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900 foot-wide asteroid to make close approach to Earth today
- rikacomet 14y agothanks a lot, I got to know about slooh from this!
- pkorzeniewski 14y agoNews like this always reminds me how vulnerable our small planet is and despite all the technological development, we can be wiped out from the universe in a second and there is little we can do about it.
- laumars 14y agothe terrifying thing is how hard they are to detect (basically spotting a black speck against the black of space). But at least, if detected early enough, an asteroids path can be changed. If a star goes supernova within a few million light years of Earth, we'd all be fried. Despite how mind boggling big space is, world extinction events are worryingly easy. /me is pretty sure he'll have nightmares tonight...
- CapitalistCartr 14y ago"If a star goes supernova within a few million light years of Earth, we'd all be fried." Within a few light years, perhaps. The entire Milky Way galaxy is only a little over 100,000 light years across. A few million light years would be outside of the Local Group.
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- laumars 14y agoA few million light years could still be within our local group (depending on the exact value of "a few"), but you're right about my error. I'm not really sure where I pulled that epic brain-fart of a figure from...
- dredmorbius 14y agoWe're getting fairly good at detecting asteroids though. Discovery from 1980 - 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw
- maeon3 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis It's Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale. The close approach in 2029 will substantially alter the object's orbit, making predictions uncertain without more data. If it hits Earth, then it's 500 megatons of TNT going off. If it passes through a half mile "keyhole" which is unlikely, it will hit Earth in 2036. Apophis broke the record for the highest level on the Torino Scale, being, for only a short time, a level 4, before it was lowered. So worst case scenario: it hits the half mile keyhole and in 2036 the equivalent of a nuclear weapon (10 tsar bomba's at once) goes off on a certain city. But there is a plot twist. There will be weeks of warning, and the risk area where it will hit will be narrowed to the size of half the earth, or if we use the science, maybe a whole continent. So it'll be like a hurricane evacuation, but instead of one state, it will be quarter of the earth's surface. Imagine the logistical nightmare if that happened near India/china. The prospect of relocating 5 billion people within 2 weeks notice with all of their junk and to do it sustainably? Plot for a cool sci fi movie there.
- wooptoo 14y agoIt looks like we won't have to worry about the year 2038 problem anymore. Everyone can go back to 32 bit systems now.
- wyuenho 14y agoI wonder what kind of weaponry and energy is required to push it away from Earth's orbit or just simply shatter it into much smaller piece so they'll burn up in the atmosphere.
- xhrpost 14y agoIf asteroid mining becomes a reality, I wonder if we could simply mine the thing down to nothing before impact.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoSure, but when you mine stuff, where does the stuff go? Instead of deflecting the whole asteroid, you're suggesting chipping it into a bunch of pieces and deflecting those somewhere. Same problem.
- phragg 14y agoRedirect it using electromagnetism?
- laumars 14y agoThe current preferred method is essentially firing painballs at one side of the asteroid. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/deflecting-an-asteroid-with-paintballs-1026.html http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/deflecting-an-asteroid-wi...
- phragg 14y agoHmm very interesting. So this would make it much more reflective, causing suns photons to bounce off and push it off orbit. In order to further understand this, and forgive me here if it sounds strange, would a flat black car essentially be 'faster' than a gloss white car due to lack of reflection?
- sp332 14y agoPhoton radiation pressure is almost immeasurably tiny. It takes years to make a smallish deflection, and that's exposed to hard radiation. A larger, related effect is visible with this desk toy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer
- yread 14y agoSince it takes 20 years to deflect it we'd better start soon
- maxerickson 14y agoIt's nice that the 2029 flyby provides an opportunity to launch a more aggressive mission (if it seems more necessary by then).
- robryan 14y agoWith asteroid close approaches I find it helpful to compare it to the earth to moon distance. In this case 9 million miles seems to be 37 times the earth to moon distance.
- yread 14y agoThe 2029 event should be pretty cool to see (literally, magnitude 3.4 which is visible(sort-of) for a naked eye) if it really comes as close as 30 000 km. Geostationary satellites are 36 000 km...
- brianchu 14y agoLet's be clear, the probability of Apophis colliding with the Earth in the next 100 years is extremely small: 7.4e-06 [1]. And even then it wouldn't be an extinction event. To me this is a non-issue - the odds of a massive pandemic or nuclear war with greater destructive potential in the next 100 years are arguably higher. There is some level of uncertainty with the estimates because the asteroid's orbit will change in 2029. But even if the estimates are off by a couple orders of magnitude in the worst case, we are still looking at a very small probability. [1] http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html
- rikacomet 14y agohmm, what if it doesn't hit earth, and hits venus, to which it is also on a collision course, and sets off a chain of events that unbalance our SS.
- dangerlibrary 14y agoIt would just bump Venus's orbit a bit - probably not even enough to notice. A single asteroid doesn't have the potential energy to destabilize a planetary orbit. see: the pockmarked surface of the moon, which still has a stable orbit.
- rikacomet 14y agobut what if it sets of some sort of chemical reaction, Venus does not have a atmosphere like earth, so he asteroid would hit its bare face, perhaps setting off some sort of volcanic reaction? Just saying, as I don't want us to be on the blind side of the fence. Clearly, the whole system is our domain, and we should be know events like this are not to be ignored, as they are way bigger than your average metropolitan housing millions of you and me.
- TallGuyShort 14y agoVenus' does have an atmosphere - and a denser one than Earth, at that.
- JshWright 14y agoThis is a fairly small asteroid on the scale of planets. While it might have some negative consequences for the thin film of life clinging to the surface, the planet itself wouldn't even notice. Impacts _much_ larger than this one have happened many times over the course of our planet's history, and have had no significant impact on our orbit.
- rmc 14y agoVenus does have an athmosphere, it's just not made of the same gasses as the Earth's athmosphere. There is no "bare face".
- darkhorn 14y agoFoot? Doesn't make any sense.
- darkarmani 14y agoWhat are the chances of it wiping out our (artificial) satellites in 2029? It's pretty crowded up there, right?
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoIf your definition for crowded is "mean distances between satellites is more than 1000km." Space is big. The geostationary orbit has a diameter of 265000km, and there are something like 200 satellites up there. The lower orbits have a lot of gunk on them, but this asteroid will only cross the geostationary orbit. It's pretty damn unlikely it will hit anything.
- mdc 14y agoI think you mean the circumference of geostationary orbit is 265000km. Diameter is about 36000km.
- paigalhaes 14y agojust to help getting the scale in meters... 900 foot = 274.32 meters
- gregPC 14y agoWe should turn this thing into a Moon satellite. I can't believe no one else has thought of this yet.
- typpo 14y agoApophis isn't getting closer than 9 million miles today. If you're interested in close passes, you may look forward to February 15th, when 2012 DA14 will pass only about 21,000 miles away, within the orbits of the moon and geosynchronous satellites. [1] [1] http://earthsky.org/space/asteroid-2012-da14-will-pass-very-close-to-earth-in-2013 http://earthsky.org/space/asteroid-2012-da14-will-pass-very-...
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