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No, a Huge Asteroid Is Not "Set To Wipe Out Life On Earth In 2880"
An anonymous reader writes "Phil Plait wants you to know that asteroid 1950 DA is very, very unlikely to hit the Earth in 2880, despite what you may have read. He writes: "As it happens, 1950 DA is what's called a 'near-Earth asteroid', because its orbit sometimes brings it relatively close to Earth. I'll note that I mean close on a cosmic scale. Looking over the next few decades, a typical pass is tens of millions of kilometers away, with some as close as five million kilometers — which is still more than ten times farther away than the Moon! Still, that's in our neighborhood, which is one of the reasons this asteroid is studied so well. It gets close enough that we can get a decent look at it when it passes. Can it impact the Earth? Yes, kindof. Right now, the orbit of the asteroid doesn't bring it close enough to hit us. But there are forces acting on asteroids over time that subtly change their orbits; one of them is called the YORP effect, a weak force that arises due to the way the asteroid spins and radiates away heat. The infrared photons it emits when it's warm carry away a teeny tiny bit of momentum, and they act pretty much like an incredibly low-thrust rocket. Over many years, this can change both the rotation of the asteroid as well as the shape of its orbit."
Everything I've read said it's very unlikely to hit Earth in 2880. One chance in three hundred does not "likely" make.
On the other hand, 1 in 300 is pretty close to the chance of a Straight coming up without a Draw....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's not like any other unknown celestial body could just show its ugly face from behind the sun and hit us while we are happily spending billions in stupid wars.
If we can't sort out an asteroid coming right at us by 2880, we kind of deserve what we get. I'm not going to worry about it too much in any event.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I wasn't particularly worried about a 2880pocalypse to begin with.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sometimes I think what America needs is mother nature hitting the proverbial reset button on us.
It'll be amazing if "America" is still around in 2080, much less 2880.
The entire population of the 13 Colonies was less than the current population of Iowa and they stood up a country just fine. China doesn't keep itself together by playing nice, and we really need to avoid going the Mao Zedong route.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
THAT specific meteor isn't, another may be.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Especially when you compare it to the gravitational changes induces by each pass by the Earth/moon system and its pass of Mars and (more weakly) Jupiter.
Each one affects it FAR more than anything from photon pressure.
Yeah, TFS makes it sound like the YORP effect is something significant, but if you read TFA (I know, i know...) you discover that the YORP thing seems to be there to point out: (1) there are lots of very small effects that make long-term predictions for orbits difficult, and (2) one needs to do a LOT of observations to be able to predict all of these factors, but (3) we HAVE an unusually large set of observations on this asteroid (including enough to predict things like YORP effect factors).
Hence, from TFA:
They accounted for a lot of small effects on the asteroid, including the YORP thrust, the gravity of the planets, the gravity of other asteroids, and so on. They found that the probability of an impact in 2880 is about 2.48 x 10^-4, which is about 1 in 4000.
I realize that lots of people out there are idiots, and everyone here thinks that they can immediately think of something obvious that no expert doing a study would ever consider... but, you know, sometimes the experts actually have thought of the obvious thing before you posted about it on Slashdot.
The USA is only 4 percent of the globe's population, get your head out of your ass and consider the whole human world.
This asteroid is only around 1 km in diameter. An impact would be distinctly annoying, but civilization, and most people, should survive.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
It's really 2018, sorry for the miscalc. We'll be more careful next time.
Table-ized A.I.
Good deal. That means we can ignore this!
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Steal the dude's house late 2016 and say, "you ain't gonna need it, your billboard says so."
Table-ized A.I.
So they're saying they're not sure which year it will hit? That's worse!
Damn. The over/under was set to 2881 and I put $50 on the under.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And who knows, 2880 AC's might get a grasp on statistics. (1:10E6 chance of a global event does not give you 7000 casualties - that's not even wrong.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Also, I thought that it was the Yarkovsky effect, not YORP, that changes trajectories.
Ezekiel 23:20
Tunguska, Chelyabinsk, you see the pattern.
The heavens punish always those evil comunists.
Yes! At Tunguska, even before they existed!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I had bought a bunch of futures based on there being an impact in that year....
Kind enough not to point out that by that time 'man himself' has already long accomplished what said asteroid some 800 years before was assured not to be able to do for other reasons.
"The Yarkovsky–O'Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack effect, or YORP effect for short, is a second-order variation on the Yarkovsky effect that changes the rotation rate of a small body (such as an asteroid)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorp
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Humans in general have been greedy and hate riddled since before written history.
So I shouldn't have quit my job and sold my house? Is that what they're trying to say?
There are way too many variables involved to be able to predict that something is going to hit us in the medium to long term.
You would need to precisely map the trajectory and momentum of every single object, large and small, which could have a gravitational influence on the candidate impactor, then calculate the effect of each on the other, then iterate for the change in trajectory and momentum imparted.
Predicting a hit in 2880 is just clinically absurd.
If this does become a problem, perhaps NASA will need to actively hunt down and recruit those champion asteroid blasters who dominated the arcades back in the 80s.
Anyone know the whereabouts of the ace pilots known only as FUK, ASS, and DIK?
This space unintentionally left blank.
No, it is you that seems to lack a grasp of statistics. The expected value of some random variable is not necessarily a value that actually happens, as is clear in case dealing with say a bimodal distribution. The expected value of of a binomial variable with a one in a million chance of killing 7 billion people is 7000 deaths, that doesn't mean that 7000 people will die. But that number is important for the purposes of cost-benefit analysis. If your preventitive measure is certain to kill more than that, then it is not worth doing so (unless, probably more realistically, have a non-linear valuation of human life... losing the entire population of 7 billion might not be the same cost as 7 billion times a single death).
Everything I've read said it's very unlikely to hit Earth in 2880. One chance in three hundred does not "likely" make.
Especially since it is actually 1 in 4,000 or 0.0248%. Still I'd actually think it would be a good thing to have the odds a lot higher, like 90%, with a lead time like this of 800+ years. To date the existential threat posed by wars have caused science to make massive advances but this has come at a huge cost of misery and death
Think of the scientific advances that could come from an existential threat that, instead of pitting us against each other, actually puts all of humanity on the same side for a change. In the past 800 years we have come from the dark ages to the internet age. If we can't get it together enough to develop the technology needed to cause a small deflection to an asteroid in the next 800 years then I'd say it was probably time for evolution to give it a second roll of the dice.
according the some billboard on I-35 the bible says the world will end in 2017
Does it say when we can start looting?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Every time I turn around I hear things like "The polar ice caps are gonna melt due to global warming, flood the earth, and wipe out all life on the planet", or "A giant earthquake is gonna cause California (where I live) to sink into the ocean killing everybody", or "A giant asteroid is gonna hit the earth, cause the sky to become black, and wipe out all life on the plaent".
And every single time some scientist come out and says "Don't worry guys, it's not gonna happen" and my hopes and dreams are crushed. :(
Like most of us care if the world will end in 2880.
The majority of our planet only cares how their profits will turn out next week.
Why, thank you, I can read myself (and has known about these effects for years). You do see yourself how changing the rotation rate doesn't shift the trajectory, right?
Ezekiel 23:20
2880 is so far away we have nothing to fear. If humanity survives in some form to the 29th century it will be sufficiently advanced to make a meal out of the said asteroid. It may not even make prime time TV.
If its 2080...yes we may have something to think about.
Tat Tvam Asi
Size doesn't matter. It's the kinetic energy that counts!
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Then again, if we're still stuck on this rock, arguing over pieces of land by then, I guess we deserve it...
Also, I thought that it was the Yarkovsky effect, not YORP, that changes trajectories.
You may be right -- I've heard of the Yarkovsky effect before, but I'm not sure I've heard of YORP before I read this. The way the wording is done in TFA, it certainly sounds possible that he's just conflating Yarkovsky and YORP into one thing:
The infrared photons it emits when itâ(TM)s warm carry away a teeny tiny bit of momentum, and they act pretty much like an incredibly low-thrust rocket. Over many years, this can change both the rotation of the asteroid as well as the shape of its orbit.
You seem to know more about this than I do, but it does sound like TFA may be lumping all these small effects of photons on motion into one thing and calling it "YORP effects."
I was kind of hoping for a global wipeout.
Sure it does, especially when the orbit starts to precess.
That's what they WANT you to think...
When Yellowstone goes, you'll have no place to stay, oh no.
Mean old National Park, taught US to weep and moan
Mean old Supervolcano, taught US to weep and moan
Thinking bout my baby and my happy home
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Blowing some karma on this one...
>> No, a Huge Asteroid Is Not "Set To Wipe Out Life On Earth In 2880"
Damnit.
Uh, "when the orbit starts to precess"? Apsidal precession is yet another phenomenon that has nothing to do with this.
Ezekiel 23:20