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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
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My wife plays the lottery, my bets are on total annihilation before she wins....
>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
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.
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And a gigantic iron to stand on.
qntm.org
Figuring out the exact speed of an asteroid, relative to us, is apparently a tad easier than figuring out its exact course. According to the data we have, the possible path of the asteriod is a cone.... the earth is inside that cone currently. Earth takes up about 1/45,000th of that cone, specifically. We know when it will get here, if it does get here, with a good degree of accuracy. And we know what direction it would be coming from. So that rules out it landing in, say, Cuba - it would be coming from the wrong direction to hit there at the time of impact.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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.
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.
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"
There's a fantastic animation of this process at Spaceguard's site, just scroll down to the second animation.
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.
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?
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