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Fifty Meter Asteroid Might Hit Earth In 2098
eldavojohn writes "The Bad Astronomer brings word of an asteroid discovered with a tiny chance of hitting Earth. While it's only 50 meters wide, it could have the impact of a 20 megaton bomb. It's still twenty million miles away so if it hits us, it won't happen until 2098. The real story here is how a remarkable telescope, dubbed Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System, that went operational in May found its first potential target in our growing impact alert system for Earth."
don't care.. sorry..
"...might... ...tiny chance... ...could... ...if..."
When my Mayan calendar runs out in just a few short months?
"Bomb the rubble", Mr. Asteroid!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
(emphasis mine)
...
He's going to be a lot of fun at parties towards the end of 2012
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Thankfully most of us will be dead by then.
Free Martian Whores!
First, let's figure out what this "Nature" is and what it wants. Then, let's stop it in its tracks!
We'd better freeze Bruce Willis, just to be sure.
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
Well, Bruce Willis' head in a jar at least.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Now about that asteroid, sounds like a problem! Quite a pickle.
If we launch Rosie O'Donnell into orbit now, her gravitational pull will divert it away! Yay!
IPv4 address should run out by then, or not, things will be hotter, or colder, social security may have crashed, or not, the USA will be a socialist nightmare, or not, God will make a sudden appearance, or not, and the Beatles may reunite, or not.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I hope by that time we have an army of Super Soilders in Iron Man Suits that could take care of that nasty asteroid.
An impact by something like that is about the same as exploding a 20 megaton bomb.
So yeah, bad.
Wiki:
The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the "Tsar Bomba" of the Soviet Union at Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961, with an estimated yield of around 50 megatons.
So this impact would be 40% of the Soviet test. How badly did the Soviet test harm the Earth?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
If the astronomers issue press releases like this every month, what happens when an asteroid really comes close?
Well finally some good news after all this doom and gloom lately.
Hope it hits something that needs to be hit and solves some sort of a problem of that time.
You can't handle the truth.
Who wants to bet we won't do anything about it until late 2097? Probably be a big issue in the 2096 elections and then congress will be paralyzed by partisan divisions for the first half of 2097. Only the rapidly approaching 2098 mid-terms will force them to focus on the, also rapidly approaching, killer asteroid.
We've had one. Ronald Reagan.
And the discussion is about an Asteroid, Limbaugh will be dead by 2098 so who cares?
It's this kind of short-term thinking that will result in the destruction of the human race.
Absolutely right, emphasis on the tiny chance. Where are my mod points...
U+F8FF
Well, I'm guessing it isn't on a direct course for Earth, and is traveling through the solar system on some eccentric orbit around the Sun. Also, once it gets here (if it gets here), it will accelerate both as it gets closer to the Sun's gravity well and as it gets closer to Earth's gravity well (the latter especially as it enters the atmosphere).
If it is headed directly for Earth, though, like "They're on a direct course for Sector 001," we're in trouble.
I bet there will finally be some flying cars by then...
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Bellus is approaching!
From the summary:
Which sounds impressive - until you realize just how empty the Earth really is. Across probably 80% of the Earth, a 20 meg explosion will produce few (if any) casualties. Doubly so since that size range is likely to breakup and deposit most of it's energy in the upper atmosphere.
Phil, you've done lots of good stuff, but you're just reaching for the hits and ad impressions with this one.
Twenty megaton blast? Meh. We've seen worse.
Of course, I'm sure where it strikes will make a bit of difference.
Happy people make bad consumers.
20 megaton? Hell, we did better already. Let's just hope it doesn't hit some crowded area.
Today countries all over the world cling to ethnic and religious differences as primary societal foundations. As long as that is true we will have never ending war. This asteroid is a gift of a single unifying foundation for all of humankind to unite around. Working together to deflect this asteroid will diminish those cherished divisions along ethnic and religious lines. Once we are done, the young generations will see no reason to go back to hating each other.
Let's see, 4/3 times pi times 75' cubed... 1,767,146 cubic feet of asteroid. At 62.42 pounds per cubic foot at STP, that much water would weigh 110,305,245 pounds. The asteroid density is probably considerably higher.
But even if it isn't, anything weighing 110 million pounds, hitting the Earth at 26 MPH, would saturate pretty much every seismograph on the planet. Sure, some of the material will burn off in the atmosphere, but Earth's gravity will compensate for the lost mass via acceleration.
it will accelerate both as it gets closer to the Sun's gravity well and as it gets closer to Earth's gravity well (the latter especially as it enters the atmosphere).
I rather think it will decelerate when it hits the dense atmosphere, but your point still stands.
telescoped [tel-uh-skohp-dee] noun, a process that runs in the background waiting for incoming photons. ... found its first potential target."
Usage: "here is how a remarkable telescoped
Given the rapid improvements we are likely to see in anti-satellite weapons in the next few decades, I doubt asteroids of that size will be any significant threat by then so long as we know about them in advance. Its small enough to blow up. Bigger asteroids, or ones we don't catch till a day before, are the ones that will kill people. Even if its solid iron I imagine we could nudge it offcourse with a handful of well aimed rockets.
If you wait for there to be a present danger, you drastically reduce your options for preventative action. Even a 50 meter asteroid is MASSIVE compared to anything we have in orbit and it could take decades to design and implement a response capable of deflecting such an orbit.
If I'm still alive then, I'll head to the expected impact site. Best funeral pyre ever!
Or just a journalist that doesn't know anything about orbits and misunderstood the information he was given.
A "gram of TNT" is defined as 1 kcal, or 4.184 kJ. So a "ton of TNT" is a million grams of TNT, or 4.184 GJ, and 20 megatons are about 84 PJ.
And every president since has been more showman than leader.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I mean, someday. But probably not from this. Most of us will be dead from something else long before.
Best Slashdot Co
These types of general warnings have been going on for a while now with no fear or panic from anyone. If nothing else this brings up a potential test bed for trying any solution we have to this problem. These kinds of solutions don't just roll out over night.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Who knows, we might actually have half of the space technologies in that movie available in 2098 if NASA keeps up it's stellar pace of innovation.
Leave Paris alone, can't you see she's suffered enough.
Well, Bruce Willis' head in a jar at least.
To get to the asteroid well ahead of impact, we have to send Bruce Willis' head in a jar right now.
I wouldn't say HW Bush, Clinton (first term) or GW Bush were showmen.
Clinton went that way in his second term at times, but in the end, following the Impeachment, tried to settle down and establish a legacy, by attacking Serbia and then trying to get Israel-Palestine hammered out.
HW Bush should have been a little showman and he would have won reelection in '92 and W never had the public speaking skill down to be a showman.
They JUST found this thing. The amount of data available to determine it's orbit isn't enough to know exactly where it is going. HOWEVER when they dig up some old sky photos they will find earlier positions of this thing. The more earlier data points the better they will be able to predict it's path. Usually this means that the odds of an Earth impact will go down. It's happened before with other newly discovered objects.
"And every president since has been more showman than leader."
Yes, but not Mr. Reagan... a man who spent the entirety of his life making films in Hollywood. No sir, not a showman at all.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
I still have 88 years to invent warp drive :)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
You won't see alerts on each one. This is the first one from this telescope, and they're pretty happy about it.
The way these things are done is that any discovered small bodies are found, solved, and stored in a database (the aptly named Small Body Database at JPL for instance). If they are classified as potentially hazardous (the formal definition is passing within a certain distance of the Earth's orbit I believe), then they will be tagged as such.
Small body survey instruments will then be tasked to check up on them every once in a while. Every measurement improves our knowledge of the bodies trajectory significantly. Its likely that this particular asteroid will be measured again in a few years, and that those measurements will let them refine the trajectory estimate to a point where we can say with certainty its not a threat. All of this goes on without much need for media attention.
However, if the process leads to something that is actually a real threat, more targeted follow-up investigations will refine the estimate further. If it is a real threat, you'll see much different media coverage than you do here. While the press may sensationalize, they still include those words like 'small chance of impact'. Finally, a mission will be launched to stop it. Fortunately, for something like this, with a small body and much more than 20 years of warning, you could deflect it for ~$300M easily. Quite frankly you need the same hardware to narrow down its trajectory that early, so by the time you find its a threat, you can already start mitigating it. If these class of bodies are common enough, you could reuse hardware and probably bring the costs down ~$100M.
HW was a weak showman but also a weak leader, so I think that counts. Clinton was always a showman, and quite a good one. W was pure PT Barnum, he actually had people believing that he was a Texas cowboy and not a Connecticut Yankee. "There's a sucker born every minute" is the only way to explain Bush's two terms.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The /. summary reads " It's still twenty million miles away so if it hits us, it won't happen until 2098". This statement seems to imply that because it is 20 million miles away it will take 88 years to get here. That implies a very poor understanding of basic math and science skills. 20 million miles is just not that much in terms of astronomy. The earth is about 93 million miles from the sun, and covers a distance of over 300 million miles each year as it falls around the sun. 20 million miles would not take this rock 88 years to reach us, the real issue is that its orbit and the earth's orbit don't intersect until 2098. Until then the rock may be closer or farther than 20 million miles from us, the 20 million is just a distance it was away from us at one time.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Well, I'm guessing it isn't on a direct course for Earth, .
Duh! It is not on a direct course to Earth. It is on the galactic superhighway that happens to pass through the Solar System. The planned highway notification has been filed long ago in Alpha Centauri. You would have know if had cared enough to look.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
20 megatons is not a very powerful explosion. Didn't the Russians explode a 57 megaton thermonuclear device back in 1961? Apart from nuclear fallout, nothing particularly catastrophic had happened. Since most of our planet's surface is not populated, the odds of an asteroid hitting a populated area is not very high.
So, our children may witness a 20 megaton explosion in some remote location. Not a big deal.
Couldn't you have used just the Unit System the whole world uses???
By that logic they should have also written it in Chinese, the most popular language on the planet. However, /. is U.S. centric and so using miles is perfectly rational. It might have been better to not give a measurement is meters. but those of us in the U.S. are not as up tight about that sort of thing as some people. Now excuse me while I open another 2 litter Coke.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Even if this asteroid did impact the earth, the impact would still be smaller than the yield of the 50 megaton blast produced by Tsar Bomba in 1961. So as long as it doesn't impact any populated areas, we should be fine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
TFA says its 20 million miles away as if that's a lot. Typical meteor closing speeds are in the ballpark of 50,000 mph, so 20 million miles (or km) is nothing. It's 2 weeks. It's not going to hit any time soon, not because it's 20 million miles away, but because it's going to go make a bunch of orbits around the sun, and so are we, and in oh, 80 years or so, our orbits might intersect again after we've both traveled many billions of miles more.
The asteroid was partially ferrous in the movie... maybe some innovative use of magnetization and such? ;)
It kinda makes a difference as to whether or not it will hit the earth or break up first.
Now if its 50 meters of plutonium that would suck.
Can it not be that all politicians are showmen on some level and that when a given politician wins, he's convinced a plurality of voters that he is the best of bad choices (and various other voters that he is a good choice)?
we have to send Bruce Willis' head in a jar right now.
I for one am really quite OK with that, I don't think it is being used for much of anything right now. Somebody go grab the head and we'll find a rocket to juice up someplace. I'm pretty sure one of the pickle jars from a restaurant will work, I'll see if I can find one.
Ronald Reagan was an entertainer? Does it count when you don't know you're doing it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The Hiroshima explosion was about 15 kilotons, and it managed to destroy some substantial portion of the city. If 20 megatons is a good estimate for the energy of this thing... well, it'll be bad even if it falls at some distance from a city. If it fell in the US anywhere east of the Mississippi, there'd be a huge number of casualties. So no, not world destroying, but if it hits somewhere even moderately populated... yeah, bad.
i plan on being dead by then...
At those speeds, at any reasonably steep angle of incidence, the atmosphere will cause a few seconds of heating, fire, some ablated material, but the bulk of the meteor will be almost unimpeded when it impacts something solid or liquid.
20 megatons, however, would only be a terrible disaster if it hits a densely populated area. If it's rural or completely uninhabited, it will have the global effect of a nuke test of that size, minus the radiation, i.e., it will be news but not a noticeable change to the planet overall. And if it hits deep water, it might not leave a mark on the planet other than its own debris.
Yes -- better start planning now for the heat-death of the universe!
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
As long as Chuck Norris is alive, earthlings need not worry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtQPBHhiAQI
... which movie? Doesn't Paris always get hit?
Nobody is panicking, no one is running around with their hands in the air.
Stop exaggerating to make incorrect predictions.
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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I was thinking recently that we were lucky that most of the ecosphere-killing events in our history were astoundingly long ago and that our local space should be pretty clear by now. And then I realized that the dinosaur extinction event that happened 65 million years ago took place when the Earth was about 98.6% as old as it is now. If the Earth was now a day old, the dinosaurs were wiped out at 11:40PM. Suddenly those past catastrophes seemed not as comfortingly ancient.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"It's still twenty million miles away so if it hits us, it won't happen until 2098."
The Earth covers twenty million miles in 13 days.
Perhaps it won't hit us until 2098, but this has nothing to do with being 20000000 miles away.
They way things are headed, who knows? I live in NYC and another attack is always in the back of my mind...sucks.
how bad is it that my first thought was "Cool!" ...
I'm astronomer, I've been waiting to be relevant to the safety of humanity for a while...
"sometimes he felt that his whole life was a dream, and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
That is what the US public seems to want.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Monkeys might fly out my butt!
Kilgore! Great you're back.
Now where's Laszlo Toth?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
... Working together to deflect this asteroid will diminish those cherished divisions ...
You will have to wait for a different asteroid since this one is "only 50 meters wide". At this size it could be safely nuked so its more likely we'll be upgrading nuclear devices and their delivery systems to reach and intercept such a small fast moving target. Numerous nations can manage that on their own.
we will have converted its mass into computronium anyway.
Have I mellowed? :-)
I do remember you looking into this, and our "chat". You used the specific legal term "real persons" vs. merely "legal persons". I'm not liable to forget...
Thanks for the link. I suppose that there is a lot to mine here. Do you have favourites?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The last time I caught Plait living up to his marketing gimmick, it was also about asteroids. He fell into the common trap of starting with the descriptive statistic (an asteroid of X size has hit every Y years on average) and assuming the predictive (last one hit Z years ago so the next one is due in Y - Z years). He should know better. These objects are independent. One has nothing to do with another (unless the happen to bump each other). If one hits today, the next may hit in a billion years or tomorrow. While you *can* make an average out of X events in Y years, it tells you nothing that can be used for anything.
This time it has to do with reporting science vs. reporting news. This NEW system has found one object that its calculations suggest something about. How accurate and precise is it? That can be estimated but can't be proven without replication and comparison with other instruments. And apparently if it has been, they haven't arrived at the same conclusion. This rock does not appear in the SENTRY data as displayed on NASA's NEO Program impact risk tables, not even as an only recently observed object, as of 27 Sept. It's not among the objects removed from the list either, so the teams contributing to SENTRY haven't seen it or the data associated in order to check the validity of the instrument, much less the claims. Things are not as PANStarrs says, or they're making claims without corroboration.
There *is* an object with a 5.5% chance of impact in 2095 -- 2010 RF12. But it's a whopping 7 meters diameter. And having been observed for a whole 3 days, that probability is extremely likely to fall drastically. That one object kicks the total cumulative impact probability up over 2% for the next century, but only for now. The cumulative will probably fall right back to the 1.5% before this object appeared.
But as for 2010 ST3, nowhere to be found. Real astronomers should know better than to announce something from a new instrument as though it's a conclusion. At best they have a data set for the SENTRY people to check over and verify their measurements. Other real astronomers should call out the ones who make such claims. Bad astronomers, masquerading as bad science writers, obviously would rather pretend to refute some aspects of the implications without bothering to talk about things like validity, replication and responsible reporting.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Exactly. Even if it's unlikely to happen, we still need infrastructure in space to deal with it if it does, or to facilitate interplanetary(stellar) shipping on every other day of the year. Plus a backup planet to trade with...
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
We don't need planets to trade with (yet), just asteroids to mine. There's tons of asteroids out there filled with valuable metals, and unlike planets, they have no significant gravity well that requires fuel to get into and out of. Even better, mining asteroids doesn't result in environmental devastation like mining does on Earth. The technology to go to asteroids and mine them for profit and resources is the same technology needed to steer asteroids into safe orbits to protect our planet from impacts.
did I say planet? I just meant off-world source. I'm a huge proponent of asteroid mining for those reasons, plus individual asteroids can contain upwards of a trillion dollars of recoverable resources.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.