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.
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
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...
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
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
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.
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]
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!!!
Chicken Little? Is that you?
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.
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
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.
read the damn article
/o \
its quite simple
you have a cone of probable impact
. METEOR
. / \
. / \
. / \
. / \
. / \
./ o \
(o=earth)
its in the cone, high probability
calculations are more refined:
. METEOR
. / \
. / \
. / \
.
base of cone is smaller, earth now has an even larger chance of getting hit.. now some more narrowing of the cone:
. METEOR
. / \
. / \
. o/ \
oops.. earth is no longer in the cone.. probability just jumped to 1/56,000
--
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason Please use fewer junk characters.
lalala 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
The now-defunct Lycos anti-spamsite screen saver, MakeLoveNotSpam, was extremely well received despite the whines and hand wringing from the no-one-should-ever-actively-defend-themselves crowd. There was speculation after its demise that Open Source spam-punishing tools would emerge. Other tools such as SpamVampireThe now-defunct Lycos anti-spamsite screen saver, MakeLoveNotSpam, was extremely well received despite the whines and hand wringing from the no-one-should-ever-actively-defend-themselves crowd. There was speculation after its demise that Open Source spam-punishing tools would emerge. Other tools such as SpamVampire, LadVampire (punishes fake bank sites), Spam Research Tool and others were mentioned with increasing frequency, but there has been no coherent followup to gauge what people are doing since the death of the Lycos screen saver. What are you doing that you think is effective in punishing spammers or their spam-site sponsors?" , LadVampire (punishes fake bank sites), Spam Research Tool and others were mentioned with increasing frequency, but there has been no coherent followup to gauge what people are doing since the death of the Lycos screen saver. What are you doing that you think is effective in punishing spammers or their spam-site sponsors?"
OMGWTFBBQ!!1 *splat*
If I understand it correctly the reason is simple, and someone commented on this in one of the other postings:
They knew the rough area in which the asteroid could end up, and with more data this area kept shrinking. However, the Earth was still in this area and since the total places the thing could go was shrinking the chance of going to one part of the area increased. Then suddenly the Earth went out of this area so it's probability went down.
Here is an analogy: think of having ten cups face down with a ball under one and one is labeled "Earth". Now Earth has a 1 in 10 chance of having the ball. However, if someone removed 5 of the false cups then Earth now has a 1 in 5 chance. However, if someone now removed the Earth cup since it did not have a ball then it's chance would go down to 0.
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
I will get to your question after this long paragraph.
The reason the probability of impact jumps around so much is as follows. The probability figure you have been seeing on the headlines is a CUMULATIVE probability of several potential impacts. In other words, they add the probability of the asteroid hitting Earth on this day, on that day, etc. for each close encounter. There were about 8 close encounters for which their probabilities were being summed to calculate this figure. There was a 1 in 38 chance for the asteroid hitting Earth on April 13, 2029, and this figure dominated the cumulative impact probability (1 in 37). Once more observations ruled out any impact on that day, the cumulative impact probability went to nearly zero. The remaining figure as of this posting, around 1.8e-05 (1 in 56,000), represents the probability of impact on the other close encounter dates (2037, 2044, etc.) as listed in the table [nasa.gov]. You will also note that the April 13, 2029 encounter has been REMOVED from this table. This is because there will be no impact; the table only lists remaining potential impacts.
Now, because they have ruled out an impact in 2029, some of the observations actually don't contribute to determining whether an impact will occur on the other, later dates (2037, 2044, etc). There have been hundreds of observations but the only ones relevant to the current potential impacts are counted on that NASA page.
January 19, 2038 the date when 32 bit time runs out or is that overflows?
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.
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.
While this may be true, you have to wonder if it's a good thing to venture into other worlds now, I mean, look at our world.
Our main fuel source is a non-renewable, polluting one that won't last us into the next century. We still have billions of people living in utter poverty, and children aspire to be rock stars, and the likes.
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. To where children aspire to be scientists, to where the best idea wins out, not the shiniest one, to where corporations and people in general terms aren't "out to make a buck."
I'd hate to see these ideals brought into space. Militarization of space? No thanks.
We could support many more billions of people on the planet if the right alternatives were taken to sustain life, and not just make money
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Make sure you use a lamp for this experiment instead of sunlight. The shadow won't change size if sunlight is used.
"...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
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.
My only chance of getting laid, gone! What? 1 in 56000 odds? I'm back in the game!
So what is the probability of the earth being hit by this "cone"?
Think of it like throwing a basketball into a hoop. As you release, no one has a clue whether you'll whiff it or what. Then people see it's in the general right direction. Then people see it's looking like a good shot. Then people start to think it will be very close. Then we see it smack into the rim and bounce away. Drat.
The probability of impact gradually goes up and up, and then suddenly drops to zero at some point if it is not going to hit. It won't go back up after that drop.
The estimates are all based on different amounts of data. As you perform more measurements, the values will change significantly, especially for the first few measurements. If you consider the odds they show when they're televising poker games, they vary substantially. The early odds aren't any less reliable, but there's a lot of information left to get.
Assuming the astronomers can figure things out reliably this far in advance, one way to thing about it is that a 1/45 chance of getting hit means that there was a 44/45 chance of the odds dropping to very small when they determined pretty much for sure where it was going. Now there's a 1/56,000 chance that tomorrow it'll be 1/1, which is obviously much less likely.
Really, they ought to report the estimated distance it will pass from earth and the standard deviation in their estimate, which would give a much clearer picture of the difference between 1/56K based on very little data and 1/56K based on a lot of data.
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.
Unfortunately, a part of the problem is that there are already too many people. But stressing self control isn't going to decrease the number, and wars sufficient to do so would have extremely bad side effects. (Most of the people playing, e.g., wouldn't be those who had chosen to play.)
One of the results of too many people is many other species dying off.
I'm all for lots of people, but the planet has PASSED it's long term carrying capacity. And it's not just mal-distribution. Optimal distribution would solve things for one, or at MOST two generations. And by that point we'd have reached a place where any problem would collapse civilization, but without the yeast vats there wouldn't be anything for anyone to eat. (Well, other people, but what are THEY eating.) Even our symbiotes are already feeling the crunch. There are some successful parasites, but I don't think you could get a useful number of calories from them.
OTOH, if we go out, then each segment of the population would be dependant upon itself. If one piece of civilization crashed, it wouldn't take everyone down with it. (Note, this means civilizations living at least at Saturn's orbit, and probably further. Macrolife would be ideal, but I'm we could not yet build a stable generation ship. Still, that's the goal.)
As for those who say "we aren't ready as long as we continue to cling to weapons", have you looked around you? If neither you nor your government used weapons, your life would be quite short. The underclasses would rise. If you look, you will see them, and they don't particularly LIKE being oppressed. It's a lot less bad than slavery, but that's not saying a grand awful much. We're packed in a box, and there are "two many rats in the box". Overcrowding drives both people and other animals crazy. So does not being able to control their own destiny. (Things are relative here. Absolute freedom to do what you want without repercussions also drives you crazy. And so does extreme isolation. But few have those problems.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"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
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?
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?
You're essentially saying that we, as a people, shouldn't colonize space until our world culture matches your own ideals. Children wanting to be scientists instead of rock stars is not inherently better; it's just your opinion. There are plenty of people out there would would say we have to wait until children dream of becoming ministers/laborers/politicians when they grow up. What we have then are two problems with your argument: A) there is no perfect cultural state. Everything is subjective, and for your version of a perfect world to come true then someone else's view of a corrupted world has come to pass. B) even if there was some perfect state we could achieve, it would be utter insanity to wait until we acheived this until we colonize space. If we always waited for everything to be right before moving on then we would NEVER get anywhere. China didn't wait to invent paper; Guttenburg didn't wait to invent the printing press. We move on, and hopefully get better as we go.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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...
Well there ain't any oil in outer space, so the colonization of other worlds REQUIRES the development of an alternative energy source.
And there have ALWAYS been lots of starving people in the world, and for one reason or another, there will most likely always be poverty in the future. However, a new frontier gives those in poverty a chance to take a risk and start a new life somewhere else. There's greater risk of death in whatever strange new lands they're venturing to than if they stayed at home, but also a great chance of having a much better life too for them and their descendents.
If Europeans had put off the colonization of the Americas until poverty was eliminated in their home country, it never would have happened... because there's STILL poor people in Europe. Obviously there'll be a significant difference of opinion about how much of a "good thing" the colonization of the Americas was from the Native American point of view, but for tens of millions of (almost entirely) poor people throughout the rest of the world, it was a chance to have a new, better life, exploiting new undeveloped resources.
The same could be true today with the colonization of other worlds. Sure it's more difficult and will cost more to accomplish, but on the other hand we have a lot more extra people sitting around on our planet, and there's no other indigenous people elsewhere in our solar system that need oppressing and killing off first...
Many people are against the "militarization of space" in theory, but in reality people will feel the need to arm/protect themselves no matter where they go. As soon as there's multiple competing groups of people scattering through-out the solar system capable of visiting each others' settlements, they will be carrying weapons of some kind with them. This is a simple fact, and you're never going to escape it. It's not an American/European issue either, there's no major society on this planet that has ever been able to adopt and maintain the ideals you want long term, at least not long enough to exist to this day or to be remembered by history.
Life on our world has evolved thru billions of years of fierce competition with each other, and with our amazing cognitive and imaginative abilities, the tools we use for armed competition have become ruthlessly efficient. You're not going to change this aspect of human nature with a couple decades of happy thoughts, it's going to take a significant change in our environment (ie. maybe expanding into distant colonies that have little direct contact?), and at least hundreds of generations for our genes to adapt.
But if you start creating human societies on other worlds, being spaced out over tens of millions of miles away from each other, war becomes exponentially more costly to even attempt, much less succeed. I don't believe humans will ever be able to form a utopian society of completely peaceful people in any group larger than a couple dozen individuals. But if you wanted to attempt such a thing, I think you'd have a much better chance of success if you could isolate your colony on some moon of Saturn or something, where it really wouldn't be worth anyone's while to build a fleet of space ships just to come out and fuck with you...
Besides, struggling colonies of people on far away lands who depend on each other daily to survive automatically fosters a priority on knowing/learning useful skills, maintaining a sense of community, and constantly thinking about the needs of the group over one's own wants.
The misplaced values you seem to despise are the results of excess and luxury. The ideals you favor are not widespread because they are not currently necessary to survive. You'll have a much easier job of encouraging the ideals you mentioned in an environment of adventure on a new frontier, than you will in the mall-shopping, sports-watching, pop-culture-consuming environment that exists right now...
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
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."
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
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...
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.
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
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
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.
Yes, it's going to fire its nuclear engine and head towards us anytime now.
You mean besides an Earth-smashing asteroid, which was the topic of this article??
OK, how bout a viral or bacterial plague spreading rapidly across the planet? The possibility of such a plague infecting the entire planet is dramatically higher than any point previously in our history due to the abundance of high-speed transportation systems. Rural areas of Europe were sometimes spared from the Black Death in the 14th century because their distance from the cities and lack of visitors meant that infected people couldn't get there before they died from their infection. Today a similar plague being released in a major airport could spread across the globe in a matter of days...
It wouldn't even have to be a plague that killed humans directly, a plague that killed our major food crops would be just as devastating. Especially considering what a tiny percentage of today's population are farmers. In the 1300s pretty much everyone knew how to continue growing their own food, even as all their neighbors were dying. You wipe out the couple thousands of farmers that produce most of the world's food supplies today, and most of the population would be shit-outta-luck.
Or how about an act of terrorism (or actual aggression) designed to make it look like Russia or China had launched an all-out nuclear attack on the United States?? The 'appropriate military response' is Nukes flying everywhere annihilating everybody. A short flaring of tempers causes all life on Earth to end, and with it the whole human race... It's not really possible for that to happen if humans are living on a half-dozen or more different worlds. Even assuming an Earth nation had built (as yet non-existent) rockets capable of delivering nukes to another planet in sufficient quantity to destroy them as well, it'd take days of planning and then months to years of travel time before they actually reached their destination, giving plenty of time to devise some kind of counter-measure.
But most likely, it would be a combination of such events, none of which would totally destroy humanity in and of themselves, but when stacked together, finish us off. Say an asteroid hits the Earth, wiping out a large chunk of the population and causing serious environmental changes. Which causes most of the food crops to be lost as well as kicking up microbes and pollutants into the air and water, killing lots of people thru starvation or poor living conditions. The surviving peoples crowd together in the areas of Earth that are still habitable, which leads to constant fighting over scarce resources. With the old political structures clearly collapsed, you're left with hundreds of ex-army officers in possession of weapons of mass destruction, which inevitably start getting used in the gang warfare that arises out of the immediate ashes. The chaos of this situation and breakdown of existing public-health systems would allow other factors that are currently not much of a threat to be major sources of fatality again. (ie. death during childbirth, or from the flu, etc.) Slowly the environment becomes so inhospitable that people die off altogether.
Such a scenario could easily lead to the complete and utter end of tens of thousands of years of human civilization. (It wouldn't have to start with an asteroid impact either, there's plenty of other events that could start the wheels turning.) But if we have already expanded to other worlds, and even to the stars, such a series of a events would surely be considered a major tragedy, but hardly the end of our existence.
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
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
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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.
The process of colonizing "the New World" certainly didn't turn us into that kind of a people -- pretty much the opposite, in fact.
History does tend to repeat itself, and there is no particular reason to believe that a whole lot has changed in respect of people's belief system and basic motivations since the 1600's.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
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!"
No need to wait, one object hit Earth just a moment ago (I dropped my keys.)