Asteroid 2004 MN4 May Hit Earth After All

ControlFreal writes "Asteroid 2004 MN4 was introduced earlier on Slashdot, and although scientists are now fairly certain that is will miss earth on April 13th, 2029, the modification to its orbit caused by Earth's gravity may still cause an impact one or a couple of orbits further down the road, the Times reports; the impact probabilities in 2035, 2036 of 2037 will not be known until the exact modification to its orbit is known; in 2029, that is. By then it may be too late for effective counter-measures. An impact would cause an energy release equivalent to about 1 Gigaton of TNT (~4e+18 Joule), and while that won't cause a massive extinction event, it causes widespread devastation. More info on 2004 MN4 can be found here and here."

Comments

*cue music*

[blew_fantom]

~~Don't wanna close my eyes. Don't wanna fall asleep. 'Cause I'd miss you, baby. And I don't wanna miss a thing. Cause even when I dream of you The sweetest dream would never do. I'd still miss you, baby. And I don't wanna miss a thing~~~

2035

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew the Republicans were lying about there being a Social Security crisis in 75 years. Now I don't have to worry about it. Whew.

so we can forget about the 32bit Unixtime thing?:)

[NekoXP]

19th January 2038 half of us will be dead! Who needs to count the seconds after
that? :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Lets solve this problem the American Way!

[Daravon]

Lets have Microsoft patent asteriod collisons and then we'll send all the lawyers after the asteriod to deliver a cease and desist order. Worst case scenario is that we're out a few lawyers.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.
- Larry Niven

Wouldn't it be funny if they did have a space program and just haven't bothered coming back?

Lets put them

[www.sorehands.com]

Lets put them on the same ship as the hairdressers and telephone sanitizers.

What about ineffective preparations?

[cbiffle]

If we don't have time for effective preparations, where do I donate toward the ineffective preparations?

I, for one, want a massive Wile E. Coyote-style flag to pop out of the Earth immediately before the asteroid hits. Preferably reading "Yipe!"

Re:Other effects

[Profane MuthaFucka]

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space."

As a geek, you ought to be ashamed that you even suggested that a tiny little rock would take out dozens of satellites. I can see how an English major or a Journalist could make that mistake, but you are on SLASHDOT here, and you should know some basic things about the space and how big it is.

Re:Good!

[0racle]

That was done on Voyager. It wasn't funny at all.

Re:Let's make an Ark B

[ericdano]

Hope it hits LA, we could whip out the RIAA and MPAA in one hit!

Re:Other effects

[maotx]

I don't know about you but with these numbers from NASA I'm getting ready to move to Mars.

Funniest single panel cartoon I ever saw...

[refactored]

...had a huge dinosaur stepping out of a flying saucer looking out unseeingly over the heads of tiny scurrying humans. The caption was, "Hello! Hello Everybody! Hullooo! We're home!"

I can't remember who the artist was. Sad.

Re:Orion Project

[stlhawkeye]

We not only have the technology, it's hard to predict what our situation will be as 2030 approaches.

We all could be gone by then.

For all we know, the United States of Arabia, formed in 2013, will be the world's lone superpower, we will be driving around in our fuel efficient hydorgen-powered Sayyarrah Ansar 4-doors, created by the Sayyarrah Motor Co in response to rising fuel costs after the world's industrial nations burned through most of the cheaply-accessible Arabian oil, leaving the United States sitting on top of the largest intact oil reserves in the world, which it stubbornly refuses to share. The USA (the Arabian states, I mean) will work with the Brazilians space program and the Federal Chinese States (formed after the Chinese Civil War in 2018) to launch an "asteroid-killer" probe at this thing from the secondary pad at Artemis International Station in the north polar region of the moon.

Or it'll just, like, Africa, or Canada, or some other place nobody cares about, and we'll just live with it. Or the environmentalists will protest that it likely contains spaceborne elementary life forms and that it's an immoral sin of human arrogance to attempt to save our species by eliminating theirs.

Print this post out now and re-read it in 20 years, it'll be fun!

Re:Good!

[scotch]

mankind has a notoriously short attention span.

Notorious to whom? Short compared to attention spans of what other species? Compared with animals? Do dogs and cats sit around behind our backs and say shit like this:

Dog: mankind has such a short attention span
Cat: tell me about it. me and my feline brethren have been working on catching mice for thousands of years. Some of our members have been known to study a mote of dust for upwards of 4 hours
Dog: I hear you - it's almost as if mankind is famous for having a short attentions spam. Infamous you might say. Heck, I'd go so far as to say they are notoriously short attentioned - wait, where's my tail? Did you seem my tail?

Or maybe you're communicating with aliens.

Re:Good!

[InfoVore]

New propulsion technology? You mean like Nuclear Pulse

I posted this to my local SF group boards a while back. Hope you like it:

10,000 Tons of Launch Weight: $500 million.
2000 Mini-nukes: $1 Billion
Finding a country to let you launch: Priceless

For normal trips to LEO, there are chemical rockets.
For everything else, there's Project Orion.

Several guys in the group work for Lockheed and want it on a T-shirt.

Cheers,
I.V.

Re:Our Eulogy

[joe_bruin]

NOT EARTH, that's where I keep all my stuff!!!