As long as we're going to find new ways to tax people for using less gasoline, why not create a pedestrian tax, a bicycle tax, and a mass-transit tax SPECIFIC to those people who are obviously cutting into revenues from actual gasoline sales?
In fact, why don't we just track people themselves (GPS device implanted at birth) and tax them for every mile they move, regardless of the means of transportation!
This is nothing new, of course. Gas taxes were raised when fuel efficient cars started becoming available as early as the 1960's, and maybe even before that, when construction started on the interstate highway system.
Yes, this was just put out a little while ago. That's a record. Wonder why it isn't on the news? I am listening to NPR's Science Friday right now; it must be a taped show, because they aren't saying anything yet. 4! Damn.
This object is much closer than 1 light year. Even objects in low orbit can't always be tracked exactly (for example, predicting where a re-entering satellite will come down, and in how many pieces). In theory the farthest MN4 could be from us would be about twice the distance from Earth to the Sun (which is 93 million miles).
The imprecise odds result the number of observations available, and predicting the gravitational pulls on the object from other objects, among other things. I don't know how many bodies are considered in the calculations, but at least three must be (Earth, Sun, and Moon), and that math starts to be quite complex. As other posters have stated, the odds represent the possible paths that the object may take, and which of those will intersect with the Earth (resulting in an impact).
NeoDys is running a page on this asteroid, and at present they have raised the odds to 1 in 60, with a Torino scale value of 4 (not 2). Obviously they are refining the orbit as they get more data, so the value may change again. But, since I first saw this story, the odds have been 1/300, then 1/233, then 1/125, and now 1/60. Hmmm. This isn't on the news anywhere else yet, as fas as I can tell. Here's the link:
http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?ri skpage:0;main
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As long as we're going to find new ways to tax people for using less gasoline, why not create a pedestrian tax, a bicycle tax, and a mass-transit tax SPECIFIC to those people who are obviously cutting into revenues from actual gasoline sales?
In fact, why don't we just track people themselves (GPS device implanted at birth) and tax them for every mile they move, regardless of the means of transportation!
This is nothing new, of course. Gas taxes were raised when fuel efficient cars started becoming available as early as the 1960's, and maybe even before that, when construction started on the interstate highway system.
Good point, and definitely a good question.
Yes, this was just put out a little while ago. That's a record. Wonder why it isn't on the news? I am listening to NPR's Science Friday right now; it must be a taped show, because they aren't saying anything yet. 4! Damn.
This object is much closer than 1 light year. Even objects in low orbit can't always be tracked exactly (for example, predicting where a re-entering satellite will come down, and in how many pieces). In theory the farthest MN4 could be from us would be about twice the distance from Earth to the Sun (which is 93 million miles). The imprecise odds result the number of observations available, and predicting the gravitational pulls on the object from other objects, among other things. I don't know how many bodies are considered in the calculations, but at least three must be (Earth, Sun, and Moon), and that math starts to be quite complex. As other posters have stated, the odds represent the possible paths that the object may take, and which of those will intersect with the Earth (resulting in an impact).
NeoDys is running a page on this asteroid, and at present they have raised the odds to 1 in 60, with a Torino scale value of 4 (not 2). Obviously they are refining the orbit as they get more data, so the value may change again. But, since I first saw this story, the odds have been 1/300, then 1/233, then 1/125, and now 1/60. Hmmm. This isn't on the news anywhere else yet, as fas as I can tell. Here's the link: http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?ri skpage:0;main