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.

Comments

Somewhat?

[raistlinne]

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"?!?

When the clock runs out

[raistlinne]

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.

Please remember to init 0 your machines!

[jerodd]

It might be a good idea to set up a cron job or something similar to make sure you shutdown your system before the asteroid hits. (Perhaps we could include `doomsday.chron' and then use rdist(8) to distribute that file from a central astronomical observatory.) We want to avoid filesystem corruption on the last disks/machines ever to exist.

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.

The important part

[Fizgig]

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.

probably not

[JEP]

...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.

--

Don't dismiss the article!

[Anonymous Shepherd]

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