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New Asteroid Becomes Earth's Biggest Threat
inexion wrote to mention a story on PhysOrg stating that we're all doomed. "A space rock capable of sub-continent scale devastation has about a one in 1,000 risk of colliding with Earth early next century, the highest of any known asteroid, watchers said on Thursday. The rock, 2004 VD17, is about 500 metres (yards) long and has a mass of nearly a billion tonnes, which -- if it were to impact -- would deliver 10,000 megatonnes of energy, equivalent to all the world's nuclear weapons. Spotted on November 27 2004, VD 17 was swiftly identified as rock that potentially crossed Earth's orbit, with a 1 in 3,000 risk of collision on May 4 2102."
For anyone interested in the hard numbers, here's NASA's impact risk summary of 2004 VD17.
For those like myself who prefer pretty pictures, here's the 3D orbit diagram of 2004 VD17 (Java required).
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I'm sure everyone has seen the movie Armageddon. Is drilling even an option in real life? Should we fire some nuclear warheads at it to try and change it's path?
I don't know much about the science of this but I have always been very interested in what we would do about this. I saw on the Discovery channel a long time ago that we could do something like shooting a laser at it to try and break it apart as well as some solar sails. They also mentioned placing some rockets on an astroid and moving it.
Now I'll be dead by the time this thing gets close enough. Should we just assume we'll have better technology then and fire some photon torpedos at it?
Let's drill out every bit of oil and dig up every bit of coal and force feed the economy into olympic level steriod consumption. We'll revoke all the anti-pollution laws. We'll ignore global warming, planing to use the newly generated riches to get off the planet just before the asteriod wipes this shithole out.
What do you think ?
Today is March 2, 2006. Our government defines 15 months as "swift"?
They should be able to calculate the exact spot on earth and the exact time it's going to hit. They're NASA for Christs sake
"The rock, 2004 VD17, is about 500 metres (yards) long" Since when are Meters and Yards same?!?! 500 Meters is more like 550 Yards!
Oh no!! Earth is going to be destroyed by VD!! Blame the damn liberals!!
BREAKING NEWS! A newly found asteroid does not present a threat to Earth!
The piece of space rock that has no chance of colliding with Earth any time soon has been prompty dubbed Benevolent by astonomers and journalists everywhere. In an interview a well-known scientist states that Benevolent is the first astral body found in the last decade that doesn't pose a threat to our mother planet, and hopes that more funds will be raised to learn the secret of this 'space phenomena'.
In other news, there are 723 remaining asteroids of different sizes on a collision course with Earth that still have a less than one-in-million chance of causing the death of all life on the planet until the end of the year.
Film, of course, at 11.
I'll go for the 1 in 3000 chance. I don't like the 1 in a 1000 chance. WTF? It's one or the other, right? Great editing Zonk.
Anyone have the number for a team of the world's best deep core oil drillers?
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
By now we have what, 30? 40? Asteroids about to destroy us.
10% difference. Hence the "about". Ah, and to be a pedant prick:b tnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?&q=1+meter+in+yards&
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
And so NOW how do you feel about our ability to calculate probability ?
"NASA Scientists reveal same computer used for ill-fated Mars Orbiter now used to compute asteroid orbits. Announces probability of collision with Earth to be 'like, maybe, we dunno. Kilometers, miles, who the hell understands all this metric crap anyway ? Please just increase our budget and we'll stop trying to scare you !"
Doom Doom Doooooom
Yesterday it was mind control sharks, and today its collision course astroids. THis is getting to be a who's who of bad movie plots. What's next? A small group of hackers take down The Man? A government copmputer becomes hell bent on Global Thermonuclear War?
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"10,000 megatonnes of energy"
I'm pretty sure they mean the energy equivalent of 10,000 megatonnes on TNT, which is only 465 kg of energy in terms of E = mc^2. Still, that'll hurt more than a snowball...
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
We only have 96 years to save ourselves!
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
There's just one big problem with hitting it away: if we guess wrong on the mass of the asteroid, there is a good chance that we could actually hit it into a more direct collision course with Earth. We're better off letting it swing past us. Knocking it off course might work this time, but since its orbit is left to question, the next time around it may hit us for sure, with nothing we can do about it.
Of course, there's also the option that we just split it into more targets, that we either have to nuke or will hit us and also do damage. So basically, if it's gonna hit, then we're screwed.
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and spewing dust and rock into our atmosphere.
Heck, the effects of global warming are probably bigger.
Unless the asteroid hits a densely populated area of the earth, like China, or India. If it hits Australia, well, not much impact on earth population.
Besides, in 2102 I'll be dead. My head will be in a jar, recounting how our civilization failed to aliens from another planet.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This could be a blessing in disguise, if the composition of the rock is largely metals rather than being just stone - it could force us to intercept it and mine it for the resources to avert it, forcing us to develop the technology and skills needed to mine other asteroids.
Also - a large impact would lower temperatures a lot....
www.eFax.com are spammers
There's a slightly less alarming article on New Scientist, where the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program suggests that this risk posed by this asteroid is likely to be significantly less than 1/1000:
"The most likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring it back down to a zero."
Slightly more disturbing is his second comment:
"We're more likely to be hit between now and then by an object that we don't know about."
Yesterday it was mind control sharks, and today its collision course astroids.
I think it's a clever plot by the mind control sharks to draw off attention from them and make us pay attention to the killer asteroids while they usurp control of our world leaders.
Anyone notice that the entire staff of the white house is wearing I Love Sharks pins today?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
These asteroids have a way of correcting their course once NASA gets more funding.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Worked for Gundam. And I would think by that point we would have gotten our collective heads out of our asses to be making a legitimate play at space settlements.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
We'll just preserve Harrison Ford and Aerosmith in cryostasis until 2100, and I'm sure they'll be able to take care of that asteroid no problem.
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Forty seventh post!
My UID is prime. Hah!
I thought these asteroid things had been roaming the glaxaly for thousands of years? Even if they meant to say "newly discovered", that still isn't quite right. The thing has been being tracked for over a year now.
Anyway, it says the impact wouldn't happen till 2102. I plan to be quite dead by that date from normal causes so it's not my problem:P
It will burn up in the atmosphere. Only those huddled in the bomb shelter will be killed when the small ball strikes the shelter directly.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
This is a 2 on the Torino scale:
A discovery, which may become routine with expanded searches, of an object making a somewhat close but not highly unusual pass near the Earth. While meriting attention by astronomers, there is no cause for public attention or public concern as an actual collision is very unlikely. New telescopic observations very likely will lead to re-assignment to Level 0.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
its so simple...just let something explode next to it and alter its flying curve. even a veeery minimal change leads to a drastic alteration in the end. no asteroid can match the size of the problems we have on earth.
...will be no bigger than a chihuahua's head.
Why do they even bother releasing this to the public. All it does is lead to mainstream journalists disasterbating. I mean, yeah, it's interesting to NEO experts and various nerds, but the general public, which has almost no functional science education, either gives 1/1000 of a rat's ass or panics unneccessarily. I know I harp on this every time, but please, give it a rest. Wake me when you find something that has at least a 1% chance of hitting sometime in the next century.
I think someone forgot the conversion number to put inside the parenthesis as yards does not equal meters at a factor of 1:1 ... Should've been, 580 metres (638 yards). Also, 500 is not correct as according to the JPL, the diameter is 580 meters.
OK this is a little freakish...
A 15 month delay in notification for an extremely unlikely event which might happen (if at all) 1176 months from now is not a big deal.
This is roughly equivalent to your wife finding out yesterday (March 1, 2006) that there is a 1 in 3000 chance that she might blow $900 on a spa trip with her mother for Mother's Day (May 14, 2006) and waiting one day to tell you about it.
Potentially catastrophic? Sure. Something to be worried about? No, because the overwhelming likelihood is that as the date approaches, the probability of the event actually taking place will drop to zero, just like all the other "near misses" that never happened, like the proposed mother/daughter cruise to Turkey, or that "girl's night out" to Las Vegas they keep talking about.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
doesn't it?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Time to quickly put on our fancy suits and power up our rockets. We have a mission to complete! We have a world to save!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
How did "1 in 3,000" get to be "about one in 1,000" in the first sentence? I don't think those are in the about range.
11-08-2104
Bah. By "early next century", I plan to already be dead.
The only real downside for everyone else is that they won't be able to bring Bruce Willis out of retirement to save the planet.
That green slime had it coming.
I'm not gonna be alive when it hits, so I'll just let my children handle this one.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Torino scale (maximum): 2
A two is the bottom of the category "Meriting Attention from Astronomers", above "Normal" but below "Threatening". From the site, about a two on the Torino scale:
A discovery, which may become routine with expanded searches, of an object making a somewhat close but not highly unusual pass near the Earth. While meriting attention by astronomers, there is no cause for public attention or public concern as an actual collision is very unlikely. New telescopic observations very likely will lead to re-assignment to Level 0.
If there's a clearer way to say "stop panicking everytime we see something", I'm not sure what it is.
if it crashes into the ocean, we already have trained sharks that can cut it up with laser beams. and the earth's surface is like 70% water, so i think we're safe.
In this talk, http://seminars.moose.cc/salt-0200403-schweickart/ salt-0200403-schweickart.mp3 former astronaut Rusty Schweickart elaborates on the asteroid threat over the next 100,000 years. It's very interesting. Also available in ogg http://seminars.moose.cc/salt-0200403-schweickart/ salt-0200403-schweickart.ogg.
Almost the perfect comment.
However, you forgot to mention that poor people, women, and children will be the most affected.
sigs, as if you care.
Aha!
I'll leave in my will that my great-grandkids, when/if they are born, should be given ample money to purchase helmets to be used in case of asteroid collision.
There, problem solved.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I'm not current on my space science, but would something like this be able to be knocked out of it's orbit? It seems that a 580m object could be moved out of harms way with a large enough blast.
I doubt an "Armageddon" style mission would work, but from a physics point of view, could this actually work?
But I feel it does warrant one single question: To where shall we go?
Just deep space past the Ort, using antimatter warp engines and hydrogen collectors like on Star Trek? Terraform a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri and deal with the mind worms whilst fighting amongst ourselves, again?
Or some other option which you have deduced yourself, and felt it was unwise to share with the rest of us unwashed primitives?
Armageddon outa here before that bog old rock hits!
The asteroid's orbit goes out past Mars, and in almost to Mercury. The delta V required would be probably be comparable to just take a hunk of rock from Earth's surface to L4/L5; I'd guess within a natural magnitude, and maybe in favor of lifting from sea level.
Admittedly, it's easier to justify using quick-and-dirty Orion-style nuclear propulsion to move stuff when you stay outside a biosphere. OTOH, lifting from the lunar surface would be way cheaper than either plan, and also not involve a biosphere.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The suns gonna burn out in 4 to 5 billion years so unless a bunch of egg heads get together and figure out how we can get off of this rock onto another suitable rock in a resonable amount of time, it doesn't really matter whether this thing hits us or not. Always look on the bright side kids :)
If the odds were 1 in 1,000,000 (EXACTLY one in a million) I would have been concerned, for as Pratchett's Law (named after the great living sage Terry Pratchett) wisely states, anything whose possibility is one in one million (EXACTLY one in one million) always happens.
That not being the case then we're left with the far more optimistic Murphy's Law, a sure relief.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
May 3rd 2032 Thats when it seems to come closest. (Pulls out a bottle of shampain) Welp...it was good while it lasted.
Doesn't anyone know their history? The Mayans said December. Estimates are normally 2011 or 2012, so this sounds about right.
So, it's bound to hit the earth, and it's GROWING!!!
I'll be under my bed if anyone needs me.
On the other hand, maybe we need more stories about asteroids potentially hitting the Earth. By time we've seen a few thousand people will finally catch on to the fact that these figures are bogus and we'll stop getting them.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Why did the author(s) have to bring up dinosaurs?
Although there is evidence of an asteroid impact around the time (meaning within a few million years in geologic terms) of the dinosaur extinction, there is no strong evidence linking these events. The extinction has also been related to volcanic activity, climate changes, supernova radiation, fireball explosions, or meteors.
Apparently, creating an impression of impending doom sells more online publications (?), or at least produces public support for expensive research.
Walk for your lives!
According to James Lovelock, civilization will fall in the next 100 years anyway as the effects of global warming will totally change the climate on a world that wasn't ready for it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Has anyone besides me ever noticed that every asteroid that almost hits earth would have done so with the equivalent to all the world's nuclear weapons? I think we need a new unit of measurement here. This asteriod will expend 1 wnw of power when it hits earth. Much easier to read.
The way things are going these days we will do ourselves in long before this asteroid dings us.
...this civilization is killing itself anyway.
Lousy and greedy politicians without any real visions and greedy magacorps with only one vision. This is not the world our parents and grandparents has worked and fought for.
Somewhere in the late 70-ties ot 80-ties something went terribly wrong... and now we are anslaved by our own greed.
--
"I've got a dream" a wise man once said... sadly it is not a better world today, just different.
We just need something really big that we can send up to hover around it for a couple decades to suck it into our orbit where it can hang out with the moon to temper our tides a little bit... Then next time one of these rocks threatens us, we can just send our big pet-rock out for some more orbit modification therapy.... We don't need no steenking bombs when we can just use our friend Gravity.
How exactly is 10,000 megatons equal to all the world's nuclear weapons? A little research on wikipedia will show that there is estimated to be at least 29,000 nuclear weapons in existence today. Even if you assume that they only release the energy of the least powerful nuclear bomb, which is 9 megatons, that would put the energy released by all the world's nuclear weapons at around 261,000 megatons. That's an extremely generous underestimate, too. I'm not positive, but I think the average nuke is about 50 megatons, which would put the total at 1,450,000 megatons. Where did they get the 10,000 number from?
Doesn't anyone know their history? The Mayans said December. Estimates are normally 2011 or 2012, so this sounds about right.
...
I thought the original Toltec predictions had it on July 4th, 2002
Dang, I've been using the wrong calendar!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In particular the whooshing noise they make as they cruise past.
Betcha the governments of the world will leave it till the last possible moment, to a crappy rocket built to obselete specifications by the lowest bidder.
As copied from a previous slashdot comment:
Homer: "So there's a commet. Big deal. It'll burn up in our atmosphere and whatever's left will be no bigger than a Chihuahua's head."
Bart: "Wow, dad. Maybe you're right."
Homer: "Of course I'm right. If I'm not may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow."
Moe: Quick... lets burn down the observatory so that this never happens again!!
The real asteroid/comet threat is that we can't possibly track everything that could hit us. If we're tracking it, I don't consider it a problem.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
Anyone notice that if you set the orbit simulation from the link to the date in the article, the asteroid's not even close to Earth?
Napalm is nature's toothpaste
Its a pretty handy metric to compare the asteroid's impact to all of the earth's nuclear weapons, considering that they have a much better chance than 1 / 1000 of going off before it gets here.
WTF?
A-Bomb
Input diameter 580m, density Dense Rock (3000 kg/m^3), impact velocity 21.36 km/s, and pick your own impact angle, impact site and observer's distance from ground zero.
It doesn't really look all that bad. The nuclear war comparison is misleading: sure, it may be energetically equivalent, but a nuclear war would spread that destruction worldwide and target cities deliberately, quite aside from the fallout. It'd wreck a city and severely damage a smallish country, but a subcontinent? Not convinced.
And taking into account the low probability that this will happen at all, I wouldn't call this 'Earth's Biggest Threat'. That would still be either the United States or Russia, as I'd reckon that the chances of one of those two going nuclear on somebody over the same timescale is rather greater than the chances of this rock hitting us.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
On May 4th 2102 Asteroid (2004 VD17) looks like it is about 2AU away from Earth based on this site: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?sstr=2004+V D17&group=all&search=Search
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Escape velocity is defined as @sqrt(2GM/r). G is 6.67e-11 m^3 s^-2 kg^-1. M and r (hald the diameter) for this asteroid are 2.7e11 kg and 290 m, respectively.
So, Ve for this asteroid is = @sqrt(2*6.67e-11*2.7e11/290) = 0.35 m/s
This number is a *lot* lower that I would have guessed without having done the calculations.
I stand corrected... if you can land any kind of functioning acceleration system, achieving escape velocity for material pitched off the asteroid will be no big deal, even if you want to use really big rocks.
The Navy's rail gun gives a muzzle velocity of 2500m/s for a 20kg round. A system operating at even a fraction of this power level would be able to fling even very, very large rocks off at escape velocity.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Did anyone else notice that according to Nasa's Orbit Simulation Earth and Asteroid (2004 VD17) will collide on May 2, 2032?
I for one, welcome our new 2004 VD17 asteroid overlords.