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What To Do About an Asteroid That Has a 1 In 625 Chance of Hitting Us In 2040?
The Bad Astronomer writes "The asteroid 2011 AG5 is 140 meters across: football-stadium-sized. Its orbit isn't nailed down well enough to say yet, but using what's currently known, there's a 1 in 625 chance it will impact the Earth in 2040. It's behind the Sun until September 2013, and more observations taken then will probably reduce the odds of impact to something close to 0. But does it make sense to wait until then to start investigating a mission to deflect it away our planet? Astronomers are debating this right now, and what they conclude may pave the way for how we deal with an asteroid threat in the future."
Praying it hits. That would be so awesome!
Just threaten to sue it out of existance.
There is a 1 in 625 chance that I will be taking a long holiday and be unavailable for comment in 2040...
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If it hits, it wipes out the major cause of habitat destruction, global warming and talk radio. If it misses, the sales of tinfoil hats and doomsday billboards will restore the global economy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
We should definitely consider putting Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Aerosmith into cryo right now. Without them, we won't have a chance.
Decisions of how to deal with the massive asteroid are best left to the individual.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/republicans-vote-to-repeal-obamabacked-bill-that-w,19025/
Yes it makes sense to wait. Why waste 18 months coming up with solutions to deflect it only to find out it won't strike 27 years from now? If September 2013 rolls around and it looks like it will hit in 2040, 27 years is practically as much time as 28 years to develop a solution.
I always liked the plans that involved speeding the asteroid up, or slowing it down just slightly.
I saw a recent idea that involved painting it white in order to decrease absorptivity.
Plan a party. Get wasted, and get laid.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
In 2040 Bruce Willis will be 85. What's he gonna do? Tell the asteroid to get off his lawn?
Wherever it hits, those are the people that God hates most. End of debate.
Ignore it.
Look I agree, only 1 in 625?! That hardly seems like a threat at all. Anyway, gotta run, I'm off to by a lottery ticket.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
And let the solar wind push it out. You only need to alter its orbit by 5 minutes in the next 22 years to miss completely.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Do statements like "The coin has a 1 in 2 chance of coming up heads" also bother you?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The Mayan calendar was more accurate... 365.2420 days, vs. Gregorians 365.2425, when the actual value was 365.2422.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
But does it make sense to wait until then to start investigating a mission to deflect it away our planet?
Well lets see, a potential catastrophe is 28 years away and there is 1/625 odds based on the data we do have that it will happen. We will know evidently with much better certainty what that odds are when its a mere 26-27 years away. Given we are talking about altering the path of a massive object in space, I say wait.
If we can't solve the problem in 26 years we mostly likely could not solve it in 28. The odds are already quite low, the cost to do anything about it quite high. If the numbers change after we can see and measure it better thats different. If we had to wait until it was much closer to get the better data that would be different. I don't see any advantage in getting a 12-24 month jump on this, given the time scales, and the complexity of solutions to the problem and risk.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You can always turn a deterministic problem into a probabilistic one if enough variables are hidden. But this doesn't mean that the underlying mechanics of the situation are necessarily probabilistic.
The gasoline example you gave above is inherently probabilistic, because you do expect that, given the same perceived initial conditions many times, the outcomes would vary each time the "experiment" is carried out.
When it comes to orbital mechanics, the variability comes not in being inherently unsure of what will change, but from a known error based on number and quality of measurements. This is why the probability of collision numbers change over time - they are really confidence numbers, not probability of occurrence numbers. No matter how many times you measure a fair die roll, the probabilities will always come up the same.
More measurements won't help you with a coin toss, quantum mechanics, or your gasoline example, because it's not possible to gain enough measurements (or in QM's case, there is strong evidence that no such parameters even exist to measure in the first place).
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)