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

Date of impact

[thewiz]

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.

Re:Date of impact

[superpulpsicle]

Not to worry. As I learned from the movie Armageddon, we can just sent a couple construction workers to the asteroid, plant a dynamite on the asteroid itself.... blow it up before it hits earth. They'll have no problem volunteering as long as they never have to pay taxes again.

Orion Project

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Orion Project

[c0d3h4x0r]

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?

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:Orion Project

[delong]

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.

Re:Orion Project

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Orion Project

[Ubergrendle]

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.

*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~~~

2037...

[athakur999]

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.

Other effects

[plover]

I wonder if anyone's thought about the effects if the asteroid doesn't directly strike earth. Could it cut a swath through the geosynchronous satellites, destroying one, two or dozens directly? Might it perturb their orbits enough to destabilize the whole lot of them?

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.

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:Other effects

[maotx]

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

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.

I know what to do, are you with me?

[Tibor the Hun]

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?

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

Not enough time for counter-measures

[jim_v2000]

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.

Re:Not enough time for counter-measures

[grozzie2]

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.

Check out the timeline for the us space program, and you plot the trend.

5 may, 1961 - Freedom 7, first manned sub-orbital flight
20 feb, 1962 - Friendship 7, first manned orbital flight
21 Dec, 1968 - launch Apollo 8, first manned lunar orbit
21 July, 1969 - First manned lunar landing
12 April, 1981 - First launch of space shuttle
1 feb, 2003 - shuttle fleet grounded

There isn't much advancement in this curve, and there is a whole lot of retreat. A once proud program, that had the capability to put a man on the moon, just last week, outsourced to get one of thier folks into low orbit. That is a rather telling 'detail' as to just how much advancement is really happening.

Technology may be advancing, but I wouldn't be counting on anything the usa is developing to be useful in dealing with an asteroid collision scenario. The current administration has priorities higher than space travel, and, the debts they are running up to achieve those goals, will prevent future generations from persueing any meaningful space program during the timeframe in question.

Practice makes perfect

[matth1jd]

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.

Not a huge amount of energy.

[Eunuch]

The Asian earthquake was some magnitudes greater than that. Of course it's all in how the energy is dissipated.

Re:Good!

[Momoru]

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.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

How do we know that? Who says they didn't? All of human history would barely register on the fossil record. An intelligent saurian race could well have evolved, had a catastrophic world war, etc. and we'd be none the wiser... except maybe a large extinction event...

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.

Bunkers?

[John Seminal]

The exact effects of any impact would have varied based on the asteroid's composition, and the location and angle of impact. Any impact would have been extremely detrimental to an area of thousands of square kilometers, but would have been unlikely to have long-lasting global effects, such as the precipitation of an impact winter.

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.

Re:Bunkers?

[NightWulf]

This reminds me of that episode of the Twilight Zone, where this block is having a block party, and then they believe the world is going to end with an attack from Russia. The entire episode revolves around the fact that one family has a bunker, and the other neighbors on the block start fighting to get in. Eventually comparing how they should survive over anyone else. The key to having a bunker is to not tell a soul, keep it from the family too if it's at all possible, so no risk of your kids blabbing it.

NASA's impact risk summary

[Aspasia13]

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.

Re:Good!

[Camel Pilot]

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.

Re:Good!

[zapadoo]

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.

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.

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!"

Actual energy yields:

[product byproduct]

0.865 gigaton for 2004 MN4 impact
vs
32 gigaton for Indian Ocean quake/tsunami, 2004

Re:Actual energy yields:

[imsabbel]

Difference:
The energy of the MN4 impact would be delivered into the athmosphere, a VASTLY less stable enviroment than the earth mantle.
Not to mention dust|chemical alteration problems...

Re:Good!

[AKAImBatman]

without some new propulsion technology i doubt even by 2029 we will have this option.

New propulsion technology? You mean like Nuclear Pulse, Nuclear Thermal (also in Trimodal for low atmospheric work), Nuclear Salt Water, M2P2, and hundreds of other mature, semi-mature, or proposed methods that we haven't used because it's "too damn expensive to get off this rock"?

Propulsion is *not* the problem.

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!

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:Good!

[delong]

The problem with those designs is legal - the US, Britain, and (through the former USSR) Russian are prohibited by the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty from exploding nuclear devices in space. That prohibition may also cover engines like Nuclear thermal if it releases radiactive material. I'm all for nuclear propulsion, but those pesky international treaties get in the way.

Re:Good!

[TripMaster Monkey]

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?

Re:Good!

[AKAImBatman]

That prohibition may also cover engines like Nuclear thermal if it releases radiactive material.

That's why the modern Trimodal TRITON engine *doesn't* release any materials. And once you get into space, it doesn't really matter how many nukes you blow up, as long as the debris is on an escape trajectory.

None the less, my point holds. The problem is *not* propulsion.

Re:Our Eulogy

[nmb3000]

sheesh, it's funny people, Funny!

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 /. stories are most of the reason I read comments. A real knee-slapper deservers a bit of karma methinks :)

Re:Good!

[LaCosaNostradamus]

"I hope this rock hits our planet [since it] 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."

I strongly doubt that. Such a catastrophe will push many governments and citizen groups over the edge of accepting Fascism as a survival tactic. Within such regimes, the ability to look outward to the liberties of space is very repressed. In effect, there will always be a constant reward for killing people and taking their stuff ... and that environment isn't conducive to all the social prosperities and stabilities that we relied upon to even have a space program in the first place.

2004MN4 would merely whack Humanity back to the social depravities of the Middle Ages. It will take many hundreds of years before cultures rediscover the wonderful benefits of letting your neighbor live long enough to invest in -- and profit from -- your enterprises.

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!!!

Re:Run for the Border!

[Greyfox]

An ocean hit would be worse. Ok, here's a scientific demonstration. Go into your bathroom and fill the bathtub up. Now put a bunch of little plastic guys on the bathroom floor. Go on, I'll wait for you to set it up...

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.

Re:Let's make an Ark B

[flewp]

I can just see it... the MPAA will try to sue the asteroid for violating Deep Impacts copyright.

Re:Our Eulogy

[JWSmythe]

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.

Re:Our Eulogy

[nmb3000]

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?