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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."
Ladies and gentlemen, may i present the new Slashdot soap opera: Asteroid 2004 MN4!!! That's right -- we have ourselves a new SCO! Watch out, for soon, it'll be demanding $699 license fees from all of you!
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Or, if you prefer, they are now at 1 in 1,000,000.
This edition of Fun With URLs has been brought to you courtesy of an overly trusting NASA webmaster.
Will Bruce Willis even by alive by then?
Play Command HQ online
24 more years to try and get laid.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
When can we start the looting?
Would this be Friday the 13th?
That's right, Hot Fudge Sundae arrives on a Friday...
A dingo ate my sig...
Yes, April 13, 2029 is a Friday.
John.
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!
On the bright side, this does solve the 2038 rollover of the 32-bit time_t.
Have you read my blog lately?
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?
due to your EXCELLENT math skills.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Asteroid insurance anyone?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
How long do we have to wait for this
Hi
I am Prince Okabaoakauu of of the microbial strain found on Asteroid Mn4. We control the motion of our asteroid and can divert it safely if the earthlings wish so. However we are not sure if the earthlings(a.k.a. you) want a collision or not. Hence to help us decide , please forward this mail to 12 people within 1 hour of receiving the mail if you do not want a collision. You will also get a free mobile phone and 2 Ipods. If you do NOT immediately forward this email we will assume that you want the collision.
Thanks
I JUST RECVD THIS MAIL, PLS FWD IT TO ALL UR FRIENDS
Just because the probability keeps going up, it doesn't mean that we are getting increasingly sure that the asteroid will hit Earth. Suppose that the asteroid were going to come close to Earth without hitting it. At first, the impact probability would appear low since the "window" of orbits allowed from the data would be wide. As we got better observations, however, this window would shrink, but the Earth would stay inside it since it's near the center. Thus, for a time the probability of impact would go up, since the Earth would take up a greater percentage of the window. Eventually, though, the window would shrink past the Earth and the probability would go down again.
I suspect that this is what will happen. Could easily be wrong, though.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Crazy, I was just checking my bookmark on this when the slashdot article popped up. Anyways..
Here is the wikipedia page explaining the Torino Scale. I still wouldn't worry about it until the thing hit at least a 8 or so. The article gives a nice explanation of what astronomers would do in warning the governments in the event they thought this thing deserved any real attention.
Torino ScaleTry not to let life get in the way of living.
Try a tsunami about 500x times bigger almost a mile high traveling 20 miles inland destroying everything in its site.
Keep in mind 90% of the population lives within 100 miles of the coast.
Devestating indeed.
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See, I think that there's a difference and a gift in disguise here.
The reason why we don't have a system to deflect asteroids right now is because asteroids are one of those things that "could happen" in the far off future.
It's like smoking. It's not guaranteed to kill you, and nobody drops dead after a single puff. Some smokers live really long lives. So smoking is viewed as something that's "bad for you", not an instant death sentence.
Therefore, we've got a lot of people who smoke in the world.
However, pulling out a shotgun, pointing it at your face, and pulling the trigger is unquestionably lethal.
Therefore, the only people who do that are people who really want to die.
The difference is that we don't always think about things that *might* cause harm, but we always think about things that *will* cause harm.
This is just one of the many ways that the human brain is a little screwed up about risk management. It worked when we were on the plains of Africa and needed to evade predators and manage to survive, but it doesn't necessarily hold up now.
Now, the blessing in disguize is that a quarter century is very much long enough to figure out what to do. Remember, we've got more than enough knowlege to do it -- computers to plot trajectories, a variety of tested and untested propulsion and power systems, techniques, etc. In the quarter of a century timespan, we may just need to paint one side white to provide the push. So, in some sense, it's even easier than trying to go from nothing to the moon landing.
But what we lack, like most things in space, is a feeling of urgency to really do something about it. Thus, this is a blessing in disguize. If they give it a decent possibility of really hitting Earth, 25 years in the future, we've got time to do something about it in ways that if they said that it'll probably hit tomorrow we won't.
Same way I know several folk who, when their doctors told them that they were going to be dead in x years if they didn't quit smoking, were able to go cold turkey.
Gentoo Sucks