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Mars Asteroid Impact More Likely Than Before
sheldie writes "The probability of asteroid 2007 WD5 impacting Mars has been revised following further observations. The chance of impact has increased from 1.3% to 3.9%" This is a follow-up to earlier coverage of this asteroid from last week.
Ok people, the likelihood has tripled!
Taking all bets at 1:25 odds now! Hurry before it becomes even more likely to hit! Lock in your bets early before the odds increase even more! I'll bet you wish you had jumped on those lucky bastards who will be paid out 1:75! Don't wait any longer!
Hey, who says nerds can't gamble?
Decimate is the word of the day. See how many stories you can incorrectly apply it.
That would truly be an amazing event. The science that could be learned in the event of a collision would be massive! I, for one, welcome our planet smashing overlord!
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"BREAKING NEWS! [SFX: Ridiculously melodramatic sounder]
"NASA now says an asteroid impact on Mars is now three times more likely than previously thought.
"At this rate, the impact's likelihood will exceed 150% in just a few days."
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Tell them that if the asteroid just barely misses Mars that its gravitational pull could actually slingshot the rock straight towards earth! You just don't have to tell them what the chances of that are (astronomical would be an accurate value.)
Lets see how many people who failed math we can get to go hide in caves till it passes. :-)
John
thats like a 300% greater chance
See that first picture where the arc of the asteroid makes a flyby right into our orbit, while just passing Mars?
How come the experts cannot mathematically say for certain whether this rock will hit Mars? What's the wildcard in this calculation that injects uncertainty?
Wow, it would be cool to see Mars take a major hit... Maybe it would push enough gas out of the molten part of the planet to produce an atmosphere.
I am fearful for Earth if anything is coming near us... since they can't even for sure estimate if it will hit us a month from impact.
It's a space station!
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
... and... there. We need to put 3 x as much armor on the new rover. Done. Next?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Mr. President, we must not allow a gravitationally slingshotted asteroid cave society gap!
My work here is dung.
Oh god! We're all gonna die!
Wait, what?
Oh. Never mind.
Technoli
As the Bad Astronomer notes, the odds of nothing happening have shrunk from 99% to 96%.
Remember how these things work - they made a few observations, from which they made a cone through which they're 95% (or whatever) sure that the asteroid will pass. Mars filled up about 1.3% of that cone, and so they can say that there's a 1.3% chance that Mars will be hit by the asteroid.
A few days later, with better observations, the cone shrinks, and now Mars takes up 3.9% of the cone. As the cone shrinks, Mars will continue to consume a larger and larger portion of it, right up until the time (maybe) that the cone shrinks outside of Mars and they determine that there will be no impact.
So remember, this is not unusual, and *every* non-impact event follows this pattern: Scientists find potential impact. Impact probability increases. Impact probability increases. (maybe a few more repetitions, too) Suddenly, they decide that it's not going to hit, and impact probability goes to zero.
from Klendathu? /Service guarantees citizenship //Would you like to know more?
That is (roughly) the size of the current transverse error ellipse at the closest approach to Mars, so statistically the Asteroid should pass at least that close to Mars.
(Mars's volumetric radius is 3389.5 km, and 3.9 % probability of impact roughly means that the error ellipse is 1 / 0.039 ~ 25 times the projected area of Mars at the time of closet approach. This ignores gravitational focusing, but this is not too important for Mars.)
So, based on the current error ellipse, not only could it hit Mars, it could also hit Deimos, as the error ellipse is now entirely inside Deimos's orbit.
The satellite is so small, however, that this is pretty unlikely.
I wonder which will be the first of the three Mars-orbiting spacecraft currently active to observe it ? That would help to improve the OD (orbit determination) in a hurry.
Does Hot Fudge Sundae falls on a Tuesdae that week?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Three times more likely?
It's in times like these I wish I were a religious man
*Reverend running wild* It's all over people! We don't have a prayer!
2007 TU24 - approaching
Approximate diameter: 319 meters (H=20.131)
Closest Earth approach: 1.44 LD at 0826 UTC on 29 Jan. -----
Inside ten LD of Earth: 24 Jan. until 3 Feb.
Inside Earth's Hill sphere: 27 to 31 Jan.
Closest Moon approach: 2.20 LD at 1533 UTC 29 Jan.
Data based on: JPL SSD orbit solution #13 downloaded 6 Dec.
based on 87 observations spanning 54 days
Optical observation: observed from 13 locations during 53.8661 days
discovered at 0626 UTC on 11 Oct. by the Catalina Sky Survey
last observed at 0313 UTC on 4 Dec. by the Spacewatch 1.8m telescope
This shows that a rock 319m in diameter will pass by the Earth on January 29th 2008, it's closest point will be about 1.4 times the moons orbit or about 357,000 miles. This is VERY VERY close.
Regards
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
You could just tell them about 2007 TU24 instead:
Approximate diameter: 319 meters (H=20.131)
Closest Earth approach: 1.44 LD at 0826 UTC on 29 Jan.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Well then, it's a good thing we're not living there yet, isn't it ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I wonder what odds the bookies are offering for the meteor hitting one of the rovers.
Get your asteroid to Mars!
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So....
How hard would it be to launch a nuke and hit the asteroid in such a way that increases it's chances of hitting mars?
Of course this would probably cause an interstellar war with the Martians, but still...
. . . on Evil Oil corporations, Big Pharm, and the Republicans yet?
Get to it, / whiners!
Is there any information yet on whether Spirit and Opportunity might see anything if there actually is impact - such as maybe seeing the dust rise or even capturing a glimpse of the asteroid in the Martian atmosphere?
The reason I note that is because if it hits, the predicted time is 2:56 am PST Jan 30.
Note the PST please. Now, that translates to 5:56 am EST, and its going to be well on its way to brightening up for the day here in WV. I had visions of setting up my elderly DS-10 with my Sony TRV-460 hanging on an eyepiece adapter with a 37mm thread and a 25mm eyepiece in the adapter so I could record the event if I can collect enough light to actually do a movie at ntsc frame speeds. That will also put it (I'm making a SWAG here folks) well down in the western sky for me, and thence out of sight, either behind a goodly sized hill to the west or buried in the trees on this hill.
However, I do not know how to calculate this out and confirm it, and I would appreciate it if someone more conversant in orbital stuff could tell me if I have a chance, or would I waste a good nights sleep & probably catch a cold trying?
Thanks.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
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-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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-- Goethe
Having RTFA, the error ellipse is not nearly circular - there is a very narrow ellipsoid that is only 600 km wide and 400,000 km long and
600 km transverses Mars. The error ellipse of course still crosses Mars, but given this error ellipse, it could still pass many 100,000's of km away.
I have to say, though, that having the 600 km wide part of the error ellipse cross over Mars makes me suspect that this object is going to come pretty close to Mars.
Either Phobos or Deimos could also be hit with this error ellipse, although, again, it's pretty unlikely given the small sizes of these moons.
That the probability of the calculations may logically either: increase (so long as mars is a subset of the cone, not necessarily the center) or, ultimately, drop to zero. Of course, since the cross section of mars compared to the scope of uncertainly isn't infinitely small, and other factors are involved, there are some logical situations that would lead to a decrease without totally zeroing.
But, saying that it's nearly certain their estimates will either increase the probability or nearly eliminate it isn't a stretch, depending on how their processes work and the size of the uncertainty 'cone' vs. the cross section of mars (if a cone is an accurate model of how those predictions work, which is how they animate it for the unintiated), it might be a correct characterization..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
To find out if the two will collide, the orbit of the asteroid must be very well determined, and that's hard. Astronomers have to get a precise location of the asteroid as it moves along its orbit, but that's not really possible. There are errors that crop up from measuring it in the images, from distortion in the detectors, atmospheric distortion, and so on. These add together to make the position of the rock a bit uncertain that far in the future.
Reading TFA can be a good thing!
But what about 2007 WD40? My bet is that one WILL slip past us! <grin>
is the tons of utter bullshit that Richard Hoagland will then spew about all the fantastic discoveries revealed by the impact, proving that there was an advanced civilization on Mars, that NASA is suppressing.
Dear Jeebus, please let the asteroid hit the "Face On Mars" dead center, just to piss off that con artist Hoagland.
Thanks!
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The asteroid will bust through the surface crust, exposting Mars' nougatty, caramel-filled center.
Yummy.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
go out to the people of Mars
That's almost 5%!
I'd go to a clinic, if I were you. You know, get checked out.
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"Never tell me the odds!"
"Mars Asteroid Impact More Likely Than Before" doesn't look right. Seems to me the probability hasn't changed at all, in fact the only thing that changed was the precision with which the probability was calculated. Or am I missing something, and should just resume my New Years Eve drinking binge?
January 22nd, NASA announces new information that puts the asteroid's impact within 1 mile of the Opportunity Rover. Calling for the implementation of the "Johnny 5, Stay Alive" emergency exit plan in which the rover will raise it's instruments upward, "scream" in modemspeak, and run like a bitch on fire - away from the projected impact zone.
*FAN FICTION* ...yeah, I'm gonna get back to work now.
"The irony when tending a flock of sheep is the dogs you put in place to protect them are genetically mutated wolves"
While NASA's comet orbit model http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2007+WD5&orb=1 is inaccurate after a few decades, flash forward to September 26th, 2084 when Earth gets fairly cozy, in cosmic terms, with 2007 WD5 by about 7 million kilometers. If the comet does not hit Mars in January, the orbit of the comet will probably change slightly; maybe I get to see some comet on Earth action shortly after my 106th birthday.
Actually, Murphy's law says that not only will the asteroid miss Mars, it says that the asteroid miss will be precisely enough to whip the rock around to a new orbit. One precisely timed and angled to aim it towards Earth where it will impact on some particularly inconvenient location. Like the 2008 Olympics, the city of Jerusalem, or something else of political import.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
... it would dark, and I would most likely be eaten by a grue.
But I will stock up on water, non-perishable foods, and plenty of ammo just in case it hits Mars, throws up a big cloud of "Martian Zombie Dust" which rains down on Earth causing a horrible outbreak of flesh/brain eating zombies.
And people say I am a pessimist!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Unfortunately, they don't tell you everything. Sure there's now a 1:25 chance of it striking Mars, but what they don't tell you is that there is 4:1 chance it'll strike somewhere on Mars' darkside. Only those lucky Saturnian Overlords will get a view of it, and we'll have to pay hefty fees for the copyrighted DRMed videos of the impact. And then only on low-def capable viewers. :'(
We should send some of our ELO defense missiles up there and shove a few more 'roids toward Mars. Hey, if we shoot enough at them maybe we can bust up the planet. Be some great fireworks then.
Oh sure, you say, well maybe one of those 'roids will get shoved the wrong way and wind up wiping out Washington state, but hey, there's no great loss there is there?
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Okay, so how does an asteroid impact on Mars affect Earth??? listen_to_slashdot
Did anyone notice this at the bottom of the page?
Last Updated: NaN undefined NaN
I hope they're better at calculating asteroid impact probabilities than they are at web development...
How in the world (boo, bad joke) could revising a formula change the chance of any occurrence?
The actual chance is the same it was just before the predictive formula was revised. What changed was the predictive formula, not the chance itself.
Typical Slashdot post...