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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."
I have no way of knowing, but at the rate technology is going right now, we'll probably have something capable of blowing the thing into gravel by 2035. Or at least something that we can knock it out of the way with.
I can't even imagine what things will be like in another 30 years...I mean, if in 1915 you told someone that in 30 years a bomb would be built powerful enough to flatten a small city, they'd laugh at you.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
So this asteroid may not hit the Earth but one will probably slam into us eventually. So why not use this one as a practice run?
From TFA:
"This is most likely not the object with our number on it, but one day we will have to address this question and we'll need the technology."
So let's develop the technology now, when a screw up won't mean utter devastation of part of the planet.
Establishing an off planet colony isn't exactly the same as getting up to turn the TV off, even if we started really focusing on this idea now, without some new propulsion technology i doubt even by 2029 we will have this option.
In general terms, having your collective dna stuck at the bottom of a gravity well relying on the "stability" of a single biosphere is not a a good long term policy.
Personally, I think we should focus our efforts on keeping the planet we live on viable. If some big rock later undoes the hard work, so be it.
Meanwhile we're hell-bent on destroying a perfectly viable planet with our own home-grown stupidity - at the rate we are going we'll eventually finish the job whether or not an asteroid beats us to the punch is just a matter of timing.
Bull. 2029 to 2035 gives us ~6 years to prepare.
You've never had any experience trying to get the government to actually do anything concrete, have you?
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
You've never had any experience trying to get the government to actually do anything concrete, have you?
The US did Mercury and Appollo in timeframes that short. And global catastrophe wasn't a motivator then.
When humanity is staring down the barrel of an asteroid strike, then these treaties will probably not be such a big deal...
Besides, whenever has our beloved President ever let a treaty stand in his way?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Why Orion? it's all new, untested technology. We're all engineers here - we know nothing works right the first time, especially not rocket science.
:)
Because most of the groundwork has been done to death. There are engineers out there who could build an Orion in their sleep, partly because it's so damn simple.
The other issue is that there simply isn't enough time to build some other super-booster. Both the Saturn V and the Energia are out of commission due to a lack of production facilities. In the case of the Orion, you'd be building something far simpler and more along the lines of a traditional building or ship hull.
But you have 20 years
You'd have 6 years, because scientists will be uncertain until 2029.
kinetic kill weapons are not that a good idea, little thing called the "law of conservation of momentum" you're not going to move a 64 gigatonne something much by hitting it with the sort of mass you can afford to lift off of earth
Well, on the small side we could build an Orion of about 3000 metric tonnes. On the large side, we could build one of about 8,000,000 metric tonnes. Maybe it's just me, but I think 8 million tons + a significant amount of relative velocity could make a difference.
I agree with you though, it's something of wishful thinking to hit it with a kinetic kill. The most likely scenario would be to take up station near the asteroid and go through several iterations of planting and detonating hydrogen bombs. The idea won't be to break it up, but rather to provide propulsion. As such, the bombs would be detonated on or near the surface of the asteroid.
What you do need to do is shift it's orbit, you don't need a lot of mass or a big motor, just time - get started now, drop and iron drive and solar cells on the thing now and fire it up, maybe deliver some more mass in 5 years, carefully watch where it's going and eventually drop it into the sun or Jupiter
The only problem is that we don't have engines that can make a dent in 46 gigatons of mass. As you pointed out yourself, the law of conservation of momentum is going to have a lot to say about a constant 1/1000 lb of thrust against that much mass.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
WWII was fought over a 6 year timespan. That's with technology that consisted of vacuum tube electronics. And it was in a destructive manner...trying to destroy your opponent's means of production. Plastic, RADAR, laser, jet technology, atomic weapons... all developed in 6 years.
Motivate the human race enough and its ridiculous what we can accomplish. We're 3 generations removed from 'total war' economy. An extinction level event would be sufficient motivation for us to see such economic focus once again.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
sheesh, it's funny people, Funny!
/. stories are most of the reason I read comments. A real knee-slapper deservers a bit of karma methinks :)
I think the reason some Funny posts get modded Insightful, Informative, Whatever is because starting sometime ago Funny mods no longer improve your karma. Thus to counteract, if a post already has a few Funny mods, a moderator might mod it Informative to boost the poster's karma a bit.
Makes some sense to me. After all, Funny comments in
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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