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Asteroid Highlighted as Impact Threat
Maggie McKee writes "The asteroid Apophis has been traversing the void of space for untold years; in just a few decades time it will make a very close pass to Earth, and could make an unwelcome stop on our planet's surface. Even still, it's nothing to get too worked up about. The 20-million-tonne object has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting the Pacific Ocean in early April of 2036. If it did hit, it could trigger a tsunami that would do an untold amount of damage to the California coastline and many other places on Earth. Despite the low level of the threat, it's still a real enough danger to prompt the United Nations to develop a protocol about the scenario. We'll get a closeup look at the object in 2029, and at that point we should have a better idea of what 2036 will bring us."
We have some drilling to do!
If we determined in 2029 that it was going to hit in 2036, our governments probably wouldn't be able to get their shit together quickly enough to do anything.
untold amount of damage to the California coastline
Cancel that request... nothing to be worried about... nothing to see here. Move along folks..
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
...called Arizona Bay
You need more psychedelic art in your life. rhesusmonkey.deviantart.com
My wife plays the lottery, my bets are on total annihilation before she wins....
Not only did they kill Apophis, they also stopped an asteroid sent by Anubis.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
>We'll get a closeup look at the object in 2029, and at that point we should have a better idea of what 2036 will bring us."
I'll stick a reminder in outlook.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
If it did hit, it could trigger a tsunami that would do an untold amount of damage to the California coastline and many other places on Earth.
DOOMSDAY PARTY IN CHICAGO! WHOOO! *plays Conga by Miami Sound Machine*
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
1. set up an alert system:
>>(green, no asteroid)
>>(yellow, the asteroid MIGHT be near the earth)
>>(orange, be careful when answering your door, IT MIGHT BE THE ASTEROID!)
>>(red, we're already dead from the impact)
2. earmark government funds to buy swimsuits and surfboards for all californians
3. have congressional prayer sessions thanking the intelligent designer for wiping out the seat of all vice
4. only give recovery funds to predominently white areas.
5. Invade iraq in retaliation.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And a gigantic iron to stand on.
qntm.org
Just out of interest: if we don't know whether or not it's going to hit, how do we know that if it does it will land in the Pacific?
I live in Phoenix. I'll have costal property to retire on without moving to Florida! The glass is way better than half full! Come on, baby needs a new beach!!!!!!
Even so, 1 in 45,000 sounds a bit high. I can't claim to know anything about orbital mechanics, but there are other ways to approach the problem. One of them is to look at history- written history, archaeology, and geology. There are no written accounts, as far as I know, of a meteorite causing significant numbers of human casualties, either through an impact or through a tsunami induced by impact. To put this in perspective, earthquakes have killed many hundreds of thousands of people in the past century in Mexico, China, Iran, Peru, San Francisco, Japan, Pakistan and so on; older earthquakes have killed massive numbers of people- often hundreds of thousands- in China, Iran, Portugal, Syria, Sicily, etc. Tsunamis have killed hundreds of thousands, recently in the Indian Ocean; Krakatoa killed a huge number of people when it blew up and created a tsunami. Explosive eruption in Crete seems to have wiped the Minoan civilization off the map. Floods kill people so routinely that it's hard to even keep all the flooding events around the world straight.
What this says is that throughout human history, in terms of natural disasters, the earthquakes, tsunamis (induced by earthquake or eruption), volcanic eruptions and floods have been far more deadly than asteroids and comets. The geological record suggests that at points, asteroid impacts have been devastating enough to destroy most of the existing ecosystem for periods of time (as indicated by the extinction of plankton, plants, and herbivores at the end of the Cretaceous) but that events of this magntitude are vanishingly rare- once every hundred million years or so. Smaller events are a more realistic worry, but even then they aren't that common. I've been to Meteor Crater, in Arizona and I'm sure it was a doozy, and it would have sucked to be within a few miles of it, but Meteor Crater is notable precisely because things like it are so rare. If meteors were that common, we would expect to see a lot more of them dotting the deserts than we do.
I don't mean to put down people who are (for a refreshing change) taking a long-term, big picture view, but I think that there are more commonplace disasters we need to worry about, like earthquakes and tsunamis, which involve more boring, mundane solutions, like good building codes, tsunami warning networks, tsunami evacuation sirens, and flood control.
This asteroid has a Palermo Technical Scale risk assessment of -2.52.
The PTS relates the impact risk to the background risk in a logarithmic way -- that is, the probability of Apophis hitting us is 0.003 times the probability that we will be struck by some other asteroid of equal or larger size first. Or, put another way, yes we should be worried about asteroid impacts, and yes we should keep watching Apophis, but it's not (by our understanding) a big cause to go and panic.
That said, Apophis is the second highest ranked asteroid we know about by the PTS, behind 2007 CA19 at -0.91 (potential impact in 2012). And if it gets the people with the budgets to start considering the problem, that's a good thing. Right now, though, it would seem that our best use of money is to spend more effort looking for asteroids -- so far, the number we find appears to be fairly well correlated to how hard we look, suggesting that we have found a very, very small fraction of the NEOs out there.
Even still, it's nothing to get too worked up about... If it did hit, it could trigger a tsunami that would do an untold amount of damage to the California ... Despite the low level of the threat...
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Apophis is not a doomsday asteroid. It will cause a major disaster for a large area if it hits, but it should not be a threat to the survival of humanity to the extent that we need to build space colonies to avoid eradication.
The object 2007 CA19 has a better chance (as of right now) of hitting the Earth than 99942 Apophis (2004 MN4) does. The former is also about four times larger than the latter and would have more than double the velocity at impact if it were to hit.
Unless they get more precise knowledge of the orbit, intervention right now could be worse than doing nothing. You might, for example, accidentally turn what would have been a near miss into a direct hit. The most useful course of action right now would probably be to deposit some sort of radio beacon on the asteroid in order to increase the accuracy of the orbital measurements.
The MPAA and RIAA will just blame the tsunami on piracy.
"So this is it. We're going to die."
Jack O'Neill can do anything.
Don't worry, if it comes, by then our protective shield of space debris will destroy it before it can enter the atmosphere.
"In God we trust, all others we monitor." -- Unofficial NSA motto
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N17363374 .htm
d ay_040412.html
To put this into perspective you have roughly a 1 in 80,000 chance of dying from an act of terrorism, almost twice the odds that this thing will strike the Earth. Now think about that. The odds of this think hitting the PLANET is greater than any 1 person being killed by a terrorist. Now look back at how much time and money has been spent on combating those that use terrorism to accomplish their goals.
Think about it where our priorities should be.
For reference, Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is about a mile wide and 500 feet deep, was created by a ~66' wide meteor. Apophis is ~450' wide. If another meteor the size of the one from Arizona were to hit a city, which is twice as likely to happen than a terrorist strike, it'd be akin to a nuclear detonation. If something the size of Apophis should strike the earth, well, say goodbye to whatever county (or small state) it lands in.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_mon
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
What this says is that every so often something terrible like an asteroid smacking us does happen. What that means is that if the odds are high that this one will hit us, we should actually focus on planning for it like we do with all the other natural disasters instead of ignoring it because it rarely happens. That's like calling nature's bluff, and nature is quite often a very mean poker player. If we have a chance to save lives in a few decades, why not start planning now? It's not wasted energy when someone's life is involved. We already plan for lifesaving in floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, et. al.. Just add "giant tsunami triggered by an asteroid impact wiping the California coastline clean" to your list.
SRSLY.
In comparison, this thing is guaranteed...
The thing about asteroids and comets is that they are out there in space for us to observe, and we can predict their movements pretty well. That means that unlike an earthquake or a volcano, we can know about an asteroid or comet strike years - even decades in advance. And that means we have time to do something about it. We could actually prevent these disasters. Given that a strike could wipe out the human race entirely, that justs makes it even more prudent to divert some resources to asteroids and comets.
Also, when studying history, don't forget the asteroid that came down over Siberia in 1908. Luckily few were hurt, but if that happened over a major city today, it could postentially kill millions.
Every society on earth has a great flood story woven into their mythology, and many stories of fire and light from "the heavens." Just because they didn't call it a meteorite doesn't mean it didn't happen.
The Tunguska event had the uncanny luck of happening over land and in one of the world's least populated areas. What are the odds of THAT happening again?
>The Tunguska event had the uncanny luck of happening over land and in one of the world's least populated areas. What are the odds of THAT happening again?
something like (1/45000) * (1/10) ?
The coastline might make a break for it first. It might prove necessary to accelerate the asteroid to prevent this.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You worry about those things. Let the Asteroid worriers worry about asteroids. There are billions of us. We can divide the worrying up and not all worry about the same thing. That way when you figure out a way to save us all from earthquakes, you won't immediately drop dead of ebola.
Seriously, if somebody doesn't get a plan for dealing with asteroids, mankind will end. No Earthquake, tsunami, famine, plague, global warming or war will do that. It isn't a question of if the asteroid is coming, but when. It's not likely to hit today, and on the 112th day of 2076 it's equally unlikely. In the fullness of time it's not just likely, it is certain. There is no more "realistic" worry than the certain end of all mankind. If the next dinosaur killer arrives and we have no plan for preventing it or dealing with it, or at least have an offsite backup, there will be no second chance; we will have had our go at Darwin's test and failed. Please -- for the sake of the children -- leave the asteroid scientists to their work.
Oh, and if you figure out a cure for tsunamis that doesn't involve moving our huts further from the sea do please let us know.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
One of them is to look at history- written history, archaeology, and geology. There are no written accounts, as far as I know, of a meteorite causing significant numbers of human casualties, either through an impact or through a tsunami induced by impact.
Well, the dinosaurs would have left written accounts, but they were all dead.
More seriously, we do have historical record of even minor meteor showers causing casualties, the biggest reportedly in Chiing-yang, China in 1490, in an apparent Tunguska-like event, killing a possible "tens of thousands". Mostly its onesies and twosies, though. Tunguska itself, detonating in the middle of nowhere, Sibera, injured the 20 people who were within 50 km of the blast, and killed two. Thousands of reindeer were killed.
Should Apophis (or something that size) hit Earth, the energy release would be about 10 to 20 times that of the Tunguska or Arizona impacts (those were in the 10-20 megaton range), and about 2 or 3 times that of the Krakatoa explosion. Since 3/4 of the planet is water-covered, odds are that most large impacts hit water and cause damage through the result tsunamis. (And yes, we get a few in the several-kiloton range each year - mostly in the middle of nowhere - as has been documented by surveillance satellites.)
Sure, Apophis is no Dinosaur Killer, but it could cause quite a mess depending on if and where it hits.
-- Alastair
They don't know exactly where it will intersect Earth's orbit, but they do know, within an hour or two when it will cross our path. At that time of day (or night, whatever) the Pacific Ocean will be more or less facing the direction the asteroid's coming from. Given the size of the Pacific it's reasonably likely that if the asteroid does hit Earth, it'll be somewhere there.
Scientists may also have an idea of the latitude or longitude it will hit, narrowing the window further.
Cogito, ergo sig.
The Tunguska event had the uncanny luck of happening over land and in one of the world's least populated areas
It also happened several decades before a nuclear power could misinterpret the event as a first-strike. AFAIK, North American monitoring can tell the difference between something like an asteroid vs. a missile, based on trajectory. They probably coordinate with other types of observers too, since they're monitoring things like space junk already. The irregular streak of a comet or asteroid is very different from an incoming missile. I'm not too concerned about a comet explosion in California being misinterpreted. OTOH, what if that system fails somehow, and all they have to go on is "we have reports of a huge explosion that just wiped out LA". How will they respond?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?