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Earth Avoids Collisions With Pair of Asteroids
Hugh Pickens writes "According to NASA, a pair of asteroids — one just over three miles wide — passed Earth Tuesday and early Wednesday, avoiding a potentially cataclysmic impact with our home planet. 2012 XE5, estimated at 50-165 feet across, was discovered just days earlier, missing our planet by only 139,500 miles, or slightly more than half the distance to the moon. 4179 Toutatis, just over three miles wide, put on an amazing show for astronomers early Wednesday, missing Earth by 18 lunar lengths, while allowing scientists to observe the massive asteroid in detail. Asteroid Toutatis is well known to astronomers. It passes by Earth's orbit every four years and astronomers say its unique orbit means it is unlikely to impact Earth for at least 600 years. It is one of the largest known potentially hazardous asteroids, and its orbit is inclined less than half-a-degree from Earth's. 'We already know that Toutatis will not hit Earth for hundreds of years,' says Lance Benner of NASA's Near Earth Object Program. 'These new observations will allow us to predict the asteroid's trajectory even farther into the future.' Toutatis would inflict devastating damage if it slammed into Earth, perhaps extinguishing human civilization. The asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was about 6 miles wide, researchers say. The fact that 2012 XE5 was discovered only a few days before the encounter prompted Minnesota Public Radio to poll its listeners with the following question: If an asteroid were to strike Earth within an hour, would you want to know?"
I know writing headlines is hard, but this one seems to imply that earth took evasive action. The less exciting "earth does not collide with pair of asteroids" would be a touch less misleading.
Of course! Time for a quick trip to the whorehouse, then a quicker trip to church to get saved.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I would definitely want to know. I would leave work, buy booze and party like there is no tomorrow.
Tomorrow is another day...
Just in case human beings go psycho, somebody in the intergalactic union will press a red button to slightly nudge the asteroid.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
And that is diffrent than any other friday, how?
And all the while everyone here thought the good Mayan folks were full of BS!
I guess "Asteroid Misses Earth, Just Like It's Done Every 4 Years For Millennia" just wasn't catchy enough
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
In the last 20 years there have been quite a few of these objects passing within the orbit of the moon, prior to that there were few announcements and it's debatable how many were actually tracked. A disturbing number have been found within days as passing and a few were found after they passed. Just looking at the numbers I'd place the odds at high of an impact. We're coming up on a hundred year anniversary of Tunguska so I'd say we're due for a similar impact any day now. It could be tomorrow or a hundred years from now but statistically we're due now. We aren't talking end of the world because most of the world was only affected by the dust of the last major impact and the odds of one hitting a major city are similar to winning the lottery. Unfortunately the odds are high of an ocean impact and that could be worse than a land impact. Very few of these objects are being tracked in the northern hemisphere and virtually none in the lower hemisphere, I can't remember but I think it's a few percent for the south. We spend trillions on defending against Arab rednecks and a few million a year on tracking near Earth Objects. Our priorities are sadly are on the wrong threats.
Earth's cat-like reflexes never fail to impress.
I figured objects getting so close would be a very infrequent occurrence and at that range gravity would surely pull the object into us. I'm not sure if it's good news that objects have to get much closer to get sucked in or bad news that we're seeing so many near misses.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I would definitely want to know. I would leave work, buy booze and party like there is no tomorrow.
But there would almost certainly be a tomorrow. The asteroid was only 50-165 feet in diameter. That is about the estimated size of the Tunguska asteroid/comet, which killed zero people. Even if an asteroid that size hit the ocean or a major city, 99.9% of the people on Earth would survive.
If we were hit by the bigger (three mile diameter) asteroid, it would only have 1/8th the energy of the Yucatan asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Unlike the dinos, we have the ability to eat canned food and stored grain, so many if not most people would likely survive.
It's not the 21st yet...
It sounds like if there is a World War 3 and any humanity manages to survive, we will be extinct in 600 years since WWIII will probably set us back far enough that we will not have the means to stop the 4179 Toutatis when it comes around for the last time.
You know that the Gauls in Asterix are only afraid of the sky falling on their head. And their favorite exclamation is 'By Toutatis!'.
Prior art: Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I would dare say that I don't think there are very many extinction-level type events could plausibly happen anytime in the foreseeable future which could also wipe out the human race unless the incident were also actually detrimental to the entire physiology of the planet. I do not think that a collision of the magnitude that led to the wiping out the dinosaurs, for instance, would have the same effect on us. Certainly no small number of people would die, but I do believe humanity itself would endure.
My reasoning is simply this. We have intellect. Dinosaurs did not.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm worried that if you tell Republicans there's oil in asteroids, they'd try to have them delivered to Texas.
greed@All_Evils:~#
Also keep in mind, that all the dried dead plants from lack of sunlight will give rise to plenty of inflammable carbon fuel lying around. We are talking about a world wide wildfire. It is interesting how some people think of meteorite as something like a huge nuke, that will kill everything directly/instantly.
Close calls like these do need to be made as sensational as possible, to remind people how important it is to not put all your eggs in one basket, and why cutting NASA's budget is like deciding to do away with life jackets on a ship, so as to "not waste money".
Obviously over your city, not mine.
Sadly, it's essentially career ending for a politician to support funding for "crazy stuff" like asteroid detection or diversion. Perhaps if they claimed they'd received it as a revelation from their favourite brand of Invisible Sky Giant it might be considered rational though.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Earth Avoids Collisions With Pair of Asteroids
This has been happening every day for years.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If it was known that an Extinction Level Event was headed our way and had a fair to high chance of actually happening, I'd want to know... however, I fully understand WHY we wouldn't be told.
It wasn't. It's crappy journalism, that's all. There was a small asteroid that we didn't know about that got pretty close and that wouldn't have done anything serious had it hit us, and then there was Toutatis with its horse-shoe orbit that gets it close to Earth, but nowhere near enough to hit us, and we know that at least for several centuries, it shouldn't. You know, celestial mechanics is, after all, one of the exactest sciences that we've ever had. Someone simply mixed these two things in their mind, and many readers still do, it seems. Even here, which is a shame.
Ezekiel 23:20
It means the mean distance between Earth and Moon. In this case, it "missed" us by seven million km. Hardly worth mentioning, if you ask me. It's already been much closer to Earth than that, and for quite some time, it's not going to approach us nowhere nearly that close.
Ezekiel 23:20
There will be a human-made satellite that will engage in a fly-by to asteroid 4179 Toutatis
The satellite is China's Chang'e 2 and it will rendezvous with 4179 Toutatis.
There are two conflicting reports of the rendezvous date -
According to wikipedia the rendezvous date will be 13th December 2012 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4179_Toutatis
According to another source - http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/20120614-change-2-toutatis.html - the rendezvous date will fall on 6th, January, 2013.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Perhaps I was too vague; I wasn't saying that THIS was an ELE, just that I would prefer to be told in such a case.
Look, no SIG!
Actually, a small remainder of civilisation could probably survive even if the sun got blotted out for years. There would be massive starvation and conflict, but bear in mind we have the technology to generate our own sunlight. It wouldn't be too hard to rig up some floodlights that provide crop-friendly wavelengths and shine them over some fields. Obviously not enough to feed the entire world, or even an entire country (hence starvation and conflict) but almost certainly enough to keep a sizeable population alive until the not-so-metaphorical dust settles.
I would dare say that I don't think there are very many extinction-level type events could plausibly happen anytime in the foreseeable future which could also wipe out the human race unless the incident were also actually detrimental to the entire physiology of the planet. I do not think that a collision of the magnitude that led to the wiping out the dinosaurs, for instance, would have the same effect on us. Certainly no small number of people would die, but I do believe humanity itself would endure.
My reasoning is simply this. We have intellect. Dinosaurs did not.
That's only worth something if you can apply it. We're not so good at that when our civilization support structures become non-functional. You might note that for most of our history, our intellect was enormously repressed because our civilization was primitive.
Actually, we are. A 50-165 foot asteroid can sneak up on us, but that isn't going to do much. It has less energy than the 9.0 Fukushima Earthquake, which killed ~10,000 people.
And how much energy from earthquake goes into actual surface damage? I was under impression that vast majority of it is used to shake rocks up and down, which is quite different from releasing same energy in something similar to surface nuclear strike.
I think we should be comparing it to Tunguska event rather than earthquakes. Imagine Tunguska happening over one of densly populated areas. I don't think that it would end up being 2-hours news.
We already know that Toutatis will not hit Earth for hundreds of year
Neglecting to consider that Toutatis could easily hit another (or pass very near another) reasonably sized object, thereby modifying it's course enough to hit us on its next pass.
"This hypothetical "death star" or "death companion" of the Sun has received a name: Nemesis. In the Greek mythology Nemesis was the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris, vengeful fate personified as a remorseless goddess. According to the hypothesis, Nemesis periodically (approximately every 26 million years) passes through a denser region of the Oort cloud, disrupting the orbits of comets, and sending millions of comets into the inner solar system and potential collision with the Earth. But, many geologists are convinced that mass extinctions on Earth are not periodic, so they see no need for such a star. Nless, Richard Muller and his colleagues have embarked on the difficult search for a possible, dim companion to the Sun." :
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_nemesis07.htm
You make me laugh...Do you suppose the totality of objects in our solar system is known ?
Jeezus, NASA (and others) find new objects of Toutatis's size nearly on a daily basis, how many smaller objects do you think there are , most of which are uncharted - for the obvious reason that they haven't been detected yet?
But, you're confident that some guy at NASA (trying to sound important) "knows" that none of them are going to affect Toutatis's path without telegraphing that information to him first.
But, you're confident that some guy at NASA (trying to sound important)
(doing his job)
"knows" that none of them are going to affect Toutatis's path
I'm confident that the guys at NASA know better than any of us how large and how close an asteroid would have to be to have such an effect, and the probability of such an asteroid remaining undetected at this time. If they're doing their jobs properly, they probably have a very good handle on those numbers, and it seems reasonable to assume that such an event is too improbable to mention.
Or do you want p-values to be specified whenever someone abuses the word "know" in such a heinous fashion?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Who said anything about civilization?
I was talking about humanity, not civilization. Evolution has gifted us with an unrivaled (on this planet) ability to adapt to all kinds of circumstances through judicious application of intellect alone far faster than physiological evolution could hope to achieve. This ability is entirely orthogonal to the support structures that you are referring to which are largely derived from technology.
Humanity would survive. Civilization? Maybe, maybe not.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Which is my point: you're overvaluing human intelligence as a survival trait sans civilization.
There's nothing humans can do to survive a global event, much like there's nothing the dinosaurs were able to do. An asteroid impact of that scale ignites a global firestorm - a whole region of the Earth catches fire over the next 24 hours as the superheated air is rolled over the landscape. There isn't a way to think your way out of that problem - you either get out of the way (which you can only do if you have satellite networks, communications etc. and even then - it's impractical to move millions of people that quickly) - or you die.
Early in slashdot's life, at a previous passage of toutitis, I tried to get people interested in forming a group to push a mission to it, to shove it into orbit around Earth, say, around geosync, so we'd have something for a *real* space station, but noooo, you guys blew me off. Just wait till it hits, then you'll be sorry....
mark
Humanity was able to *develop* a civilization in the first place because of that intellect.... and we can utilize that intellect to adapt more quickly to a changing environment than evolution can otherwise manage with physiological changes. I'm not overvaluing it... I'm presenting it as a simple fact that it is unmatched by anything else evolution has been able drum up, and you have yet to offer any evidence that suggests that mankind would actually not any incident which does not, at the same time, utterly destroy the viability of the planet as a sustainable biosphere, or otherwise require that evolution start over practically from scratch.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'