Slashdot Mirror
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."
From the summary:
I hope this rock hits our planet. I really do.
This may be the spur humanity needs to get us up off our collective keisters and establish a viable off-planet colony before it's too late. It would be an unprecedented catastrophe, but still survivable, and it seems like this is the only way we're going to learn.
Then again, it could be a bad thing...instilling a sense of false security. (Hey...this asteroid hit us, and we're still here. Guess all those asteriod doomsday scenarios are bunk.)
I rather suspect the former will be the prevailing attitude...trouble is, mankind has a notoriously short attention span...would this command enough attention for us to start a space colony project...and actually finish it?
Will our eulogy be: "The humans became extinct because they couldn't concentrate hard enough on their space program."?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
My bet is it will hit Earth on April 13, 2029. After all, it's a Friday!
I wonder if Jason http://www.fridaythe13thfilms.com/ will show up.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
in 2029, that is. By then it may be too late for effective counter-measures.
Bull. 2029 to 2035 gives us ~6 years to prepare. If the asteroid actually posed clear and present danger, then a crash program to build an interceptor could be accomplished. With apologies to Pournelle and Niven (warning, associates link), the catch-22 is that we would have to give up our fear of the Orion. Using standard building practices + what we know of advanced hydrogen bomb design, we could potentially launch an Orion within three years. The options would be to either send it on an unmanned kinetic-impact course with the asteroid, or to send a team ala "Armageddon" (or some other lame stop-the-asteroid movie) to manually plant and detonate the charges.
If I'm reading the info correctly, the asteroid is a mere 46 gigatonnes. So as long as we get to it fast enough, there shouldn't be any difficulty in nudging it into a higher orbit. Of course, we may only be able to buy some time in the short term. Orbital mechanics is tricky, and not as simple as just "pushing" the asteroid out of the way. We may actually have to push it toward earth to slingshot it into a more acceptable trajectory.
One way or another, we have the tech. It's just scary as all hell to behold, and in a crash program would almost certainly add a small amount to the nuclear pollution that already exists on our planet. But if it's a choice between three random deaths from cancer or millions dead from a massive impact, I think the choice is fairly clear. Especially when the former is theoretical and the later is firm.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That's it. I'm moving. This neighborhood is really starting to suck.
So...let's party like it's 1999?
~~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~~~
**puts on tin foil hat**
I'll be 59 in 2037 which is when I can start withdrawing from some of my retirement accounts.
I guess I should go ahead and blow my money on a car or something instead since how big my 401k is isn't gonna matter when the monkeys take over the Earth.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
I've got a list of politicians and patent lawyers all ready and waiting for it.
The only problem is, I'm not sure whether we should be on it or they.
I wonder how close it would have to come to have an effect like that, and what those probabilities would be like?
As it is, I'm not losing sleep over a %0.042 chance that this puppy will shorten my retirement.
John
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.
I reckon if we gather up as much lead and place it by the Oval Office, we might just be able to alter the asteroid's trajectory and save ourselves from self-anihilation.
So let's start collecting lead! Who's with me?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I knew my Y2K shelter would come in handy. Who has all the Spam now!?
19th January 2038 half of us will be dead! Who needs to count the seconds after
that?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
The Asian earthquake was some magnitudes greater than that. Of course it's all in how the energy is dissipated.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
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.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
Lets put them on the same ship as the hairdressers and telephone sanitizers.
Fight Spammers!
I wonder if people will build more bunkers. I know a person who owns a house, and there is a bunker in the back yard, from the days of a USSR nuclear strike threat (Back in the 70's and early 80's the drill for a nuclear strike was to climb under the desk in the school). It looks kinda flimsy to me, I am guessing the salesperson was real good. It looks more like a shed that is half way in the ground.
But, if someone wanted to make a good bunker, not just to ease the mind, but something to survive in, how deep would it need to be? I live on flat land, so I can not tunnle into a mountain, which I would assume to be the best choice. What is needed for a good oxygen supply, can you generate your own, or do you need an exhaust? How long would you need to stay underground, and where would you store the water and food? And would you have more than one exit out of the bunker, in case one side suffers damage and is burried under?
I think it would be cool to have a series of bunkers, with some pre-picked neighbors, people you trust. Have 7 or 8 bunkers, maybe a mile apart, each one acting as a node. The chances for survival would increase, and the time would pass quicker.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
They know it will be close in the other years, so why not start planning NOW so that if we know it by 2029 for sure we can either use whatever we worked out or use it for something else.
The reason it will not happen is because it will still not be eminent and it will be something only those earth saving tree huggers could work with.
Others have more importand things to do, like making money and the plan of the company only looks ahead 5 years, not 50.
Well, it was nice knowing y'all.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The following NASA page contains an impact risk summary of several near-earth object:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/
Note that this one is in the top three, but with due respect to Douglas Adams, "Don't Panic" appears to be in order.
That game was actually written by NASA, in order to train the nation's children for just such an eventuality.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I am probably more apt to be hit by an African Swallow then be killed by this asteroid.
Homer: It's times like this I wish I were a religious man.
Reverend Lovejoy: Run for your lives people We don't have a prayer!
For Christ's sake, scientists -- MAKE UP YOUR FRIGGIN' MIND ABOUT THESE GLOBAL KILLER ASTEROIDS!
I just went through paperwork HELL getting the "Asteroids, Meteorites, and Other Heaven-to-Earth Bodies" coverage removed from my AllState homeowners insurance. This after I put it on there when you FIRST told us it was going to hit us!
Then I had to call Jean, my agent, and f*cking tell her to shred that whole contract and contact my mortage lender when you f*cking scientists said, "Whoa -- wait -- it might NOT hit after all. Our bad." But, of course, the fax machine at my office was on the fritz that week (screw all-in-one concepts, HP!), so I had to take a 2 hour ride through traffic BACK to my house to get the paperwork and OVER TO Jean's office.
Now, after FINALLY getting the signature pages right, 'cause Jean's assistant can't friggin' spell "interplanetary" for sh*t, I gotta do the whole g'damn thing again.
Christ -- I'm going to just leave it on there this time and pay the extra 20% on my homeowners insurance premiums this year. It's not friggin' worth going through all that hassle, having to take time off, explaining to my boss what why I'm having to factor "global extinction" into my homeowner savings plan, etc. Dammit.
I guess, now, that those f*ckers from Homeland Security are going to change the f*cking color of the alert this week too. Then I'll have to go back and talk with Jean about that "Dirty Bombs, Biological/Chemical Agents, and Other WMDs" clause. Dammit.
IronChefMorimoto
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!"
Way to make my 59th birthday seem grim!
rm -rf
Let Them Eat Quiche!
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Yeah, there's no way it will hit Earth, otherwise John Titor would have mentioned it...
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
0.865 gigaton for 2004 MN4 impact
vs
32 gigaton for Indian Ocean quake/tsunami, 2004
I have no idea....I'm no physicist, but it seems that if they know the object's mass and the object's size, they can figure the object's density, and infer its composition from that. What more do they really have to know?
(Mabye he's afraid it's composed of antimatter or admantium or neutronium or naquada, or has a quantum black hole at its center, or some other bullshit concern...)
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Hmm, lets take that one step further.. Lets capture it in a very high orbit and use it as the counterweight for our Space Elevator. We should just be getting out technology down pat by that time and, hell, this thing is big enough we could actually use it as a base for all sorts of stuff.. kinda a mini-moon.. with elevator access. heh, it'd even make the ISS obsolete. You could use it to capture/send spaceships from/to other sites (Mars...)
Even if we had an off-planet colony, how would we populate it? We can't even get a hundred people into space let alone a thousand, let alone a million, let alone a billion.
The half of us who are still living would. Sheesh, for some people, it is all about me, me, me.
Would be a good chance to put a digger on an asteroid, maybe even park a HST-like observatory on it...
...almost as good as a lunar base...
I can't remember who the artist was. Sad.
I look at this and know that, like many people, this is a cash vehicle and a licence for the US government to do what always wanted to do. With a big scare like this, the US government can get all the funding it wants to put a nuclear spacecraft into orbit. This will allow them to pour trillions of dollars into the "greater good". While they are at it, they will have a nuclear missile platform in space to control any government it so chooses.... with the "permission" of any partnered countries! "Either you with us, or your terrorists".
.. It will be convenient for the US government to use this new "planet saver" platform for other "very important" military moves against "terrorist" organizations.
Now NASA gets a blank check to research and develop anything it wants.
Kinda like someone fending off "killer minnows" in a bucket of water using a shotgun and a paint mixer.
I bet a case of Beer that the US government will make an announcement to develop a space vehicle that has the ability to blast something. Not really thinking that all you need to do is give the big rock a shove, so that it never comes near the earth.
Bush is planning cuts in astronomy budgets.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
This may be the spur humanity needs to get us up off our collective keisters and establish a viable off-planet colony before it's too late. It would be an unprecedented catastrophe, but still survivable, and it seems like this is the only way we're going to learn.
If the sole reason you want a space program is paranoid fear that we might be hit by a rock, that's a pretty sad reason.
I'd like to visit the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. I'd like to see other star systems. I'd like to advance our knowledge of the galaxy and universe and try to find other life forms.
I mean, if people were dying left and right by micrometeorites hitting the earth and blowing out people's skulls but no one in power cared, I'd be concerned. That's not the case here.
Let's keep the fearmongering to a dull roar here. How sick does our society have to be when someone start's talking like a bad sci-fi thriller about the end of the world?
The sole purpose of any space program should be like any other science program, to make the unknown known and to expand the horizons of human understanding.
Frankly, if the meteor is coming in 2035, my opinion is that it's pretty much too late now. Get out your sandbags and automatic rifles and prepare for the armageddon (not the movie!).
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
4x more likely to hit then in 2035. Impact risk
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
/)
Watch what you say, or you'll end up in Gitmo for threating the president with all the other freedom haters, you freedom hating hater of freedom.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
I'm not much of a paraskavedekatriaphobe, but if the probability of it missing doesn't improve, I'm becoming superstitious.
Signature.
This stuff is way over hyped. All you need to know to deal with such an event I learned in elementry school.
Just watch the vid.
Duck and Cover
Most likely the strength of the material. This determines how much energy is dissipated by tidal forces during the close Earth flyby of 2029. That in turn affects the orbital parameters and hence the possibility of a later impact. The strength of the material (is it solid rock, or a big gravel pile) is very hard to determine remotely.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
But what the U.S. government is already doing may be the very same safety measure that is needed: The renewed interest in a moon base, missions to Mars, etc. This exact same space program, I believe, is being put into effect to install a gigantic weapons system in orbit, very similar to the Death Star in Star Wars. This type of weapons system will be sufficient to blow up this silly little asteroid.
There are about twenty years left to prepare. NASA, you can rest assured, will come up with all kinds of devices to blow this thing out of the sky. And I'd bet you that the government, with all its supercomputers and whatnot, knows exactly when and where this thing is going to strike, and they're not just sitting around waiting for it to happen.
In the meantime, I know I'll be stocking up on canned foods and bottled water, and I need to buy more ammo for my handguns. If this thing starts coming down in my back yard, I'll shoot at it myself. Or I'll shoot at any looters that come around looking for trouble.
* I spelled "nucular" correctly. It's spelled according to the pronunciation of the guy I elected.
60.000 years ago something like this hits somewhere on the American continent, killing lots of people. Humanity wouldn't be wiped out. The people living far away from the impact wouldn't even know.
This thing hits New York or Tokyo today, you think you wouldn't care ? Even if you aren't directly affected or anyone you care about is, think about the economy. We aren't self sustained hunters living far away in small groups anymore. Sure, humanity would survive, but would suck loosing your job because the economy took a hit now wouldn't it ?
There is plenty of time now. NASA has all the time in the world now to develop a new super secret shuttle, and train a small flight crew. Then they will have plenty of time to hire a rag tag bunch of wise cracking oil drillers to send on said super secret shuttle, while first stopping off on Mir to visit with a crazy cosmonaut and refuel. Once they approach the asteroid, despite all their natural personality classes, they will come together and drill the required distance to the center of the asteroid, deposit a nuke or two, detonate said nukes, thus splitting the asteroid in half and getting each half to go its own seperate ways... and then Morgan Freeman will make a public speech glorifying the heroics of this intrepid band, and we will get to see hollywood make movies about their journy and adventure... oh wait... that already happened. Damn... guess we are fucked then.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Parent post is currently at +5, Funny.
Where's the "Ironic" meta-moderation option?
How's my typing? Call 1-800-eta-shut
Komodo Dragon vs. Sewer Rat.
Round 1. Fight!
Crunch
Komodo Dragon wins.
Fatality
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
NOT EARTH, that's where I keep all my stuff!!!
All done? Ok, now take a big freaking cinder block, stand on your toilet and drop it on the little plastic guys. Ok now that's a bit of a bloodbath, sure. Set 'em up again and then lob the cinder block into the bath tub. See what the problem could be here?
So if the asteroid hits the ocean, not only will lots of people be killed, but you'll also get in trouble with your wife/parents/room mate for making a huge mess. Go figure.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While you're right that Hubble wouldn't be too useful for tracking this asteroid, Hubble is perfectly good for looking at things in our solar system.
There is no need for humanity to have Mars colonies, or an extensive off planet presence for civilization to survive even a dinosaur killing scale impact. Think Cold War era undeground shelters, long term survival planning for large numbers of people, caches of tools, technological implements etc, could be stored away in dispersed caches. Carefully storing up large quantities of survival foods, seeds etc could assure that civilization survives. I'm a big booster for space exploration and colonization, but I've always thought this to be a bit of a BS. train of reasoning. Now using this space program to divert an asteroid is clearly better than hunkering down and digging in. However I really think we could dig in and survive even a big one with 1950 technology.
And what if it hits in the ocean?
Lot more water out their covering much more of the earth than land.
Two thirds of the earth is water so a water impact is more likely than a land impact. In such a case it would suck to be living on an island or any of the coasts in the body of water it hits in because of the resultant Tsunami.
Just a thought.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
For a frame of reference, I Gigaton of TNT explosive yield is about the size of 20 Tsar Bomba class nuclear explosions . If the asteroid was kind enough to hit us somewhere on land and thinly populated, such as the Sahara Desert or Siberia, the main effect would be a volcanic winter, such as what happened after the explosion of Santorini, in about 1650 BC or Mount Tambora in 1815 . Not a lot of fun, but civilization would probably go on as usual for most places.
If it hit in the middle of the ocean, a Tsunami could conceivably wipe out many of the major cities on the Pacific Rim or Atlantic and European seacoasts. Tens of millions could die, and many of the developed world's major cities would be laid waste. Whole countries would be crippled, and the ensuing chaos would disrupt world trade, and potentially destabilize entire regions.
A direct hit on a major population center, such as Southern California, the area around Bejing, China, or Bombay, India would cause millions of casualties and huge suffering, but the effects would be local enough that the rest of civilization would find a way to get by, even if important industries were wiped out. Such a hit would be a relative longshot, but could happen.
The Earth Impact Effects Calculator lets you calculate the destructive effect of various asteroid impacts.
Seastead this.
It looks like we won't have to put in overtime on that 2038 Bug w00t!
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
There will be no eulogy. Humanity will die quickly.
Denial will reign, as no preparations are done to evacuate the planet. Some will say there is no way to evacuate everyone. Others will say there's nowhere else to go. The real thinkers will know, if we had started years ago, we would have had a chance.
Most will die from the intial impact.
The impact will crack the planet's crust, resulting in volcanos, earthquakes, and tsunamis, which continue for years.
Many will die due to the dependance on transportation systems, or more specifically the failure of them.
A very few will survive in the cold dust and ash filled atmosphere, through the shaking ground, and giant destroying the costal areas. They will survive for many months on their preserved food reserves, and filtered air. Alone, they will consider themselves the lucky ones.
In the end, none will survive.
Many millennia later, other civilizations will have grown in far outlying areas of the universe. They will look at the dry and barren planet, covered by rocks and dirt, and say "nothing could have ever lived here. It's always been a dead planet"
Eventually, despite taunts, archeologists will find disputed traces of life on the planet. Some artifacts will be found. They will be found frozen in the ice of the polar ice caps, or burried in the sands of the vast deserts. Still others will be below hundreds of feet of dirt, on the iced tops of frozen oceans.
The artifacts will be carefully examined for many years. There will be many theories to what they are, and what the markings may mean. Could there have been life on this far distant planet? Could a civilization have thrived in this desolate place? Maybe these creatures could be a clue to our ancestory?
In the end, their markings will be considered random discolorations. The artifacts will be labeled as "common rocks", and thoughtfully put into storage well away from public sight.
No, as egotistical as we are, there will ne eulogy. There will be no memory of anything we've accomplished. We will be part of the dust on a barren planet, spinning slowly around a dying star.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The Overrateed/Underrated mods are a little interesting.
:).
If you read the Mod FAQ about them (last bullet) you'll see that you can get some odd (but unlikely I guess) combos like +5 Flamebait (that would be cool though
Also, and I don't know this for fact but I've seen others discuss it, if you mod using Under/Overrated too much, you may eventually be given fewer/no mod points. The reason being is that Under/Overrated mods cannot be metamoderated so you get trolls with mod points using them to mod people down without valid reason (political, whatever). There's some big discussions about users getting hit by tons of Overrated mods because they have enough Foes with mod points. Basically there's no way to "balance out" Under/Overrated mods.
Anyone know more about this?
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Not that I disagree, but damn...
Perhaps someone should read a little less Nietzsche.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Speculation here, but likely what ever condition we have on earth after an asteroid impact would still be better than the current conditions on the moon or on mars. If we can design a self sustaining mars colony, we can probably design a self sustaining post apocalype earth society as well.