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Could a Meteor Have Brought Down Air France 447?
niktemadur writes "In light of an Air Comet pilot's report to Air France, Airbus, and the Spanish civil aviation authority that, during a Monday flight from Lima to Lisbon, 'Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,' the Cosmic Variance blog team on the Discover Magazine website muses on the question 'What is the probability that, for all flights in history, one or more could have been downed by a meteor?' Taking into account total flight hours and the rate of meteoric activity with the requisite mass to impact on Earth (approximately 3,000 a day), some quick math suggests there may be one in twenty odds of a plane being brought down in the period from 1989 to 2009. Intriguingly, in the aftermath of TWA flight 800's crash in 1996, the New York Times published a letter by Columbia professors Charles Hailey (physics) and David Helfand (astronomy), in which they stated the odds of a meteor-airplane collision for aviation history up to that point: one in ten."
Yes.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If meteors can be so dangerous to airoplanes, why we don't see them hitting cars or buildings more often?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
No.
Let P1 = the probability of a human pilot, mechanic, or inspector screwing up.
Let P2 = the probability of a meteor intersecting an airplane midflight
P1 is much, much, much, much, much, much greater than P2.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Glad they hang out on Slashdot.
Fair?
Finding the REAL causes - through speculation and investigation - are the route to improvements that prevent this sort of thing from again happening.
I can think of no more fitting tribute to the departed ones, and their families.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
So any guess is equally likely/unlikely until there is more information. I think even a lot of the 'debris' they've found is probably not from the jet.
They disengaged the main flight control system because they thought it was flying too fast in the turbulence, or was causing too much passenger discomfort.
They slowed down to a very narrow margin above stall speed.
They hit a 100 mph updraft, causing the AOA to go beyond the stall angle.
They went into a high-speed dive.
Because they were on manual backup control they could not exert enough force on the controls to recover before Vne or the flutter speed of something was attained.
Something (wing, tail surface, aileron, spoiler... whatever) tore off.
The resulting asymmetric forces caused a violent departure from normal flight.
At a speed probably above Vne, that resulted in the aircraft structure being instantly destroyed.
This accounts for the fact that there was a an elapsed time of approximately a minute between the first failure messages and the last.
If it had been a bomb, or simple explosive decompression from another source, that time would have been at most a few seconds, and more likely zero.
The crew was struggling, all three physically, to pull the aircraft out of a high-speed dive and nobody had a chance to radio what the hell was happening.
That's my call.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
70% of the earth is water. I would guess 98% of the land is not covered by buildings or roads. So, a lot of things can hit the ground without us noticing.
Without reading the article it almost sounds like the 'ol insurance company trying to play this off as an act of GOD.
Much less liability if it was hit by a meteor than if it was a malfunction, poor maintenance, pilot error, any human caused reason.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
I read somewhere that statistically, airplanes are safer than cars, you're more likely to die in a car accident.
I also read a quote somewhere else of somebody saying "Airplanes might be safer than cars, but I'd rather arrive at my destination with a false sense of security than feel like I've narrowly escaped death."
Also- I personally believe statistics aren't all they're cracked up to be. When I'm in control of a situation VS when I'm not. I think I can personally change my chances of survival in a car by not speeding... Maybe only a few percentage points, but still- statistics are cold hard ideas, but don't account for personal decisions.
Statistically, 1 in X number of men will have a heart attack- but eating healthy and excersizing changes your odds. You're not just a sitting duck, y'know?
Sorry for the rant.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
I don't know what the assumptions were, but it seems to be an over estimate by orders of magnitude. Space, 3D space is really really huge, unimaginably huge. In WW-II they had to protect the lumbering bombers from the swift fighters. So they tried arming a few bombers with very high number of machine guns. Short Sudeland flying boat was actually called a "Flying Porcupine" because of the number of gun barrels sticking out of it. With guns firing at 1000 to 3000 rounds a minute, with tracer bullets, with trained gunners aiming the guns, they still could not reliably hit the fighters. Both Luftwaffe and RAF and USAF independently had to learn the same lesson with very high cost. Yes, meteors could hit an airplane. But if their calculations shows odds of 1 in 20 for the last 20 year period, I am very sure they have over estimated the odds.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I mean, why do we still have to have the black box in the aircraft? Is it possible to radio the parameters continuously and record it on land? Thus even when the plane is lost, the data is safe. What kind of bandwidth is needed to transmit that level of data?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
While I don't buy it, either, your reasoning is too simplified.
Let P1 be 0.1
Let P2 be 0.0001
Even though P1 is much greater than P2, P2 will still happen with a probability of 0.0001 - it is independent of P1.
So while for every individual event, the probability that P1 happened will always be 1000 times larger than P2, in a large enough sample size you are still very likely to have P2 events.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What you want (and what you are getting with your thought process) is the illusion of control.
We want to feel as if we are in control of our destiny, not handing it over to some faceless being behind a locked cabin door. It doesn't matter if you are the sort of driver that spends more time on the sidewalk racking up points for hitting old ladies; you believe in your heart that you would be better at saving your skin than some highly trained but anonymous professional.
This is also why there is such a huge push against automated driving, not because it isn't safer than letting the average driver control things, but because we as a species have a difficult time trusting in a 'higher power' to save us.
(Incidentally, you probably don't want me to get into my ideas on what the implications this has on our 'need' for religion.)
The modal verb "could," indicates possibility; thus the GP is (trivially) correct.
Or are you denying that it's possible that a meteor strike could take down a commercial airliner?
I read somewhere that statistically, airplanes are safer than cars, you're more likely to die in a car accident. I also read a quote somewhere else of somebody saying "Airplanes might be safer than cars, but I'd rather arrive at my destination with a false sense of security than feel like I've narrowly escaped death." Also- I personally believe statistics aren't all they're cracked up to be. When I'm in control of a situation VS when I'm not. I think I can personally change my chances of survival in a car by not speeding... Maybe only a few percentage points, but still- statistics are cold hard ideas, but don't account for personal decisions.
Your confusing your personal risk assessment (I'm in control vs when I'm not) with actual risks. Yes you can raise your chances of avoiding or surviving a car accident by taking precautions - but the overall risk levels are still vastly in favor of airplanes. People generally feel more comfortable when tehy are "in control" and discount risks (won't happen to me" yet fear much safer things that they feel are out of their direct control. Add to that the rarity of airplane fatalities and so they make the news, heighten people's apprehension.
Bottom line - people are very bad at assess risks realistically; and even worse at probability and statistics.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Those probabilities are incorrect. What we want is P(a plane was hit by a meteor GIVEN that it crashed), not P(some plane in history was brought down by a meteor). These are very different probabilities, and the former is surely much smaller than 1/20.
The following probabilities are all much greater:
P(it was hit by lighting | it crashed)
P(there was a bomb | it crashed)
P(human error | it crashed)
and the list goes on...
Car travel, by contrast, is largely mundane.
I don't know about that. I'm often largely impressed while driving by how innately our ability to control objects moving far faster than we would ever be able to achieve in these squishy shells. It is quite amazing to me that we have evolved the ability to react to things moving far faster than any remote situation that we would ever run into in nature. With modern nutrition the best of the best barely brake 20 mph for short distances, and fast predators are not that much faster. Even heading towards each other we have little need to react at 200+ mph relative speeds but we do have that ability. Not only that we have the ability to control a vehicle as if it were just another leg with relatively little training.
In rush hour it can definitely get mundane, but if you step back and think what wonderful things our brains are then it becomes very interesting indeed.
Nothing I've read or know from flying in the Air Force and working at the USAF Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB indicates this was a collision....with a meteor or anything else.
I personally believe the aircraft encountered weather conditions that Airbus never tested against or thought possible. 100+ mph updrafts, as some have reported, would definitely cause control issues.
By that, if the plane was on autopilot or simply "in trim" and suddenly went nose up, it would have required immediate and CORRECT actions to handle. Having recently read the transcripts of the commuter crash, where the pilots were inattentive, then compounded a stall problem by pitching up, I think the real cause was a combination of events, including pilot error.
If a lightning strike caused electrical and control problems while the pilot(s) were trying to recover from a sudden attitude change, they were screwed. Going into a flat spin at 35000+ feet at 400 knots would have ripped the airframe to pieces. Given the reported debris field, and no apparent evidence of explosion, I'd bet that's what likely happened; unexpected event combined with control/system problems resulted in an unrecoverable spin and the aircraft came apart well before impact.
I am my own gestalt.
Someone from the 1700's? who likely died within 10 miles of where they were born?
trust me- the car would NOT be mundane to them.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
> Statistics are cold hard ideas, but don't account for personal decisions. ...
>
> You're not just a sitting duck, y'know?
It's exactly the attitude you've so nicely expressed which keeps people from living happier, healthier, and safer lives. Since perceived control is *so* much more important than outcome, you'd rather run riskier odds on the hope that you've got some special stuff in you that will make you an outlier in the statistically probable outcomes of your actions.
The fact is, that on the road (or on a bus, or on a bike) you *are* a sitting duck to an inattentive, incompetent, or otherwise overly aggressive driver... regardless of your actions. The reason we even have most traffic accidents is that many drivers overestimate their abilities and underestimate the risks involved with their actions. When you get on the road, you're out there with other multi-ton vehicles where there is no barrier of entry (other than a key or a hotwire job) for control of those vehicles.
What the statistics actually show is that if you replaced all of the hours you spend in a car on the road with hours in a plane in the sky, you're chances of being injured or killed are still *lower*. So, if you take how many hours you fly during the year, your chances of dying on a plane are just about zero. Got it? So stop spreading the fear and ignorance and enjoy the plane ride.
Sorry for the counter rant.
statistics are cold hard ideas, but don't account for personal decisions.
Go explain that to an actuary.
When I'm in control of a situation VS when I'm not.
Your control of a situation simply might not be as firm as you think.
You're not just a sitting duck, y'know?
Sometimes, you are.
True, but the concept of air travel shrinks the planet way more than cars, especially if both are revealed at the same time.
Also- I personally believe statistics aren't all they're cracked up to be. When I'm in control of a situation VS when I'm not. I think I can personally change my chances of survival in a car by not speeding... Maybe only a few percentage points, but still- statistics are cold hard ideas, but don't account for personal decisions.
Control is an illusion. There are so many variables when driving in a car that you have no control over despite your best efforts.
What if the brakes spontaneously fail because of a manufacture defect?
What if you get blindsided by a Mac truck when you are going through a green stop light?
What if you get a head on collision of a drunk driver who crosses over the median?
And I could sit here all day talking about instances were you get into a car accident where you had no control or chance to prevent it because it just wasn't your fault and you had no time to act defensively.
Well I suppose you could control it by just not leaving the house or always taking the bus but that would be impractical.
The point that is even if you mitigate by driving carefully and defensively, you would still have a astronomically greater chance of dying in a car wreck than dying in a plane wreck even if you flew every day of the year.
The reason for this is that aircraft have a pretty good system of traffic control while local traffic does not and people aren't very good at controlling how to deal with traffic even though they like that sense of control
Of course if they ever automate cars in the future like they did with the DARPA Grand challenge, I'd argue that driving in a car would be more safe than flying in a plane.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I enjoy flying simply because the idea is so absurd.
So true:
"Everything is amazing, nobody is happy..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETv3NURwLc
Airplane segment starts at 2 minutes in...
"You're sitting in a chair... In the SKY!"
Feeling of helplessness greatly influences perceptions of safety of an airplane.
In case of a car, you can actively increase your safety, by...driving safely. Granted, sometimes you are at a mercy of some moron, but even then - you can often recognise such situation soon enough, or at least point at the other guy. Furthermore, in relation to "you can always blame the other guy", most morons on the road think they are great drivers. And this is all about perception, of safety in this case.
But the planes are different. You're just a cargo. When things unfold you have no idea who/what is responsible and can activelly increase you chances (proper position and evacuation) only in part of the cases.
And people hate beeing reminded how small and fragile pieces in the grand scheme of things they are.
One that hath name thou can not otter
It's so strange. About 40k traffic fatalities in the US last year. That is over 100 per day. A 9/11 every month. Nobody cares, it doesn't even make the news. Yet people can't shut up about 9/11 even a decade later. People freak out about swine flu. People are up in arms about airline safety.
I guess lots of people are bad at math. Look at the popularity of gambling!
Maybe people should be encouraged to take a probability and statistics course in high school.
Man, you really need that seminar!
As someone who has done a fair amount of driving, I don't think "not speeding" is your best protection. In fact, the best is moving with the flow of traffic. If traffic is going 85, and you are doing 65, guess what? You are now a rolling road block, and causing an unsafe situation as all the rest of the traffic has to adjust to you.
Your best protection is to practice what the MSF calls SIPDE. And I do mean practice, its really about a state of mental awareness more than anything. SIPDE btw stands for "Scan Identify Predict Decide Execute"
Scan to see whats going on all around you. In front, way up ahead, to the sides, to the back.
Predict... what are they going to do? What is the situation going to look like 1,2,3,5,6 seconds from now?
Decide... Should I maintain course and speed? Get over to avoid a dangerous situation?
Execute... There are few things more dangerous than second guessing your moves. Once you have decided on a course of action, you do it. Your situation is changing moment to moment, a decision made 3 seconds ago may not be valid now. Decide based on whats about to happen then act before it happens.
People like to blame speeding or all manner of things. Speed differences are not what causes accidents. Its what causes situations that are likely to cause accidents. Any time you bunch cars together you decrease reaction time windows, and you decrease paths to safety (outs). What really causes accidents is failure of scanning, identification, prediction, decision, and execution.
The guy absentmindedly going down the road at the speed limit is just as much part of causing these situations as the people absentmindedly going as fast as they can. The problem isn't the speed per se, its the combo of speed, lack of options, and lack of paying attention where it matters.
The only difference is, the arbitrary "speed limit" is "the law" so only the person going over it (which is usually the majority of people on the road) who gets blamed. The guy going the speed limit causising a flow restriction for everyone else never gets stopped, he is totally unaware of the fact that he is causing a dangerous situation by not flowing with the traffic.
Though speed limits are set as much by the desire of the state to bring in money from tickets as anything else. They regularly set it lower than the average person feels safe traveling on a road, just so they can send their tax collectors er I mean the States Finest out to collect their taxes er I mean, punish the dangerous criminals who are speeding.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
the odds of an accident for a typical driver may be X, but if you drive safely, or very rarely, or only in optimal conditions, etc., then your personal risk will be less than X...
That may be true, but I think drivers (especially people who would rather drive than fly, for this reason) find false security in their perception of control. It's easily forgotten that there are OTHER DRIVERS out there, and sloppiness by any one of them can result in fatal car crashes. Unlike airplane pilots, drivers, including yourself, aren't required to undergo thousands (number pulled out of my ass, but you get the point) of hours of supervised training. In fact, many drivers, unlike (probably) most commercial airplane pilots, have no formal training, and (potentially like some airplane pilots) may not be in a sober state of mind as they drive.
Also consider that its quite possible to cause an accident in which you don't die, but somebody else does. I personally don't consider that to be a preferable outcome.
How often are you a passenger? How often are you driving with passengers, the safety of whom you're responsible?
So, I don't believe people who say they feel safer driving than flying because they're in control. I think its more that they feel safer because there's a (perceived, and maybe actual) sufficiently wide spread between the number of car accidents in total vs. the number of fatal car accidents. For planes - if you fall out of the sky, it seems very unlikely there are going to be any survivors.
Oh, also, I want to throw out there that people also may not trust the bureaucracy. Its one thing to hear that a pilot has X thousand hours of training or experience, and trust that pilot personally (as one might trust a friend or acquaintance who is driving), but its another thing to trust the bureaucracy responsible for training, regulating, monitoring, supporting, etc. the pilot.
Plus, Terrorism.
I agree that it's amazing to think about how fast we can go in cars. I make a trip in less than a day that would have taken weeks or months to make before trains. That's absolutely amazing.
However, if you look at the way that humans control cars, they're basically controlling a machine that moving over 60 mph like it's moving at less than 30 mph. The interactions with cars around you can be seen as you going (your speed - his speed) mph around a stationary object. The entire system can be modeled (and is, at least by my brain) as the slowest moving car in the vicinity being stationary and everyone else moving in relation to him. Curves cause problems, but the faster you are the more gradual they are, so they can also be treated as a more-sharp turn taken at slower speeds. For the most part, controlling a car going 75 mph is the same as one going 20 mph; the trouble comes when people don't keep a large enough margin of safety and something breaks the general rules that allow you to treat the situation that way.
Exactly, I don't understand why churches needs lightning rods if they have nothing to hide from God.
There's a simple explanation, they fear Thor.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
I'm oprety sure by the time you drove that person to the airport, they would be so amazed at everything else that air flight would just be another crazy thing.
Think about it:
This is my home? AM I rich? no it's only 1800 Dqr. Feet.
This switch gives us light. Too bright, here let me dim it.
This knob here? it gives us clean safe hot water.
This magic box with he funny green lights? cooks my food in 90 seconds.
Hey, do you need to lie down? you look a little pale. Here let me put this blanket that heats it's self for you.
What's they? your hot? ok I'll push this button and nice cool air will circulate around the house.
You feeling better? good.
Hey, lets get in this metal carriage and go to the airport. It's 30 miles away, we will be there in 45 minutes.
When he gets there and sees an airplane take off his head would just explode.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If I told someone in the 1700's or 1800's that many people across the country often travel 50+ miles a day to and from work and home, I imagine they would be very awestruck.
Maybe... but perhaps that'd be because they're simply bewildered as to why everyone doesn't just move closer to where they work 8P
Are you insane?!
I think wasting 24 hours, going through airport security multiple times, sitting in an uncomfortable stuffy hot screamy cabin for 8+ hours, all the waste and waiting and bullshit and potential delays, all in order to attend a 1 hour meeting is the height of byzantine ridiculousness.
Man, you really need that seminar!
This is of course for U.S. based airlines. There are some places where the airlines are notorious for poor maintenance. However, it seems that I read not too long ago about some major U.S. airline getting fined for improper maintenance records, so it does happen here occasionally.
There are also problems with undiscovered design flaws. This also does happen, but is rather rare.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
Any report that ends with "pilot error" isn't worth the electrons it's printed on. Some airlines have dramatically lower pilot error rates than others; why? Pilots, like any other piece of the system, do not operate in a vacuum. Any investigation that determined that a crash was caused by a hydraulic failure, for example, would then proceed to investigate why the hydraulics failed. Were they built properly originally? Maintained correctly? Inspected properly? Used within design specifications? Similarly, when you find pilot error to be the cause, you should ask why the pilot made a mistake. Was he overworked? Distracted? Managing cockpit resources poorly? If so, why? In general, you can find a deeper cause for pilot error. Sometimes the NTSB / FAA keep investigating, sometimes they don't. Many of the underlying causes for pilot error involve things like airline policies, pilot cultures there, etc. And the airlines have the ability to affect those, for better or worse. Unsurprisingly, not all airlines are the same when it comes to safety and pilot error rates.
Driving skill or not, it's important to understand that the odds always win. In terms of airplane vs. car travel, unless the difference in risk is extremely narrow, the slight percentage that better driving gains you is probably still not enough to make it safer than an airplane.
Consider that while an airplane crash is big news, it's big news because its uncommon. When I commute to and from work, there is at least one accident of some form on the side of the road, and I only live 12 miles from work. Sometimes those crashes are very significant indeed.
If you are betting on your driving skill to make it safer for you to drive than take a plane, you are making a bad decision. Whether or not you have overestimated your driving skill is beside the point. You have picked a higher risk activity, and over time, you have increased your chances of an accident significantly. Results-based thinking means that since you have succeeded at a risky activity in the past, that you will continue to do so, even though the odds against remain the same. Eventually, it is almost certain that you will fall prey to that risk. In fact, the only thing that will prevent you from hitting that risk is another risk whose consequence happens sooner.
> (days or even weeks of travel historically)
I concur, I noticed while watching a history show about the Medici that one of them spent a full month to travel from Florence to Rome back in the 14th century or thereabouts. Google maps says Rome to Florence is: 284 km â" about 2 hours 51 mins
What if you get blindsided by a Mac truck when you are going through a green stop light?
It's probably because Apple made a truck with only one pedal. Such a senseless decision :(
i'm much more interested in the green stop light.
My method of avoiding accidents is much more simple and much more effective than yours. I simply assume that every driver around me is going to do the most asinine, idiotic, and jackass thing possible. When I come to an intersection, I assume that at least one idiot will run a red light or that one moron will lane change in the intersection. Hell, I avoided an accident last week when I assumed that the jackass sitting to my left in a two lane turning lane would turn wide and end up in my lane, which he did, and I made sure to hold up during my turn so he wouldn't hit me. Of course, then I jacked my high beams and horn at him and then flipped him off. But I avoided getting hit by the moron.
Agreed -- if only there were some crazy invention that allowed us to communicate over long distances without actually having to travel anywhere. Now THAT would change EVERYTHING...
There's a vast difference between our reaction to accidental deaths and intentional deaths. 9/11 was a lot of intentional deaths in a single location by some crazed lunatics. Car accidents are definitely regrettable but aren't considered murder because in the end they are just accidents.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
Interesting point, but most denominations "stipulate" that God does not prevent bad things from happening to good people. Those that believe otherwise, such as snake handlers and anti-medicine cults, may not actually have lighting rods either..
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If your goal is to improve safety, it is not sufficient to find a way to blame the pilot and stop your investigation.
If your goal is to assign blame, then you can blame the pilot and stop. Unfortunately, that doesn't tend to improve safety, which ought to be the goal of a crash investigation.
I think wasting 24 hours, going through airport security multiple times, sitting in an uncomfortable stuffy hot screamy cabin for 8+ hours, all the waste and waiting and bullshit and potential delays, all in order to attend a 1 hour meeting is the height of byzantine ridiculousness.
I like my version, better, given a few recent business trips down to San Diego and back:
--Relax at the airport after a long day of work with a good book and some airport food (on the company card) for an hour before the flight,
--Catch up on some sleep/reading/old Scrapheap Challenge episodes for 2 hours in the air
--Spend the night in comfort in a nicely kept hotel, maybe do some pedestrian sightseeing in the meantime
--Enjoy free soaps and shampoos followed by a continental breakfast along with said book
--Cram a month's worth of discussion into a day of face-to-face meetings, with a team lunch thrown in for good measure
--Resume earlier enjoyment of book, sleep, media, or games at the airport and on the flight home.
Yeah, you can end up being elbowed for half the flight, stuck in security for what seems like an eternity, or simply lost in your destination city, but the experience of travel is extremely dependent on your mindset. I've run into all sorts of problems and hassles while traveling (Was stranded in Houston for 10 hours without my luggage, once... almost didn't make it through customs due to nitpicking another time), but traveling on my own has always been a positive experience for me.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.