone notice that a few years after the 2.7 probability pass, there is a 9.4 impact probability. that seems to be more noteworthy
--alop
The server's name is apparently Neo. Can it save us? I doubt it since it already took the red pill.
Someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure by the name that this is the 16 foot (5 m) rock that passed inside the moons orbit last week. That's large enough, if I remember correctly, to hit the ground if it doesn't break up, but too small to do anything more than very localized damage. If someone really wants to get Karma points, they'll post a link to the asteroid simulator page so we can all go throw a 16 foot rock at the earth and find out how much the climate is affected.
It will be intereresting to see what happens on the political front, if it is eventually determined that this thing will hit earth.
At 300m across, it is small enough to be nuked out of harm's way. And fortunately, we still have a lot of time on our side to plan and fly a mission to blast it to rubble, or at least into a different trajectory. But this would mean at least temporarily revoking some treaties regarding nuclear detonations in space. And how will the bill be divided up? What happens if is eventually determined that this thing will land in central Asia or Africa - will unaffected countries still be willing to pick up the tab?
Looks like we will need to develop some sort of (funded) international contingency plan to deal with dangers from space, even if it is eventually determined this particular rock will miss us.
My rights don't need management.
but it does raise the issue of needing more money put into research and defense in case an asteriod is found
Does anyone get the idea that someone could possibly be playing with the numbers to get funding for someone's pet project? I put a certain level of trust in NASA and I don't think the current data is necessarily inaccurate, but the thought did cross my mind. What do Slashdotters think?
What is your penile percentile?
We will have all killed each other by then, anyway.
This does bring up an interesting issue, though. What if humans knew 20 years in advance that there was a near 100% chance of complete obliteration by an asteriod? (Yes, I know it would be unlikely to know with such certainty, but that's not the point.) How exactly would society react?
I'm sure many would panic, even though the event was 20 years out, maybe some would commit suicide eventually, and a lot of brain power would be directed towards preventing this disaster. But how would things like personal relationships, international relations, and everyday life and social norms be affected? For example, would people be looked down upon for bringing children into this world? Would warring nations of people put aside their differences and work together or just continue on as usual?
Obviously a lot of questions, none of which I know the answers to. Just trying to trigger some more interesting thoughts and discussion than, "Oh my God, we're all going to die!"
Ocean would probably be worse. If it landed in the ocean, it would probably be like yesterday's unpleasantness with a great many people killed by tsunami. Landing on land, it would just make a big boom and put a lot of dirt into the air, unless it happened to land in a populated area. Worst case is a city, of course, but that's not likely.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I don't see the original author having posted it yet, so here's a link to an interesting theory regarding the possibility that what we're looking at is in fact just the upper stage of a rocket launched some time ago.
~Lake
Well, since those pieces of paper with dead presidents printed on them are no longer backed by anything in particular, the only way they're worth anything now is by consensus. How much good they'd be after the big rock hits would depend on whether or not the survivors decided to agree that they're still worth something. And the habit of agreeing that they're worth something is pretty well ingrained.
Almost certainly, it would depend on whether the governments that printed the little pieces of paper survived the disaster. Which they probably would, for the simple reason that governments are very, very good at ensuring their own survival.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Except that if Earth's surface was completely destroyed, there would be nothing for us to purchase with our precious money, whether we believe it to have value or not.
Well, yeah, if you're talking about a planet-killer, that's different -- I suspect that in the months before impact, we'd see a period of hyperinflation followed by economic and political breakdown, leading eventually to anarchy. (Me, I'm for hiding away with a few good friends and a bunch of booze.) Whether the rich people could get off the planet -- assuming, of course, that the technological capacity existed; it certainly doesn't now -- would probably depend on how many guns they had stockpiled. But I was thinking more something like a Chicxulub, which would certainly kill a hell of a lot of people, but probably wouldn't mean the end of the human race, and maybe not even civilization, after a fashion.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
American roulette wheels have 2 greens. There are a few tables here in Vegas that have single green, and the smart roulette player (oxymoron) will take a few minutes to find that table. Most of the big Strip casinos don't carry them, or may have one, tucked away somewhere. The off-Strip casinos are a bit more open with their roulette wheels, or placement of low-minimum blackjack tables (try finding a $5 table at one of the big Strip casinos after 5PM).
Even if the energy released in 2004-MN4's impact were roughly equal to the energy released in the recent earthquake, I seriously doubt that the effects could be considered comparable. For one thing, ALL of the asteroid's energy will be released in one gigantic explosion when it enters the atmosphere and hits the surface (either land or sea), concentrated in a relatively small area. But the earthquake's energy was released along a huge (700 miles long) segment of the undersea fault, which almost certainly dampened the effects of the quake. Not to mention that quakes typically take place at least several kilometers underground...
(IANAGOP -- I Am Not A Geologist Or Physicist. But I am using what I think to be logical deductions based on what little I know.)
I don't think it's so easy. While you are right that in deep water, the energy of the earthquake was distributed across a very long wave with a very low amplitude (i.e. big wavelength, sic), the shallower shore acted as a kind of "lense", concentrating the energy to a smaller area (shorter wavelength, higher amplitude).
I assume an asteroid might cause waves with shorter wavelengths even in deep water, but OTOH there'd be not such a "lense effect".
In the end, the product of amplitude, wavelength and the square of the speed of the wavefront determines the energy, so waves being taller in deep water does not mean they'll be more destructive when hitting the shore - i.e. the earthquake causes the whole of the sea to "move", while an asteroid might mainly impact the surface.
Since at around 800 km/h, wind resistance is a real factor, higher waves might even be considerably dampened on their way through the sea.
...should the odds look grim and there's only x-small amount of seats off planet, I would wager it's the guys with the biggest guns and the willingness to use them who would get off planet, and I doubt they would let any civilian politicians or generic stupid random rich farts go for a ride either, they would tell them to fudge off. To get loyalty from their other troops, they would hold a lottery for the last few seats, to insure no counter revolts, with winners only announced at the last second. Maybe.
Even then it might not occur, jealous other military forces might attack with such force that no one gets off the planet at all. And by 2029 I *doubt* we will have much of a space launch ability anyway, I think a thousand all at once would be pushing it. I've weatched the space race since going outside and staring up trying to see sputnik, and frankly, it ain't all that far along compared to what I thought would happen way back then. and even with rutans and virgin airlines help, it still won't be that much further along in the 20's unless there's some sort of dramatic breakthrough to replace chemical reaction rocket engines. They are just too expensive for huge mass production, require a lot of people to get a few people off the ground and lots of work. And you'd still have the problem of how would you get the ground crew to cooperate? Like stated, what good is money. Now, maybe large balloons, or blimps might be sufficient, not sure, but it would be worth a try and a heck of a lot cheaper to mass produce..I bet mass prouction you can make decent Model T blimps for the price of a car. Add in some groceries and grog, good to go for a week of floating above the destruction. Earth quakes and Tsuanmis you could fly over and float around for awhile until things settled down. Even if the winds blow ya around, so what, let em. strap in.
That might be more doable on a somewhat larger scale than just 1,000 people. You would think after a few days it would be enough settled to reland someplace.
Me,with a big ole asteroid coming in, and say no blimp or rocket, naked barbecue! Dead mans dinner, surf and turf! Well,proly wear a grease spatter apron, got to be practical about these things. Then kick back in the lawn chairs and watch the show! Hmm, maybe loot a bank and play monopoly with real money and deeds to properties waiting for it to show up. sort of like new years eve countdown.
Ya, ya, I know, you young guys all thinking the same thing, "hang out with the ole lady ya tarded fool, get you a bunch..."..Sure,sure, sure, sure, but get that out of the way the week before the show. I mean, you can get lucky anytime, how often do you get to see a PLANET SMASHER hit? We are geeks, some things are just *important*.
Anyway, that one is too small, need a much larger one for a good fireworks show. The Mayans claim no history past 2012 anyway, something like that I was reading.
Looks like the odds have changed again. Down to 1 in 56,000 - It's even a zero on the torino scale now. Check it out here.
Yeah, but the date (April 13, 2029, IIRC) is totally gone. So it was almost going to hit, but now it's so far away on that date that it doesn't even warrant mention? Either somebody goofed (either the earlier or later calculations), or ... what?
Is this A) Government trying to keep it secret so they can cause less panic ? B) Simple mistake C) NASA cover up so they can relocate everything and save millions and be the only survivors. Not A as the government CAUSES panic, not dampens it... Not B as a mistake from 1 in 37 probabilty to now 1 in 56,000 is not exactly in the margin of errors that people would expect a government agency to be within. :o /me covers private parts with aluminum foil
Interestingly enough, the first observation has been lowered to March, instead of June, and the total number of observations is down to 118 from around 170.
This seems to mean they identified this object in old shots from March and from that data could eliminate quite a lot. This is confirmed in your source. BUT, it also seems to mean that they in the process threw out 50 observations as faulty?! Some kind of later explanation of this lowered total number would surely be interesting. Was the wrong celestial body observed by some people? Or is the identification of the object in March more certain than a lot of more recent observations? Any insights?