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I don't think that calculation is quite right. An asteroid on a collision course with the moon doesn't need to hit the Earth in order to avoid hitting the moon
by cperciva 5y ago
I don't think that calculation is quite right. An asteroid on a collision course with the moon doesn't need to hit the Earth in order to avoid hitting the moon -- simply coming close to the Earth will alter its course.
- vikingerik 5y agoIt's just as likely that the Earth will perturb an object's course away from the moon as into it. Except if the object hits Earth itself, but the point is that's a pretty small percentage of cases, the Earth occupies only a small portion of the moon's sky.
- cperciva 5y agoAre the probabilities equal? I agree that they're both possible, but I don't have any clear intuition for why they should be the same -- or which would be larger if they're not the same.