Slashdot Mirror
2004 MN4 Probably Won't Kill Us
Xshare writes "It's now official. NASA's Near Earth Objects page lists 2004 MN4, the asteroid that's been covered on slashdot recently, as having a 1 in 56,000 chance of hitting earth, and even then only in 2037. It seems that earth was near the edge of the cone of probability of when it could go. As the cone kept closing, the probability of hitting earth grew, but it kept getting closer to the edge. It's now outside the cone, and we can be safe."
Now how will I justify my unwillingness to accomplish anything in life.
I already ordered the T-Shirt!
Stop the world; I need to get off.
... the sky is not falling. Your choice.
will we be killed by more hype tidal waves or even microwaves from outer space? (Simcity)
...wants us to think we are going to die by an asteroid don't they? They can't make up their minds to decide if and when we die. Should we call them our gods? :D
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
That is the cumulative impact probability. The probability of impact in 2037 is actually 1 in 526,316,000 chance. The more likely one is in 2044 and that is 1 in 83,000 chance.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Stop it I am about to become diabetic.
That means it will make us stronger.
... maybe it'll hit us anyway. NASA is looking at whether the metric or imperial systems was used all along the calculations. Stay tuned...
Posted by timothy on Monday December 27, @07:44PM
Future dated stories now?
Or am I just an insensitive clod in the eastern time zone...
I wasn't exactly looking forward to the 30+ years of tossing and turning in bed at night.
instead i'll toss and turn over what the prez is doing to the economy
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I can cancel my bomb shelter purchase now...
:\
It was gonna be a first if I didn't hit reply so quick
Is this whole thing a fake, like the Christmas lights?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
i hate you
Not true at all. If you even bothered to RTFA, you'd understand. Not to mention that the slashdot submitters actually used TFA from NASA. :-0
We really need something like this to justify our space program to the masses and to wake people up. There is more to life then just cheeseburgers and scoring that awsome IT job.
Human destiny lies with the stars, simply because eventually the Planet Earth will no longer be able to support human life, soon then later at our current population and resource expenditure.
On a long enough timeline, survival probability always drops to zero...
In three days this has gone from 1/233 chance, to 1/45, to 1/56,000. How can there be so wide of a spread over such a small time interval if the method being used to estimate this is at all reliable? I could see how small trajectory changes in the asteroid would vary the predictions a lot if it were closer, but this is still 30+ years away.
What's to say tomorrow won't be 1/1? How is this latest measurement the final word that there is no threat?
Now my bet is useless! I was sure we'd all die and I'd become rich beyond my wildest dreams!
I like muppets.
Slashdot has editors? Who knew...
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Between the Mayan calendar, the Unix epoch, and now this, I don't see how any of us will make it to 2040 alive.
Slashdot editors didn't even bother to fix my typo. s/when/where .
Heh, they didn't even bother to capitalize Slashdot in your submission. Shows just how much they care.
or maybe you could read the damn article.. hell the little description on /.
"It seems that earth was near the edge of the cone of probability of when it could go. As the cone kept closing, the probability of hitting earth grew, but it kept getting closer to the edge. It's now outside the cone, and we can be safe."
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
I noticed that the number of observations dropped from 176 to 118 and the number of days increased from 196 to 287 in just a couple hours. Something smell fishy or they found more data and removed a bunch more!
----
Quote:
So how exactly did we go from a 1 in 37 chance to a 1 in 56000 chance in a few hours? My guess is that slashdot submitters was posting meaningless statistics and editors were letting them through in order to sensationalize the issue.
----
Not true - I looked at the NASA website a few hours ago and the probability was indeed listed at 2.7%
However, I am also interested in how we went from 1/37 to 1/56000 in a few hours.
Do I get Billy Bob Thornton to bite his nails while Liv Tyler "comforts" me in my last moments or not?
Come on, Bruce Willis' life and hot elfin love are on the line here!
Anyone else wondering if this is more damage control then the truth? It's not good to have the world thinking it will die in 24 years.
It's very difficult to go "We'll fine you £100" when they arn't going to live much longer..
I like muppets.
Then why is there a round shadow surrounding my house getting bigger and bigger and... [CONNECTION LOST]
Unknown host pong.
The odds are still not good! The chances of someone winning the lottery is like 1 in a few million/billion! Yet there's almost always a winner! OMG WE'RE GONNA DIE!!!
that's what they's like you to believe. Don't be fooled; 2004 MN4 is coming and it's going to kill you and your little dog too.
Anyone want to come up with a semi convincing conspiracy theory? No? Even a mildly possible one?
Chicken Little? Is that you?
That would have solved the Social Security solvency problem.
So how exactly did we go from a 1 in 37 chance to a 1 in 56000 chance in a few hours? My guess is that slashdot submitters was posting meaningless statistics and editors were letting them through in order to sensationalize the issue.
Too bad you'd be guessing wrong. NASA's information page on 2004 MN4 has been continuously updated throughout the weekend. Just a few hours ago, based on certain observations, it was concluded that the probability was 1/37. After further calculations and observations, the trajectory of the asteroid was plotted with enough confidence to warrant a reevaluation of the impact probabilities. Hence, we now see a 1/56,000 chance. It's all right there on NASA's page. Nothing sensationalistic about it.
How'd we get arrive at those probabilities within a matter of hours? Read the article summary. It does a good job of explaining it.
That's just what they want you to think. Get your astroid insurance here!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You can do one of two things:
Trust the math
Do the math
I only briefly considered it but enough that I trust the math. It's not that the estimates are unreliable, it's that the estimates are only as reliable as the measurements made, and as the measurements become increasingly accurate in number and value, so too the estimate.
So the first estimate was made with a small number of measurements: The theoretical 'circle' of probability was large and intersected quite well with the Earth. As more measurements are made, the probability circle gets smaller, but because the size of the Earth doesn't shrink the chance of impact go up; more of the volume of the probability circle coincides with the Earth.
Then as even more measurements are made the circle grows ever smaller until it is small enough that only the edge of the circle is now overlapping the Earth, and thus the chance of impact goes down.
GPL Deconstructed
I was just looking at the google cache of that page and there are loads more instances (including the 2029). Do they remove the ones too unlikely to happen once they get better measurements? (Or insert conspiracy theory here)
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Gosh - I looked everywhere on Google News and practically every mainstream source said just about nothing about this story! Why could that be?
(and, even weirder, the ones that -do- mention it are dated days ago and talk abut an "actually miniscule probability". can't they read?!)
I guess I'll just have to turn to Slashdot for all my eschatological news.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
...but if we all submit to biometric ID cards, sub-dermal RFID chips and CCTV in every home, then Earth can't be hit by asteroids right?
I mean - we all know that it's terrorists launching asteroids at the Earth.
OMGWTFBBQ!!1 *splat*
To hit us, I believe that if it is on course to hit us, it will be eaten by a small dog from different Universe that is larger than our entire Universe because as improbable things go this is quite possible.
Everyone had to know this wasn't going to happen. I don't know which asteroid it *will* be, when it does hit, but the day will be Dec. 21, 2012. Duh.
See my post for an idea of how the math works.
The best way to visualize it: Imagine a dot on the ground. Cast a shadow on it from your hand. That shadow is the probable area where the future asteroid would be. As measurements become more accurate you would move your hand closer and closer to the ground. The probability goes up because the area of the shadow becomes smaller while the size of the dot on the ground (the Earth) remains the same. As the shadow continues shrinking then the probability of impact continues to go up until your hand gets so close to the ground that your hand touches (or misses) the dot..
At that point the shadow is either on the dot (impact) or it is off the dot (miss) and right now the shadow is off the dot (miss).
GPL Deconstructed
See the pictures on the official Nasa sites.
Probability: 1.8%...
No, seriously: I just like the impact probability page at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ip?; put an arbitrary number and link it as an official and validated probability to your /. posts.
NEODyS says over 200 observations came in in the last five days alone. What's going on here? Anyone from NEO/JPL want to enlighten us?
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-e61dbc532f-3b92f7 5b09-3d33154d70
So, you mean I *shouldn't* start to live a life of debauchery and fornication, knowing that life now has no meaning and no future?
Sex and drugs and party, party, party are right out, you say?
Ah, well, hmmm... Yes, well then, I'll be going now. Never mind all that. I'll clean it up later, thanks.
Would someone call my doctor for me please? I seem to have developed a little rash from last night...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I was about to kill my wife!
Wondering why i am doing so strange posts? I am trying to get a "+5,Flamebait" or "-1,Insightful" rating.
its all a mass conspiracy to herd us like sheep - you can't have the sheep scared now can you? :)
... until tomorrow, when the ywill change the status yet again.
Nothing to see here... move along.
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
January 19, 2038 the date when 32 bit time runs out or is that overflows?
I think we're doomed and the feds are censoring so we wont go ape-sh*t. Definite conspiracy going here!
Disney has a movie coming out "Chicken Little" and all this press about an asteroid? Diseny has grown so powerful it controls the universe! Kinda comforting, since killing all of us off would be bad for business.
Spaceguard, using the information that was already available, did a "prediscovery" of the asteroid dating back to March of this year. Because it was from so long ago, it gave them a better "baseline" on which to judge the orbit. With the upgraded data, they were able to eliminate any possibility of danger to the Earth from 2004 MN4.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
At least we can hope these two don't do a remake that year. That would save the planet from one disaster. Of course, that potential disaster probably wouldn't actually kill anyone. It would be more likely to make hundreds of thousands of people sick.
I am sure the Earth will eventually suffer a devastating blow, again, via cosmic forces at work, sooner or later. I just hope it is later, much later. Like after my kid's college bills are paid and stuff.
* or double your money back.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
DAMMIT! >_<
[o]_O
NASA predicts an increasing chance of utter doom or at least an increasing chance of some rock chunk hitting some guy in Idaho's corn field(Yes I know they never said anything about it hitting Idaho) and then five hours later takes it back? Jeez! You know these modern day doom predictors are no fun anymore! At least when Nostradamus was wrong he still stood by the predictions until nothing happened! I mean what happened to swelling of hope?
Make sure you use a lamp for this experiment instead of sunlight. The shadow won't change size if sunlight is used.
Shit, now I gotta continue hacking that hyper-virus DNA and thats gonna take forever. Dammit, Dammit, Dammit.
"...and we can be safe."
That end should have been:
"...and we can be safe, probably. Maybe. Perhaps. Or not. But possibly. Who knows. Until the next article."
They have confirmed the probability of hit to be 100% and don't want us to know! (* puts on a tin foil covered kevlar helmet *) You better not cancel your bomb shelter!
-ItsME
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ip?1.8e-1
I don't know if there is enough tin foil to save us all....
Save the Music; Save the World at http://www.TuneTriever.com (Our latest Android game)
Oh well, guess we'll have to find another excuse to sing
"Super comet fragment impact extra-large explosions"
Oh well, it's a damn asteroid anyways.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
ripped from imdb
Lloyd Christmas: What are the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me... ending up together?
Mary Swanson: Not good.
Lloyd Christmas: Not good like one in a hundred?
Mary Swanson: I'd say more like one in a million.
Lloyd Christmas: So you're telling me there's a chance?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
It worked. Damn am I tired...
My only chance of getting laid, gone! What? 1 in 56000 odds? I'm back in the game!
Hooray! The outsourcing problem will be fixed in 2037.
What's interesting is that the new analysis seems to come not from many new observations in the past few hours, but rather previously undiscovered historical observations.
Back when the impact probability was 1 in 45, the NASA NEO page said it was deduced from 169 observations, from as early as June 19. Now the most recent verdict of no impact consideres only 118 observations, but from as early as March 15.
So not only were earlier, unused observations now taken into account, but the total number of data points decreased considerably.
I wonder what happened. This is quite different from how I would have expected the analysis to evolve.
It was the effect of that 9.0 earthquake. Its changed our orbit and rotation.
rewriting history since 2109
This post is complete bullshit. Whoever modded it up is an idiot. The supplied link has an article written in 2001. I highly doubt that it has any speculation about results pulled the other day.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
As the cone kept closing, the probability of hitting earth grew, but it kept getting closer to the edge.
This tells us nothing, since it is true of every point inside the cone as it closes.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
So Wormwood won't hit in 2029...so that delays Armageddon a little. Well, more time to repent I guess.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
So what is the probability of the earth being hit by this "cone"?
Sorry to be posting to this story so late, but I was out looting in the general mayhem from the last announcement.
So, etiquette question. Now that I know the odds are about NIL of total annihilation in 2038, do I have to stop looting now?
fifth sigma, inc.
Why isn't there a "-1, Gratuitous Gigli Reference" mod?
does anyone else feel disappointed?
Wohoo! I almost thought I should to go and LIVE now...
Thank god for endless life. Until next shaker.
You should have read the article, but since you didn't, I'll quote the relevant bits here:
... ... ... ...
" Information leading to an impact prediction
" should be transmitted for confidential review
" before any announcement
" be made public via
" the World Wide Web.
Do you get it now?
But did they take into account the changes to Earth's orbit due to the massive earth quake?.
As another poster noted, you can check the math yourself if you like. However, you can understand the fundimentals behind it without getting into math.
Basically what happens with this is we do not know the motion of any of these objects precisely. We do not precisely know their position, or velocity. So, we take what we know to the accuracy that we know it, and extrapolate a cone of possible paths. This is quite large when you deal with something in solar distances.
Now the motion of the Earth is known quite well. So, you plug in the possible paths of the asteriod, the predicted locations of the Earth, you get possible impact points. These are only as good as the measurements of the motion of the asteriod and the precision of the calculations. This isn't simple, ideal newtonian motion where the asteroid travels in a perfectly straight line, gravity of the planets, the sun, etc all play a part as well as many other factors.
So once an asteroid is intersting to look at (meaning it is heading in a direction that could possibly result in Earth impact) NASA starts working on refined measurements of it's motion, mass, and position, as well as more precise calculations of the forces affecting it.
Initally, the calculations kept eliminating paths that would lead to no impact, thus raising the probability, based on what we knew currently. However further calculations have now eliminated most impact scenarios, lowering the probability.
It's all just refinement of measurement and calculation. Orignally we had a very fuzzy idea of the possible paths the asteriod might follow, now we have a fairly refined one, and most of the paths lead to no impact.
So what of changes? Could go any way at this point. Maybe tomorrow we refine calcuations to the point it shows 80% likely to hit Earth, maybe we refine them to show it can't possibly hit Earth, who knows?
This isn't the final word that the asteriod will miss Earth, just means it looks like it's not very likely to. It probably won't be known for sure either way for some time, if at all. I mean notice the ones on their list with like a 100 billion to one chance to hit. It means an impact is almost completely out of the question, but not totally, there is still a very small amount of uncertainty.
I think we should still send a team of bad Hollywood actors to go crash on it.
getting our hopes up so high then just dashing them.
...till 2035.
Then I Might just relax. However, still doesn't help me if they've managed to forget the effect of the Moons' gravitational field or something...
That's only true if the sun and your hand are perpendicular to the ground!
GPL Deconstructed
Simple reason: the 2029 data isnt listed anymore under "possible collisions" because its ruled out completely. If the hit percentage is zero, you dont have to list the date...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Given the history of the Bush administration's meddling in science, the math probably works like this:
...
[NASA]: Hm, we're down to 1/20 chance of making it. We should report to the President.
[Bush]: What's this ass steroid thing. Is it bad for us?
[NASA]: Yes, sir, the asteroid is now at a 5% chance of hitting the Earth. When it does, it will explode with enough force to destroy a medium country and flatten most of any neighboring countries.
[Bush]: What country will it hit?
[NASA]:
[Bush]: Excellent. This incident is now escalated to top sure...
[NASA]: You mean top secret?
[Bush]: No, secret is made for women. As I was saying, nobody outside of this office is to know about this ash toroid thing, and it will not hit the planet. Understand? It is not going to hit the planet.
[NASA]: Yes, sir.
And that was already done before the 1 in 300 post was made. They even apologized for this taking unusually long, as some data seemed wrong. In addition, the dates are not mysteriously deleted, they simply are below 10^-10 now. There is no absolute cutoff, if they should list every possible impact it should include the possibility that every single observation is incorrect and that 2004 MN4 will actually be knocking on your door tomorrow morning, 8 AM. Do you want that listed, too?
Does anyone else feel a sort of guilty dissapointment?
"Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4: improved situation
"The asteroid 2004 MN4 will have a very close approach to Earth in 2029. However, the observations collected by the astronomers, both professionals and amateurs, have provided enough information to exclude the possibility of an impact in 2029. This asteroid has an estimated diameter of 400 meters, and the nominal orbit solution results in a close approach to the Earth at 64,000 Km minimum distance on April 13, 2029. The actual distance could even be smaller, as small as 8 times the radius of the Earth. At the time of closest approach, the asteroid should be as bright as a fifth magnitude star, thus from some areas it will be visible to the naked eye.
"The sharp decrease in the estimated risk from this object was the result of the enormous work done by astronomers from all over the world. Notwidstanding the Christmas holidays, many dedicated people went to work in their observatories, in the archives of past observations and at their computers, as it was the case for the staff of NEODyS. More than 200 new observations of 2004 MN4 were obtained in the last 5 days. The discovery observations of June have been painfully remeasured, the impact monitoring computer programs have been run more than 30 times. Finally today some prediscovery observations from March 2004 were found and extracted from the archives of the Spacewatch survey. These allowed to extend significantly the observations time span, thus the confidence region for the orbital elements was sharply reduced and many impacts compatible with the previous data turned out to be incompatible with the extended observations."
"A worthy cause has never been harmed by the truth" - Gandhi
Not true - try it. As long as your hand doesn't change position relative to the ground, and the sun doesn't move appreciably while conducting the experiment, the shadow will be the same size and shape. This assumes that the person conducting the experiment is not moving the height of his hand more than a fraction of a percentage of the distance to the Sun.
Of course, it also has to be a sunny day for this to work. It will definitely not work on rainy nights.
Just figure it's like a one-use breath weapon with a very low chance to hit.
I thought there was - it is disguised as "+1, Funny"
(I was going to suggest a "+1, Insightful", but I don't think anyone would fall for that one.)
Look at the web page, that's still REALLY friggin' close. I think that's well inside geosynchronous orbit.
news.google.com search
Yea, that's right.
Figures.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Yes, I received an email from old people in Korea stating so.
If the sun is not perpendicular to the ground but low in the sky, say over your right shoulder, and it casts a shadow on the ground, when you move your hand towards the ground the shadow will necessarily move closer to you until it is directly under your hand.
GPL Deconstructed
If course all of this depends on *if* you trust *them*. (And "they" weren't using a buggy version of Windows)
The chances went from 1 in 37 to 1 in 50,000 in 5 hours? Do we believe these numbers are clean and scientific? Any politics in the mix you think? If they are just scientific then why didn't all the caveats justifying the latest "safe" number bet included with the earlier scary number? Should we believe either of these numbers 3 orders of magnitude apart or simply think it is anyone's guess and that the chances of any real warning of "the big one" are slim to none?
earlier today the odds were about even
Impact Probability: 0.5
50.000000000% chance of Earth impact
or
1 in 2.0 chance
or
50.00000000% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
There goes Taco Bell's chance to put a bulleye out in the middle of the ocean. If it would hit, free tacos for everyone....
Could it be that the mass media actually showed a reasonable amount of restraint on covering this story until more information was in hand? In the previous Slashdot stories posted on this subject, there was a lot of complaining about "What aren't the major media outlets covering this story?!?!?"
Well, this is why. The data is/was incomplete. The calculations are/were preliminary and ever-changing based on new observations. There was no point in starting a panic and sensationalizing the story at this point.
Sometimes we, the readers/contributors of Slashdot aren't as collectively bright as we think we are.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
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.
-- http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F11.html
But how do they know how big it is? If you discover a new rock on space, how do you know how large it is if there is no 'ground' as a point of reference?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
With the sun low on the horizon, even with your hand on the ground, there will be shadow on the other side of your hand cast by the vertical profile of your hand. If it is almost sunset or just after sunrise, the amount of shadow cast by the horizontal profile of your hand would be less than that cast by the vertical profile of your hand.
Really, try it tomorrow.
I suggest a new name: NASA Budget Builder 2004.
It is catchier than 2004 MN4 and tells you why we ever heard about it in the first place.
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to have been an earth-shattering kaboom!
Now I'll have to rewrite all that damn code! Well, I suppose I can blow it off for another 33 years or so.
From the website, they estimate from the brightness:
H - Absolute Magnitude, a measure of the intrinsic brightness of the object.
Diameter - This is an estimate, based on the absolute magnitude, and assuming a uniform spherical body with visual albedo pV = 0.154. Since the albedo is rarely well determined the diameter estimate should be considered quite rough, but in most cases will be accurate to within a factor of two.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
25 years to plan a mission to capture this bad boy. Even redirecting it to impact the moon for future study would be neat.
Because it's a total non story at this point and they are excersizing that rare trait called journalistic integrity. Obviously, with the almost daily changes in the probability as better calculations and measurements are done, there is no certianty at all. Since a story of an asteroid hitting the Earth will certianly get people worked up, and maybe even cause a panic, you'd better be on fairly solid ground.
Ok, well, given that the earliest possible impact is over two DECADES away, I'd say it would be proper to wait until NASA was to the point that there was likely to be little change in status with more calculations. Maybe that takes a month, that's fine, nothing changes, this is a WAY in teh future story.
Given that the chance changed from around 3% to 0.002% with just one day of measurements and calculations, you'd look like a moron if you trumpeted this as a big news story yesterday.
Now, supposing NASA does new calculations and says that it's about 50% likely to hit, and after a week they still can't be any more certian, then maybe you break the story.
Either way, it's not like we will be sitting around 2-5 decades from now going "Damn, if only that story had hit major news a month earlier, we'd all have been saved."
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot 1-way_LT 399_ins_LT 2029-Apr-13 21:50 0.0004284247 0.00152 0.003563 0.000000
These data are from the high-accuracy ephermis link at the jpl site right now. It's possibly using old data or doing bad rounding compared to the impact risk page, but I want you to have a look yourselves. In short, both the delta and 1-way-LT numbers here basically say the same thing: The distance in the nominal orbit will be slightly more than 64.000 kilometers, far closer than Luna, for example. In fact, it seems to be about the same height as the current Hubble Space Telescope orbit.
Once again, I just put in the numbers and this is what I got. I think this is closer than any number I saw before for the distance and to rule out a collision if it gets this close, I would imagine that they would be extremely sure of the orbit. If you add columns for the sigma for angle it freaks out and gives very high numbers, which I guess could indicate that the position is not that sure.
Ok, now build a conspiracy theory on this!
Meanwhile the chance that Nasa may calculate accurate odds so soon has shrunk to 1 in 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 ... [TO BE CONTINUED]
diegoT
(Used a <pre> tag and didn't preview, sorry...)
I for one was hoping it was going to be on-target to hit the earth. With 25 years advance notice there's no chance in hell it would actually kill anyone, we'd obviously develop and launch a mission to nudge it off course.
So why are we less safe? Well now we won't bother developing any such program. And then when we spod some other bigger badder asteroid on the way and it's only a year out, what are we going to do? I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We're all going to be sitting around getting drunk at an end-of-the-world-party because we don't have any ability in place to do jack shit about it. But heay, look on the bright side: even Slashdotters can probably get laid at a year-long end-of-the-world-party were everyone is double-vision-drunk and literally screwing the year away.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
1 in 24,000 chance ATM
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html
It is Schroedinger's sky...
That explains why the sky is (or isn't) going to rain cats and dogs...
Sorry, couldn't help myself.
Our main fuel source is a non-renewable, polluting one that won't last us into the next century.
We use coal, oil, and natural gas because they're CHEAPER than other energy sources. When they actually DO start to run short the price will rise and we'll (incrementally) switch to using something else.
But don't use "known reserves" as a measure of how much is left. "Known reserves" measure how much has been hunted up. When enough for a few decades has been found it becomes uneconomic to hunt for more now, rather than waiting until later.
Early money is better than later money - because it can be put to work meanwhile. There is a crossover point where it makes more sense to put the money to work earning more money rather than hunt for more resources that you won't need for decades. The exact crossover point varies depending on interest rate and other factors (such as the planning horizon needed for your operation). But normally it's never more than 30 years in the future.
As a result, having "known reserves" good for more than about 30 years occurs only by accident: Either the last discovery made was enormous, or expected demand has dropped since the planning that ordered the last round of explorations.
But that means, if you assume known reserves are all reserves, you ALWAYS think you're "going to run out in 30 years" or so, and have a crisis. This has been true for the last 50 years at least, and people have been "viewing with alarm" and raising a big popular stink about it every decade or so for all that time.
I hear it has been going on for much longer. History records similar popular angst about running out of whale oil for lamps and limits to city size due to knee-deep horseflops in the streets from the delivery wagons. But I can attest to the doomsayers of the last 50 years or so from personal observation.
Yes, eventually the oil will run short. But there won't be a sudden catastrophy when the last well suddenly sucks dry. Instead the price will gradually rise, and the production gradually fall. First power plants, then cars, will switch to other fuels while the remaining production is used for more lucrative purposes (such as chemical feedstocks, until it becomes expensive enough that the chemicals will be synthesized some other way).
We still have billions of people living in utter poverty, and children aspire to be rock stars, and the likes.
And that's a total non-sequitur. So some people are in poverty. So what? That has no effect on whether some of the people who AREN'T starving will chose to spend some resources building mansions, watching football, touring the Moon, or colonizing space.
I don't think our (american/european) culture is ready to venture into space and colonize, we need to start putting value on the right ideals.
If america/europe doesn't do it first, somebody else will. That's how evolution works - for species, ideologies, corporations, and the couple dozen or so other things that have some of the characteristics associated with life. Nature red in tooth and claw. Every gene/meme for itself, and cooperation occurs only if it's advantageous for the cooperator.
Some groups die out. Some find new, more successful, niches. But those that put expansion into new opportunities on the back burner until they have "perfected" themselves lose out to those who ignore such hand-wrining and "boldly go".
You snooze, you lose!
I'd hate to see these ideals brought into space. Militarization of space? No thanks.
So your feelings will be hurt. Space is already militarized, and has been since the first shots. The entire process evolved from a war effort.
Right now we have ICBMs and spy satellites as major parts of military strategy. The {apparent} lack of always-up orbiting nuclear bomb platforms (to suplement the always-up bombers and always-down submarines) is an artifact of the dance that brought all-out war to a screeching, no
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Although I was one of the first to welcome our Asteroid Overlords, I can now reveal that my supposed collaboration was a clever plot to win their trust, then defeat them from the "inside". Yeah, that's the ticket!
Sure, maybe it won't hit the earth *directly*, but it may bounce off the moon, richochet off Mars, then split in 4 by hitting Europa, and one of the four pieces will smash into the Sun, triggering a huge magnetic storm which will make all spoons and forks gouge us all in the eye. Nobody has mathematically ruled that out yet. And if they do, just give it to the global-warming-does-not-exist group to rework the report. They're good.
Table-ized A.I.
First of all, let me thank Xshare for the excellent one-sentence explanation of how the probabilities so quickly vanished after peaking at 1/37th.
Having said that, doesn't this suggest that their method for computing probabilities might need some examining? How is it that the probability can change by over 3 orders of magnitude within a week---a full 30 years or more before the event itself?
At the very least, I would assume that these folks have some sort of idea what the log-variance is of the probabilities they're computing. It might behoove them to hold off on reporting the numbers until that log-variance dips below a certain amount---at least when the event is so far out.
I don't know, I suppose it might behoove us to have, say, a decade of warning so we could figure out what to do if necessary. But 30 years? I'm not so sure the hype this week was necessary.
I welcome everyone else's thoughts on this...
Not that I'd expect them to tell us if they knew it was going to hit. That'd make the population get all irritable and demand that a method be found by which the asteroid could be deflected (I like the solar sail approach...) but that costs money and takes a lot of effort for something that will happen well after we're all out of office (Except the Bush Junta) so a better plan would be to tell everyone that the chances of it hitting us are astronimical and let our children deal with it. Er... wait...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So, to sum things up from all the previously high-rated comments on the multiple /. articles regarding the object: you still have plenty of time to get laid, fix the unix time epoch issue, and finish coding Duke Nukem Forever.
And Neodsys confirms this. They seem to be very sure of the position, the stretching is very small. But it will be visible to the naked eye!
So how exactly did we go from a 1 in 37 chance to a 1 in 56000 chance in a few hours?
NASA dug out some older telescope observations
and found the object on them. That pushed back the length of the observation interval and resulted in a more accurate estimate of the trajectory (just as watching it for an equivalent amount of extra time in the future would have done).
The extra accuracy from the extra measurements both gives a better estimate of the center of the expected trajectory and narrows the uncertainty. It "shrinks the cone" - and perhaps also moves its ceter.
The earth used to be inside the cone 1-in-37 cone. Now that cone is much narrower and misses the earth. The earth is now only in the 1-in-56,000 cone (which also shrank but is still wide enough).
Think of it as an archery target. Bullseye is the best estimate of closest approach. The rings are increasingly lower probability locations for the flyby. The extra observations shrank the target and perhaps moved it a bit. The earth was on a high-probability inner ring. Now it's on a low-probability outer ring of the much smaller target.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So what?
What difference should it make to any of your plans? Seriously? If the rocks fall next week or eight years from now, you still have to focus on the problems facing you right now. -It IS very important to not pretend that everything is all okay and all normal, because that's just not how things are, not on any level; not politically, not environmentally, not even solar-systematically; choosing to believe in lies is right up there in the top three or four most self-destructive things a person can do. Life is about growing one's spirit, and that cannot be done by embracing falsehoods. When one is given to pretending that things are okay, that sets the rhythm for a life; if you view the external world through wishful thinking, then you will inevitably use the same tools on the internal, which means you will simply never fix the problems inside yourself because you will pretend that the problems are not even there. Truth hurts, which is what drives us to fix the ugly parts of ourselves. But that being said, at the same time it is also foolish to get needlessly upset by the various nerve-jangling truths when they become apparent. Like impending asteroid strikes.
Asteroid disasters, (among other things, including the most recent 9.0 earthquake in the East), are going to start pounding the crap out of us with increasing regularity until there's not much left but a lot of debris and the cold wind whistling. That's all part of the show. Everybody dies, so why stress over it? Recognize it, adjust course as necessary and move on.
You're here to work on the spirit, not the physical. The interesting part is that if you're ready to advance, you might actually avoid the big crunch. It'll all be clear soon enough.
-FL
This was the purpose of setting off the quake.
I see the evil plan worked! muhahahaha mmuhahahahaha muahahahahah.
The odds this object will hit the earth are 1 in 56,000
:-)
The odds that you will be hit by lightning are 1 600,000
Now how do you feel
Hit the moon. Decay its orbit. Destroy earth. Seems possible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
comes to a close... *Tear*
I looked this morning and it was at a 2.7% chance to hit us with 176 observations. The google cache http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:m0pn5fcePc8J: neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html+&hl=en shows the 2.2% chance with 169 observations. Now we are only using 118 observations (although spread across more days) which suddenly suggest less of a chance of impact. I'm not suggesting a comspiracy, but I'd like to know why 58 or more observations are now deemed invalid for use in analysis.
Also, NASA gives my wang a 99% impact probability. Ladies, I'm talking to you.
This is Randy Pinkwood, signing off.
Can't you just say 44 choose 6 and be done already.
I wasn't seriously worried, but it was an unsettling thought nonetheless. I'm glad to see we're allright... for now.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
An asteroid which is still far away is worrying people to death. While i agree we should be prapared for this, there are other dangers as well. For example the Sundays earthquake and tsunami which has killed around 30000 across south east asia. The earthquake has caused a big change in the tektonic plates of australia and india and scientists are worried that this may be the first in the series of quakes and eruptions which will be much more widespread across the globe. Imaging coastel towns all over the pacific and indian oceans ravaged by 100feet high waves. The impact would be same as an asteroid. And the funny part is we dont have early warning systems etc., and nobody is seriously looking into them
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
2004 MN4 has already hit us. Survey the damage online.
Dang. Guess I shouldn't have bought that policy.
You never know though.
Dick/Bush took care of everything. Why would any government want the masses to know that the apocalypse was coming @ such and such date? They wouldn't. This would cause mass panic, craziness, depress world markets, etc etc etc. Think about it. Mulder would find the truth.
Why would they even try to predict 2037 when the very-near-miss in 2029 should deflect the orbit of the asteroid in a non-trivial way? They know it will come close, just not precisely how close, and any ensuing approaches will be contingent on that.
Before the recovered three month old data
And
Now
Figures explanation at the end of: Fig. 1 and Fig. 2
As a concerned Cone of Death Survivor [Also known as Floridian (Floor-Id-e-an)], I'd like to express my desire to possibly work on some alternative plans to avert destruction of the planet. We here in Broward have often times been told "Naaah, that hurricane won't come anywhere near...oh, it turned. Yep, run for your lives, you've got 16 hours to get plywood, GO!"
Just a thought.
If not, it could break up into a million pieces and light up the moon. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH
There's still about a 1/268 chance that at least one object will hit Earth in next 100 years
Is that still a live option? - And can be we ready in 2037 to try to keep it around?
on how big your hand is!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's just a Vogon ship
This giant earthquake and subsequent tsunami that's been in the news, preliminary reports of the casualties are at least 30,000 people. Do you realize how huge a number that is? And it's probably drastically under-reported, the waters swept through poor coastal lands in many Asian countries and carried bodies out to sea. I bet (but hope to God not) that the death toll is twice that, on the order of 60,000. But I suspect the death toll will climb because it always does, especially when information collection is weak in the disaster areas.
There is a huge natural disaster here on earth, without stuff raining from the sky on us. I guess all I'm saying is, disasters will happen, and as non-religious as I am I can only say that we should all pray that large disasters will not happen, and in bad times help out others who need help, because there's really nothing else you can do.
2004 MN4 upgraded again , now to Torino 1, years of danger 2030-2103
nasa risk page And there is two other of Torino 1, but not in my lifetime:
2004 VD17 impact 2062-2104
1997 XR2 impact 2101
If it would be January 19, 2038, I would believe that something should hit Earth that day. But 2037 it is definitely an error.
Why bother if I'm going to be smashed like a grape... of course, on the other hand, now might be a good time to max out that credit card :)
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Some of us are going to die. Best bet is to dig a hole away from large newly formed mountain ranges(Rockies) and oceans/large rivers(Mississippi).
As long as the earth does not speed around the bend it will not hit the cone.
There was a cow and chicken episode like this piece of news3 !
oh my god its comming!!!!
ohhh its gone
its comming!!!!!!!!!
its gone!!!!!
coming!!!!!
gone!!!!
coming!!!!
gon
come on...
coming!!!!!!!!
oh we are all going to dieeeeeee!!!!
i can even see the red guy in nasa running around without pants...
98% of all accidents happen within a 5 mile radius of a persons home.. so I moved.
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Then they wouldn't really care whether it hit or not, and they certainly wouldn't leave the couch to call the press about it and get everyone upitty.
The cone of probability that they'd order Pizza delivery instead is 1 E 0.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
The max probability 0.022 was too low for worrying about it.
I would get concerned only if the number was something like 15 or 172.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
This would make sense except that they were showing 176 observations giving a 2.7% probability Monday morning, but by Monday night the number of observations dropped dramatically. They are now at 139. I would like to see some explanation of why they threw out so many observations.
The odds have impoved to 1 in 26,000 chance. The Tarino scale has also been updated and is now at 1. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html
NASA / ESA should send up some probes to land on this thing as it hurtles past us. On a rock that big, they could set up robo-camp, and find out a lot of information, like what it's made of etc.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
> 99.000000000% chance of Earth impact
> or
> 1 in 1.0 chance
> or
> 0.99999999% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth
1 in 1.0, rounding we can live with that, but...
99.000000000% + 0.99999999%...
That leaves a small chance that it will neither hit nor miss the earth. Do they have some old pentiums that need replacing at NASA, or do they know something we don't?
copy 'n pasted from the good ole internet....
.9999999... then 10x = 9.9999999... does it not?
.9999999... correct? (the two equations subtracted)
If x =
Also, 10x - x = 9.9999999... -
Thus 9x = 9 , and x = 1.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Then maybe our governments would finally begin to pay attention to the matter.
Think it's time for a little white lie about a asteroid.
So what's the problem?
Dot on the ground
Moving shadow
Moving hand
Shadow is on the dot when the hand is raised
Shadow is no longer on the dot when the hand touches the ground
Hand doesn't touch the dot when the hand on the ground
Are you objecting to the fact that your shadow isn't getting smaller?
GPL Deconstructed
Are you saying that we all are going to die?!?!
It'd be cool, but we don't have the technology to pump enough delta vee into that rock to bring it into orbit. I suppose aerobraking it would be possible, but that's a lot of mass to play with and it's probably an odd shape, so I don't think the end result would be predictable.
We slashdotted the asteroid out of the orbit!
...remember good 'ol times when IP used to mean Internet Protocol....
Oh, come on. Do you really think Bush has ever heard the word "toroid?"
Looking at this story and seeing how much the probability changed just with more observations of the object and more calculations on the existing data, I wonder if we the geeks might be able to help out. I'm sure there're plenty of other asteroids out there like this one, and I for one would feel safer if we knew about 'em. Is there any sort of a distributed computing program around (similar to SETI@home) which would feed our computers a "patch of sky" to scan for objects like this one?
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
Did anyone check the date?
These are astronomers, right? And a good sized chuck of stuff is going to wiz by our little planet on April 13th, 2029, which happens to be a Friday... now then, large chunk of rock, here, Friday the 13th.
My family's male longevity suggests I'll be under the daisies around 2029 anyway. Smashed by a space rock would have been a mega cool way to go.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
By an eco terrorist or OBL and things might not be so rosy (except the sunrises and sunsets)
Is that you think that the current state of things is the traditional American and European culture. It isn't. The traditional is Christendom, which brought us such things as hospitals and social welfare. What we have now is the savagry that occurs when a culture has rejected Christianity. As G. K. Chesterton put it, paganism was the biggest thing that came along, until Christianity. After that, everything else has been smaller.
Nihilism has this odd and poetic characteristic of producing -- nothing --.
The original post linked probability to the size of the shadow and described a good analogy to demonstrate. My sole point is that you can't use the sun for illumination in that demonstration of probability because the shadow size doesn't change, which wouldn't demonstrate a reduced likely area of impact in the original post's demonstration.
If, during any demonstration, whether the sun is used or not, a path not directly from the light source to the target is followed by the hand, the shadow will gradually move from the dot. I get that point.
It is too early to know if we will or will not be hit by this MN4. It was too early yesterday to realistically think we actually had a one in thirty-seven chance of getting hit and it is too early today to think that we are in the clear. Interest in the matter has been sufficiently raised to make a point, now reduce the risk so the rocket scientists can refine their calculations in peace. With the publicity that was generated over the last week, there will now be money available to collect the data, propose solutions, and do the math, money that would not have been available otherwise.
I support this study. I think it is a good thing. But I don't think anyone wants to do the work that has to be done over the next year or two with likes of CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS, and others covering this issue like they did OJ or Scott Petersen.
How do I get the Earth back inside the cone of probability? This planet could use a mass extinction.
Hey, I'm as glad as th next guy to hear this NEW information, and I wouldn't throw those e-Bay tee-shirts away just yet either. But how about that snowcone hitting the Moon? And what if it hits Mercury or Venus? Couldn't that affect the overallgravitationalwhatchamacallit? Equilibrium? We nnnnneed to launch a SPACEPROBE and meet that sucker, land on it, and send us signals every so often til 2038.... IMHO. Rest uncensored er assured my friends, as long as I live I'll not leave Tara because I -Anonymous- do give a damn. I will summon the gods to our side, and with every sinew of my soul I'll fight the intruder, for you. You won't have to do a thing, for I -The Protector- am here, working in the background. Signed, Wild Bill {Hopalong} Gaits
My research has led me to suspect that about 45.631% of all statistics are made up, and 28.3% of statistics are false.
Scott Simontis
Just for reference (energy in megatons TNT):