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Killer Asteroid
Scott Manley
writes "Astronomers have found a mile wide asteroid
which has a non-zero possibility of hitting the earth i
n the next century. Asteroid 1999 AN10 was found on 13th January '99 by the
LINEAR system
and scientists working in Italy have predicted a close
approach in August
2027 and a potential collision in August 2039.
This has been kept quiet after the panic last year over
1997 XF11 whic had a similar 'remote' possibility, if
1999 AN10 were to hit it would be a real civilisation
killer. " I can't believe scientists are bothing
with this stuff when we all know Y2k will kill us all in less
than a year anyway.
>Sometimes I really believe that if you don't think about it, it's really not a threat.
In the last sixty million years, it seems like there has been at most one truly planet-affecting asteroid collision: the one that may have doomed the dinosaurs. More recently, there was a doozy that carved a sizeable crater in Arizona about 50,000 years ago, and one in Siberia about 100 years ago; no doubt there were a number of others over that same time period. There's no reason to believe that asteroid collisions will change in their frequency, so a truly world-affecting asteroid should be an extremely rare event based on previous history. A Siberia class one is rather more likely, but the question is just how much of our resources do we devote to something that we may not be able to detect in time anyway, may not be able to stop anyway, and may have the unfortunate side-effect of making us even better at killing each other? Reagan's Star Wars speech was in 1983, and 16 years and billions of dollars later it still hasn't come close to realization. I can't see a system that has to go far out into space and blow up something huge (and spread the debris far and wide) doing a whole lot better.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Please don't call it World War III. "World War III" has traditionally referred to a nuclear exchange between superpowers, while the present situation would more likely lead to a fully-informed air- and ground-forces escalation than to the panicked, uninformed, "get them before they get us" escalation to nuclear exchange of the classic WWIII scenario.
:)
Given the political importance in the present conflict of international bodies such as NATO and the UN, as well as ethnic and political factions within nation-states, it seems like the present situation would more likely escalate into something resembling a global civil war.
Besides, "Global Civil War" is what it was called in Robotech. Maybe the "asteroid" is really the SDF-1.
The Open Earth Initiative (OEI) would write an open letter stating their belief in the new Living Earth Public License (LEPL).
The Free Space Foundation (FSF) will challenge the OEI's position while claiming that they're not against some company from selling space ships for the great exodus, but that it is necessary for all people to have free access to shuttles. The bar service and food service would cost though.
"Free Shuttle, not Free Beer" they're heard to say.
They also insist that since the actual shuttles are licensed under the GPL as derived works (from a GNU editor in the 20th century - see: emacs), that the destination planet be called GNU/World.
There are currently 15 licenses in the making, and no real work has commenced outside of angry letters and a couple small border skirmishes. The Asteroid is now easily visible in the day sky in the northern hemisphere.
The latest trajectory reports place the impact in the Western United States near Seattle Washington.
--- http://foo.ca
This will happen on 5-5-2000.
But the planets' gravitational pull on our planet is smaller than the moon's, so planetary alignment cannot cause global catastrophe.
The last time an alighnment similar to the 5/5/2K event happened was like 2-4-1963, and somehow the planet survived. Also there was an April-1982 alignment that was supposed to destroy us as well.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I've heard several dates for it:
12-22-2011, 12-23-2011, 12-23-2012, and 12-24-2012.
Don't know which is correct
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
There's always the chance that our war heads will slightly alter the path, and make a collision with earth more likely.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
You forgot the pole shift of 5-5-1900!
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Two things come to mind: A Jupiter sized asteroid could not crash into earth, earth would crash into it. For an idea of relative sizes, take a basketball and a large (shooter marble).
Also, I'm sure that a Jupiter-sized asteroid would be considered a 'planet'
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
The scientific community will not be taken seriously on this for thirty years, then a five year study will take place, then remaining four years, special interests will stall the project.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
So, now that the Soviets went to that great James Bond villian scene in the sky (Stalin is having cocktails with Ernst Blofeld right about now) we now get to sit around and fret about the 'cosmic hammer' doing us in like it did the dinosaurs.
Actually, I think this fits human tendencies really well. Besides hitting on the human fear of sudden death, I think down deep most folks like the idea of 'we were such kings of the globe, it took a COSMIC DISASTER to do us in!!!'. I think some must also like the idea of our fossilized bones being dug up one day, mounted in museums, and captioned with tidbits like 'they once ruled the earth...'.
Oh well... if we really wind up having to depend on a yutz like Bruce Willis to save us, maybe being a set of fossilized remains isn't so bad after all...
How do you get random information out of emacs?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
That was one of the sillier things in that movie. "The size of Texas" puts the asteroid at somewhat bigger (1.5 to 2 times, IIRC) than the asteroid Ceres, largest known in our solar system.
There's no way you're going to blow that up with any mere collection of nukes, and even if you did, there's no way to avoid having a rain of multi-mile wide chunks falling on you anyway. (Consider - the size of Texas - call it a diameter of 600 miles - means about 40 million mile-wide chunks, distributed evenly).
The other asteroid movie - "Deep Impact" - at least had the physics a bit more reasonable.
-- Alastair
Like that Shoemaker-Levy commet, it screwed up Jupiter's crap. The largest recorded explosive release of energy man has ever witnessed (other than the Crab (or was it the horse?) nebula which burned as bright as the sun during day light for a couple weeks a little over 1000 years ago, can you imagine seeing two suns for a couple weeks? That was a spiritual experience back in those days...)
I would think that the odds of a comet hitting the planet would be pretty good compared to asteroids. It would/will be crazy too, people are packing up and heading for the hills because of y2k, imagine what would happen when they get on the news and say a comet is heading for us and it looks like it will get her in about 6 months...
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Planet killer asteroids only have to be about a cubic mile in size and with the very best telescopes they can be extremely difficult to see. Some of them orbit the sun in really odd planes and we have to practically stare at the sun to see them, it's very difficult to do.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Hmmm.. 2039. That makes me about 64 years old. About 9 years after my pension matures.
Let's see.. 9 years of Golf, seeing the sights, watching daytime 3D-TV, and complaining about how things were better in my day.
Yep. I'll be (a) bored enough by then, and (b) have the money to take a cruise to the Bahamas and watch the fireworks about three seconds before I'm nuked.
That's if I haven't died of sexual exhaustion (here's hoping), or more likely unfitness and cardiac arrest by then.
Ah well, it's been a hard day. Perhaps I'm being cynical. =)
I long for a world of Open Source orbits and a non-monopolistic galaxy where I am free to live on the planet of MY choice, not the planet I was pre-installed on!
Somewhat consists of something like 500 billion years, if I got the calculations correct. Let's see, 2^64seconds * 1minute/60seconds * 1hour/60minutes * 1day/24hours * 1year/356.25days == ; + 1970 (to adjust for the fact that the UNIX date starts january 1st, 1970) == 584,542,048,061. So for those of us on Alphas (and some other platforms), the date will run out some time in the year 584,542,048,061. 584,542,048,061 - 2039 (to be generous) == 584,542,046,023. You call a difference of 584,542,046,023 years "somewhat"?!?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Only if you're on a 32bit system. Those of us fortunate enough to run Alphas (and some other architectures, but I forget them at the moment) should be good until the year, hm, I forget the calculation, but it's something like 500 billion, or so.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
I'm personally far more worried about spending the rest of my life under opressive government rule (like 99% of the world's past denizens have spent their lives) than I am about sudden destruction. Hey, it ends quickly; persecution doesn't.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
The important part of the article:
None of these encounters can result in an impact, except one in August 2039: the probability that the true asteroid actually follows a collision course for that date is less than the probability of being hit by an undiscovered asteroid within any given day.
There, we can go back to worrying about the ones we can't see.
...August 2039: the probability that the true asteroid actually follows a collision course for that date is less than the probability of being hit by an undiscovered asteroid within any given day.
Given this, I fail to see the big deal.
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Jason Eric Pierce
It's pretty hard to worry about something we can't see =)
But this asteroid we can see...
And it passes close enough to our own planet that they perturb each other, and it passes nearby often enough in the next 600 years that we cannot predict if it will hit us or not, or when.
After each near miss, of course, we can observe the movement of the asteroid and get a better understanding of its motion, but until it misses we actually don't know if it's going to hit!
And I quote
"Among the possible orbital solutions
there are some that undergo a close approach in August 2027, but no impact is possible. However, the period of the asteroid may be perturbed in such a way that it returns to an approach to the Earth at either of the possible encounter points."
It goes on to note that their accuracy isn't good for more than a decade after each pass, and that each successive pass makes it worse...
Not something you want to ignore when there is a greater danger from it, than say, Y2k or something...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*