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Simulation of Close Asteroid Fly-By
c0mpliant writes "NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have released a simulation of the path of an asteroid, named Apophis, that will come very close to Earth in 2029 — the closest predicted approach since humans have monitored for such heavenly bodies. The asteroid caused a bit of a scare when astronomers first announced that it would enter Earth's neighborhood some time in the future. However, since that announcement in 2004, more recent calculations have put the odds of collision at 1 in 250,000."
That means we won the global armageddon lottery?
* O - Earth
|
| ---- Asteroid
|
...that the odds were 4 in a million...
looking at the simulation, the amount of energy required to bring this into any orbit at all seems really really really high
apparently there is a better chance of this happening than getting struck by lightning. http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/probability.html what happens when a slider tries to visit that world?
Hmmm . . . a giant harpoon, tethered by a long nanotube to the Earth. We could nail that asteroid, like Captain Ahab did to Moby Dick. We could travel back and forth on a space elevator. The more alcohol I drink, the better this idea sounds!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The people responsible for that simulation have been sacked.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'll give you either odds that the meteorite hits, I'll put your winnings in the mail the day after it hits.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Then just change the gravitational constant of the universe....duh
Earth will have been destroyed 17 years before this happens when Planet Nibiru crosses our orbit in 2012.
Actually I'm pretty sure that's a standard sci-fi technique. Send the big mining robot to the asteroid. It then starts processing the asteroid and ejects the waste material in order to produce thrust to head towards Earth (aiming for an orbit rather than a collision :).
Actually, the standard Sci-Fi technique is:
- Send big mining robot.
- Big mining robot passes through exotic magnetic field and develops conscience.
- Big mining robot invades Earth; possibly to mine it.
Your vish is my command:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zvCUmeoHpw
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
One can download Celestia and make your own simlation! It's not rocket science. It's not, it's astrophysics, and some astronomy math to get the orbit to work. But there is enough data on the net to recreate this... and then tweak it for the earth shattering kaboom!
I wish that someone would make a game of this... where you need to send up a vehicle, bump and asteroid and watch the change. Give us all a chance to crowd source the various "solutions". Learn just how friggin tricky this would be, how long it would take, how little effect we can have. All of this talk about "capturing this asteroid" on this thread alone is sad. The amount of energy in an asteroid's kinetics is astounding. This topic needs a dose of realism.
A POX on Bruce Wyllis!
Q, stop posting on Slashdot. Or is the Continuum that boring these days?
In that animation, the asteroid was apparently deflected by the earth's force field. Either that or I just don't understand what's going on. Can someone kindly explain what the video is showing?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I'm surprised the original post didn't link to this article from Sandia National Labs. There is a pretty interesting analysis of what would actually happen if an asteroid did hit (complete with nifty graphics).
From the Sandia article:So what would happen during such an impact, really? According to the simulation, the impact would vaporize the asteroid, deform the ocean floor, and eject hundreds of cubic miles of superheated water vapor, melted rock, and other debris into the upper atmosphere and back into space. Much of the debris would then rain down over the world for the next several hours and also form a high global cloud, says David Crawford of Sandia's Computational Physics and Mechanics Department. The shock wave from the impact would level much of the New England region. The heat would incinerate cities and forests there instantaneously. The global cloud would then lower temperatures worldwide, and a global snowstorm likely would ensue and last several days to several weeks, initiating a "nuclear winter" that would create more hardships for earth's inhabitants.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Thank god, more rocks on the moon. What a prize.
Moonfall by Jack McDevitt. Also some SyFy presentation of EarthStorm.
The laws of thermodynamics are against you.
And art deco was in the 20's and 30's.
No, it doesn't
However, the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
We already have Armageddon and Deep Impact.
Actually this pass (the 2029 close approach) is not a concern at all. The error brackets are brought in well enough that we know it will not impact the Earth, but will pass well within the GEO belt. What we don't know, and when the actual 1/250000 impact risk is, is the next pass, in 2036. If the asteroid passes through what is known as a 'gravitational keyhole' in 2029, the effect of Earth's gravity will actually swing the asteroid back around on an impact path in 2036.
Right now we can predict where Apophis will be in 2029 fairly well, within a few 10s of kilometers I believe. When you're talking about hitting the Earth, a thousand kilometers or more is good enough precision. The problem is that that during that flyby in 2029, any small uncertainties magnify by a few orders of magnitude, so when you carry it through another 7 years of orbits the uncertainty is 10s of Earth radii instead. Add in uncertainties about the effects of solar wind and the Yarkovsky effect and it just gets more complicated.
Additional computing power isn't really needed for this problem. JPL already has the Standard Dynamic Model they use to model all bodies in the solar system accurately, and the current hardware is perfectly capable of handling the problem.
What is needed to refine and understand the trajectory is more observations. Radar range and range-rate measurements, along with optical angle measurements are fed together to estimate the current position and velocity, and using estimation techniques you can estimate your uncertainty as well. In order to bring down the uncertainty, we need more measurements that give a better statistical sample and allow you to have more confidence in your averages. Sadly most people don't have radio telescopes are large enough optical telescopes (20"+ preferably) to really make a good observation. For that reason, it will probably take till 2013, the next close approach, to get a new set of data that will make it easy to determine whether there is a 2036 impact risk.
It is certain not to hit the moon on this pass, just as its guaranteed not to hit the Earth. Uncertainty of the asteroid's position is within 10s of kilometers, more than enough to make sure theres no risk of that.
If it were to impact the moon, we can determine the relative Delta-V it would apply. The velocity of the asteroid relative to the Earth moon system upon entry is approximately 5.9 km/s, according the JPL NEO page, and has a mass of ~2.7e10 kg. The Moon is moving at ~1 km/s and has a mass of 7.3e22 kg. Assuming an inelastic collision, and that the impact is along the velocity vector (where it will have the largest impact), and applying conservation of momentum, you get a whopping 1.8 nm/s velocity change. So basically, the asteroid is far too small to have any kind of noticeable effect on the moon. Looking at the surface these kind of events happen all the time (cosmologically).