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No, the Earth (almost Certainly) Won't Be Hit By an Asteroid In 2032
The Bad Astronomer writes "Last week, astronomers discovered 2013 TV135, a 400-meter wide asteroid that will swing by the Earth in 2032. The odds of an impact at that time are incredibly low — in fact, the chance it will glide safely past us is 99.99998%! But that hasn't stopped some venues from playing up the apocalypse angle. Bottom line: we do not have a good orbit for this rock yet, and as observations get better the chance of an impact will certainly drop. We can breathe easy over this particular asteroid."
...that's until the U.S.'s tolerance of gay marriage changes its trajectory.
But how do we know you aren't preparing for a quick bug out when its only a month away? I've seen 2012, I know how this stuff works!!
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Being such a huge failure in my life I would definetely welcome an asteroid
In fact, the chance it will glide safely past us is 99.99998%
Since the odds of any asteroid of a city-destroying size or larger only hit the Earth every 5,000 years or so... this particular asteroid's odds are 36.5 times better than the average one's.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
If you tell me that there's going to be no asteroid, then I'll just go up and make one hit the Earth, just to spite you.
You'll know it by the blinky LED lights I'll have on it that will spell out "2032 suckers!" in bright red and green lights.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
99.99998% miss from extinction-level objects means that, on average, they kill a mere 1,400 people.
the whole human element. What is the one thing that can change that 99.99998% to 1% or lower? Humans. The same people who thought that there would be no way that 18 humans would kill themselves by flying planes into buildings are the same people who think that there is absolutely no way that humans would do the same thing. The way I see it is the ultimate "suicide bomber" is just a step around the corner.
...that's until the U.S.'s tolerance of gay marriage changes its trajectory.
I'm not sure why this was down modded. I actually got a chuckle out of it personally.
While I'll admit it's a problem for everything within about a 200 mile radius, and has a potential to create a 50+ meter tsunami, depending on where it hits... globally speaking, it doesn't represent a significant threat.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Lower odds has not stopped people from buying the lottery, and so let them at least make up stories of the apocalypse. Human nature is such that they have more fun hoping for the worst.
99.99998% of a miss.
0.9999998 ^ 100,000 = 0.980 -> 2% chance of at least 1 hit with 100,000 such events
Or approx 3.5 million such events for a 50% chance of at least 1 hit
Next questions are
a) how often do such events occur ?
b) how long since the last such event ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's all a scam. They're hiding the possible cure for asteroid impacts, because this way they can continue to get unlimited grant money from the government. They've already planned their off-planet habitat for when the earth is destroyed, but they won't admit to its existence because then the sheeple would question the purpose of those radio telescopes and interplanetary probes.
WAKE UP! STOP BIG ASTRONOMY!
Bottom line: we do not have a good orbit for this rock yet, and as observations get better the chance of an impact will certainly drop
If the number given is the best estimate of the chance of impact based on available data, then additional data should have a 50% chance of increasing that chance and a 50% chance of decreasing it.
Not really. Local flora and fauna would kill off a zombie epidemic fairly quickly, if live humans weren't around. Just insects alone would have a field day, and in 72 hours would grow fast enough to deal with it.
The Earth really doesn't need us.
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Phil Plait just posted a correction, 99.998% chance of a miss.
If the odds were higher, then governments might start taking money off their war spending and start putting some serious money into space technology and asteroid deflection programs, which would certainly lead to a faster space colonization, asteroid mining and so on,
Folks- Please note a couple of math errors in the article (and in the headline I submitted here at /.).
1) The chance of it missing is 99.998%, and not 99.99998%. I misplaced a parenthesis when I did the math and wound up essentially getting 100 - 1/63000 instead of 1 - 1/63000. D'oh.
2) Also, the original circle I drew in the article was too big. This one makes me smile wryly: I first drew up the analogy as the circular cross-sectional area of a target region in space versus the cross-section of the Earth. Both are circles. However, a pixel is square! So my circle was too wide by a factor of the square root of pi, since the radius of the circle is the sqrt(area/pi). Put in 63,000 pixels for the area and the radius is 141.
I corrected the article, sent a note to TPTB at Slashdot, and beg the forgiveness of math pedants everywhere. :)
*** Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer http://www.badastronomy.com
The odds of an impact at that time are incredibly low — in fact, the chance it will glide safely past us is 99.99998%! But that hasn't stopped some venues from playing up the apocalypse angle.
A 1 in 5,000,000 chance of this asteroid hitting is super high compared to the 1 in 175,223,510 odds of winning the grand prize in the Powerball lottery, yet tons of idiots still line up to play.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
would've fixed a lot of problems around here.
...it's still worth reading The Last Policeman.
chance of an impact will certainly drop
If it would certainly drop, then it would be already zero today. The reason why the estimate is currently 0.00002% is because it is not known at which side the real value is. Actually, a defining criteria of a proper estimate is that it is located in the middle of the probability distribution, meaning that the actual value might lie on either side, with equal probability.
Note that the original article uses "likely" instead of "certainly".
International Panel on Asteroid Collisions.
They are circling around Uranus.
> Bottom line: we do not have a good orbit for this rock yet, and as observations get better the chance of an impact will certainly drop.
What is that supposed to mean? It should get closer to 1 or to 0. It will get closer to 0 with probability .9999998, and to 1 with probability .0000002. So it will not "certainly" drop.
over 5 orders of magnitude is as close to "almost certain" as science gets.
...I was hoping to avoid the 2038 bug.
... will already have whipped the planet clean, so why worry?
...after reading your username
Humanity needs an apocalypse to shake things up a little...
Captcha: Kaboom
Yes, there is a 99.998% chance that the chance of a hit will decrease when more measurements are taken, and a more accurate trajectory can be calculated.
BUT: there is also a 0.002% chance that the new data will increase the chance of a hit all the way up to 100%, and a 0.02% chance that the chance of a hit will increase to 1:10.
Really? I don't know, the origin of life seems to be nearly impossible to me then.
Asteroid Apocalypse: What Could Happen, But Probably Won't, in 2032
[Cue a solid hour of CG destruction porn.]
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Bottom line: we do not have a good orbit for this rock yet, and as observations get better the chance of an impact will certainly drop.
This makes no sense. If "the chance of an impact will certainly drop", one might as well lower the quoted chance now.
Orbit determination is a pretty fascinating problem. I haven't read TFA, but how it works is we have a set of measurements that have some known uncertainty. We propagate the uncertainties to the orbit properties, which basically gives us an ellipsoid of potential position at any given time. Propagating this uncertain orbit out to 2032, the resulting ellipsoid encompasses Earth, but only if our best guess is fairly well away from the true orbital parameters (>5 standard deviations if it were one parameter, but with six orbit parameters it's more complicated). That's where the number comes from -- that is exactly the chance based on current observations. That means it will change one way or the other as soon as a new measurement is taken into account, but until it does, quoting a different chance would just be pulling numbers out of thin air. And we probably only have one measurement source right now. Once we point some more telescopes at it and start gathering simultaneous measurements, our estimates will improve (even if those other telescopes have a larger uncertainty than the first!) and that ellipsoid of potential orbit states will shrink.
Disclaimer: this is from an aerospace engineering perspective where we use Kalman filters to do this sort of thing automatically in flight. Not sure if astronomers have a better way that is too computationally intensive for on board computers.
What's the other kind of person? Huh? WHAT'S THE OTHER KIND, DAMN YOU?
Y'all said Fukushima wouldn't be no big deal, either.
So? Nearly impossible things happen all the time given a sufficiently large sample.
With only 19 or so years to go, we'll have to act quickly to get a long range space craft up to this asteroid if we want to alter its trajectory so it certainly will hit Earth! There's no time to waste if we're going to set up for this future crisis!
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I had a big retirement fund blowout bash planned for 2032. After all, you can't take it with you. Now I'll have to text everyone that's it's been cancelled....
I've followed http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov for years and this is the first time I've noticed an impact probability increase instead of decrease. Usually the first observations suggest a possible impact and with additional observations, the probability of the impact decreases. Two days ago, the probability stood at 1 in 63,000. With an additional two days of observation it's risen slightly to 1 in 48,000.
The uptick is most likely a blip and a few more days worth of observing will drive the impact probability down.
What would happen if it came really close but didn't hit? Like 2 miles up? What about 500 feet above land? 50 feet?
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
I'm sorry. Astronomers didn't detect Eris until 2005. Eris is a dwarf planet that's more massive than Pluto (that's why Pluto's not a planet anymore, we'd have to admit there was another planet closer and bigger than Pluto, and that we're basically blind. Now, when we factor in that these city or country or world killing asteroids can be smaller than dwarf planets... Yeah, sorry bub. You've got no legs to stand on when you make predictions. The evidence doesn't bear out. This particular asteroid probably won't be striking Earth. Big fucking deal. You moronic "Scientists" have no clue how to interact with people. You want Astronomy and Space exploration funding? Keep downplaying the fact that you don't really have a clue of what's out there. You humans are basically blind when it comes to space; Seriously you really are blind. If we compare your world wide telescopes' vision for things within your own solar system with that of a human in the average size basement, you're worse off than folks who are legally blind.
Protip: Your chance of extinction is 100%, ask any astronomer. It's only a matter of time. Doesn't even have to be an Asteroid or comet. How's about a gamma ray burst? You're hundreds of thousands of years overdue for a mass extinction event. As the higher minded of a sentient race it's your responsibility to spurn the lazy among you into letting you build self sustaining off-world colonies and at least TRY building the infrastructure to prevent global extinction. You call the politicians morons, but they know how to sway the herds -- It's not with reason, but with appeals to those primal emotions, you dolts.
You have a chance to literally save the world, and you screw the pooch every damn time. A dwarf planet! Gimmie a fucking break!
The second kind is apparently ADD from poster not finishing their sig.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
"as observations get better the chance of an impact will certainly drop."
That's not how probability works. First of all, the real probability is either 1 or 0, because it will either happen or it won't and it's not a random event (nothing really is). What we're talking about is scientists' estimate of the probability. But that's too nitpicky. I haven't read TFA (don't need to for this little rant), but you are correct that the estimated probability will probably change frequently. They ran their trajectory models and predict a miss, and .002% is the chance that they're wrong according to the assumed uncertainty. Later scientists will record the asteroid's new position and rerun their trajectory models, and as the asteroid gets closer the level of certainty in the model results will go up. But that does not mean they will get more certain that the asteroid will miss. It's just as likely that the newer measurements will show a closer trajectory than expected and their estimate of the odds of collision will go up. That is the very definition of probability. You cannot know in advance if the probability you measure tomorrow will be higher or lower. Instead, you know the probability that it will be higher or lower!
I guess we gotta start updating UNIX to have 64 bit dates after all.
The Earth really doesn't need us.
You're projecting again. The doctor called, he wants his thermometer back.
The Earth really doesn't need us.
You're projecting again. The doctor called, he wants his thermometer back.
Most of the earth is molten, actually, and most of the rest is covered with water.
Now, if I were talking with a whale, you might have an argument, but I kind of doubt that.
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Now, if I were talking with a whale, you might have an argument, but I kind of doubt that.
"Projection" is a psychological term that means you are assuming someone else has the same feelings and beliefs that you do. For example, you are mad at someone for some reason and based on that you assume they are mad at you.
In this case, you feel the Earth doesn't need you and you project that into a statement that it doesn't need "us". The Earth may very well not need you, I can't speak to that issue. If that is true, you are welcome to leave; the rest of us who want to stay will wave goodbye as you exit.
Get NASA, Russia, China, and the ESA on it to put this asteroid into Earth's orbit. It might need a bunch of thrusters on it and a bunch of fuel, but it would make a good platform in geosynchronous orbit.
Then put the ISS up there and start building a space elevator.
So 1/50,000 chance... better than winning any lottery, better than winning a 50/50 draw at a sporting event. Considering the consequences, such a number is awfully scary - no?
I hope we all reconsider how best we can compensate for the Global Cooling that will surely occur.
Burn more oil now! If this one does not hit, some other one will, and we must be in a position to counter the gian dust cloud!
However, remember we only observe a small fraction of the skies, and much of the things that have a 99.99998% chance of missing us, were never detected.
Also.... when asteroids get close enough to our orbit to have a 0.9999998 chance of impacting us; eventually, the number of times this is happening adds up to a million, and the number of expected collissions is 1 or greater.
Drat
Earth gets hit by asteroids daily.
"before we get hit by that asteriod?"
There are plenty more rocks in space for us to be hit by. There's hope yet!