NASA Counts 4,700 Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Asteroids

coondoggie writes "NASA continues to get a better handle on the asteroids buzzing around in space saying today that there are roughly 4,700 potentially hazardous asteroids, or as NASA calls them PHAs. NASA says these PHAs are a subset of a larger group of near-Earth asteroids but have the closest orbits to Earth's – passing within five million miles (or about eight million kilometers) and are big enough to survive passing through Earth's atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale."

Comments

PHA

[BasilBrush]

PHA - Pointy Haired Asteroid?

Re:PHA

[robthebloke]

Probably Harmless Asteroid

Re:PHA

[seven of five]

NASA: National Association of Superfluous Acronyms

All well and good

[Big Hairy Ian]

But we are still hopeless at spotting these things for instance today Asteroid 2012KA will pass within 224000 Kilometres of earth http://www.universetoday.com/95202/asteroid-2012-ka-to-buzz-earth-on-may-17/ the scary thing is it was only discovered yesterday!!!

So what are we going to do when one the size of texas comes heading for DC I mean aside from putting marshmallows on extremely long sticks :)

Re:All well and good

[Anonymous Coward]

Even cooler would be to build an improbability drive for the whole planet and press the button just about the last seconds before impact.

Im betting the asteroid turning into a financial document with a surprisingly small budget of just $42.

If it all fails, well, at least there will be space for a hyperspace express way.

Re:All well and good

[Razgorov Prikazka]

I was thinking the same... It all sounds very Armageddonish but...
70% of the worlds surface is water. Since there is an equal chance where space can lay a brick on the planet, there are 1410 PHAs left to worry about (30% of 4700). Then the population density is about 50 people per km2 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#Human_population_density ) so that you end up with only a handful PHAs. And then there is a good chance that those will not even reach the planet because they wondered off somewhere.
I am not worried at all. 4700PHAs? Pffffffffffffffft dont make me laugh!

Re:All well and good

[jkflying]

You saw what happened to Japan when there was an earthquake in the ocean? Now, imagine the tsunami that would be cause by a meteorite strike.

Re:All well and good

[arth1]

I'm sure your post was meant as a redneck parody, but in case someone takes it seriously:

The damage to humans is likely to be worse if it hits water.
A majority of the major cities of the world are near an ocean - 35 of the 40 largest ones are coastal.
An estimated 700 million people live less than 10 m above sea level.

Re:All well and good

[robthebloke]

I fear your proposed 24hr emergency response plan, has a small conceptual flaw.....

Star Tram

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I'm going to beat the drum for Star Tram again here, we need this built to have a defence against asteroids, since Bruce Willis is a bit long in the tooth to be leading a gang of roughnecks to the rescue at this stage.

More of this please

[turing_m]

It kind of disappoints me when I read an article on slashdot that is about something worthwhile that humanity really needs to get behind and fund, yet there won't be many comments. This is one of those types of articles. Normally the surefire comment magnets are trolling articles, or feature a topic that has a lot of fanbois, or better yet a technological holy war between several factions of fanbois.

However, that shouldn't be a sign that no one is interested or cares about such things. We do. This site is about Stuff That Matters. Researching and preventing low probability cataclysms now we have the technology to attempt it is a very important and noble goal. Whether the average person realizes it or not, those goals are more important than 99% of other charitable goals, because without a habitable earth or human population there is no point to any charity.

So in future while I can't usually add much more than a boring "this is great, more of this please" or a dumb joke if at all, this stuff is important and yes, we need more of it. Don't take low numbers of comments for lack of interest or perceived priority.

Re:More of this please

[Electricity Likes Me]

Aren't we way ahead on this with asteroid mining?

I mean the first step of that company is rolling out a mass-producible telescope specifically for spotting near Earth asteroids - something with a dangerous orbit also happens to be a great candidate for resource extraction, and their long term plan (deflect the targets into stable orbits around the moon) - has the benefit of developing the exact tools and techniques we'd need to employ for any type of practical asteroid defense.

I mean, I'd say this is very much on its way to being a solved problem. Go go private sector (and potential piles of platinum).

Re:More of this please

[khallow]

It always puzzles me how people invent all sorts of imaginary flaws in markets. For example, I got into this long argument with someone who was claiming that "free markets" created class structures and an exploited class on the bottom, but ignoring that both societies do that just fine on their own and markets actually help reduce such stratification. It's nonsense, but of a sort that's fairly pervasive in society.

This complaint above is however of the biggest legitimate flaw of a market. Namely, if it doesn't trade on the market, it doesn't exist in the viewpoint of traders on the market. While there are (as I gather) a few businesses which can and do legitimately offer insurance or whatnot against asteroid impacts, the cost of such insurance is way out of line with the risk.

It's much cheaper at this time to self-insure, that is, use your own resources to prepare against such low probability events.

Re:More of this please

[Nrrqshrr]

Oh, you know how it is... No one will bother with a proposal for this, until it hits something and kills a couple of millions. THEN we will start thinking this out seriously.
So yeah, let's just hope that the first one to hit won't cause too much damage, but enough to scare the shit out of people.

Re:More of this please

[pakar]

*To remember if ever filing a lawsuit against an insurance company*

In this contract they only restrict liability against 'acts of god' but i have not seen any proof that a god exists.. Judge, can you please order company X to provide evidence of:
A: That a god exists
B: That a god did indeed cause the incident
C: That the laws of physics where cancelled the day of the incident and it was all controlled by some omnipotent lifeform.

Re:More of this please

[Chris Burke]

Well being that we don't have any good theoretical models to stop said asteroids, it is difficult for the market to invest into a defense.

Nonsense. There are fantastic models that will definitely work to prevent asteroid strikes given enough lead time. The math has been done. E.g. Let's say Apophis looks like it's going to go through the keyhole and come around and hit earth -- a one ton spacecraft equipped with ion engines operating for 2 years as a gravity tractor bam done earth is saved let's have a parade.

What's lacking is sufficient funding for discovering and tracking asteroids to make sure we find any dangerous ones far enough ahead of time, and development of the theory into an actual capability that's ready for when we do need it.

It's not the lack of models preventing the market from investing. It's the lack of market incentive to invest in preventing something that will happen an unknown amount of time in the future -- possibly even thousands of years. In a business culture where thinking past next quarter is considered ambitious and far-seeing, the market isn't going to do anything until we know something is going to happen soon. and by then it could be too late.

Re:More of this please

[symbolset]

It's even simpler than that. Those things take vast refining and manufacturing operations to turn into useful stuff. The real prize is water.

Re:Avast Armageddon!

[VortexCortex]

"Avast Armageddon" - Sounds like a planet-scale AV product gone awry.

Tracking orbits within orbits?

[AttyBobDobalina]

Whenever these stories get posted, there is always a calming disclaimer that none of the asteroids threatens Earth. But does anyone know whether NASA (or anyone else) is modeling asteroid orbits with each other? I realize it's not like a set of billiard balls, but is anyone checking to see if any current non-threatening asteroids could be diverting into Earth's path from colliding with another object?

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010

[chenjeru]

Here's a cool video showing all known asteroids with a time-lapse revealing the year they were discovered: http://youtu.be/cKT1VGIDEd4?hd=1