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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..."
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
If we launch Rosie O'Donnell into orbit now, her gravitational pull will divert it away! Yay!
Steamboat Willie will still be copyrighted.
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.
Let's see,
Take the year 2098... subtract the left wing anti-Christ(43)... subtract the right wing anti-Christ(44)... carry the asteroid(1)...
2012!!! THE MAYANS WERE RIGHT!!!!
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
How you measure the unknown? It IS optimist, saying that we now finally have tools to start discovering this kind of threats. Anyway, that we are getting aware that things could get close don't mean that anything will hit us (in last century nothing similar to that size, so odds should be pretty low).
I'm eligible for retirement in 2012, so the world as I know it will surely end. Don't know about the rest of you guys, though. More importantley...
Our calendar ends on Dec 31st of THIS YEAR! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!
Free Martian Whores!
It's this kind of short-term thinking that will result in the destruction of the human race.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well, if it's a comet, it might be called Wolf-Biederman ...
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.
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.
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)?
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?