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Asteroid Flies Under the Radar, Literally

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Dec 22, 2004 07:50 PM
from the too-late-to-drill dept.
Space News
mrn121 writes "Space.com is reporting that a 16-foot wide asteriod has passed the Earth in a phenomenally close call. The Asteroid, named 2004 YD5, passed just below the 22,300 mile range where geostationary satellites sit. What makes the incident most interesting is that the asteriod was not seen until after it passed the Earth, due to the well-known Cosmic Blind Spot caused by the Sun."
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  • First post (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IO ERROR (128968) * <error.ioerror@us> on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:51PM (#11164189) Homepage Journal
    Asteroids this small, if they were to enter the atmosphere, would break up and the pieces would burn up on entry. Little or none of it would reach the ground in any form you could recover it.

    The asteroids that are large enough to do damage can be seen far away enough that the cosmic blind spot is irrelevant. The article mentions a 2.9 mile wide asteroid (which would quickly wipe out all life on the planet [nationalgeographic.com] if it hit) which scientists have known about for years. It won't come anywhere close.

    At the moment, we have no defense against a planet-killing asteroid, but the European Space Agency [esa.int] is studying the issue [cnn.com], and NASA's Deep Impact [nasa.gov] project is also working on it.

    • This is NOT reassuring ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by i_want_you_to_throw_ (559379) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:56PM (#11164228) Homepage Journal
      Four small groups of dedicated astronomers in Arizona and California, totaling fewer than the number of employees at an average fast-food restaurant and using mostly off-the-shelf equipment for their telescopes, have been mapping the heavens and steadily adding to the number of known near-Earth objects. The article from TIME is here [slashdot.org]

      Something more dedicated to this would make everyone feel better probably

    • Re:First post (Score:5, Informative)

      by Laivincolmo (778355) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:01PM (#11164268)
      NASA's Deep Impact is going to impact a comet to study the composition of it. If sucessful the impact will create a crater on the surface. It has little to do with breaking up asteroids.

      • Re:First post (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:02PM (#11164292)
        Not really, the asteroid could be totally illiterate and it would still burn up.

      • Re:Tell that to Bikini Atoll... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by BrianH (13460) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:21PM (#11164435)
        Correct, a nuke detonated against an asteroid could conceivably break it up or change its course. It's just a shame that we don't have a delivery system with the range, speed, or accuracy needed to actually HIT an incoming asteroid.

        • Re:Tell that to Bikini Atoll... (Score:4, Funny)

          by SuperBigGulp (177180) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:49PM (#11164619)

          Wrong. We have have an accurate delivery system in the form of Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner [imdb.com].

          If we need a second chance, maybe they can get Lance Bass.

          • Re:Tell that to Bikini Atoll... (Score:4, Informative)

            by Demolition (713476) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @10:47PM (#11165311)
            Actually the old Nike Zeus/Spartan antiballistic missle from the late 60s early 70s might have the range and speed. But it is unlikly that it chould it hit far enough away to make a big difference.

            Probably not.

            The Zeus EX/Spartan had an operating ceiling of only 560 km (350 mi) and maximum range of 740 km (460 mi). I've read that the ideal range to intercept an asteroid/comet, so that its trajectory is altered enough to guarantee a complete miss, is 300 million km (186 million mi). That's because such an object would be travelling very quickly (as much as 60,000+ km/h) and we'd need a lot of lead time (at least a week) to figure out the object's composition and course, and prepare a missile/payload that could alter its course (or destroy it).

            In other words, I don't think that anti-missile technology from the 1950s (or even present-day technology, for that matter) is going to save us.

            D.

      • Re:Tell that to Bikini Atoll... (Score:4, Informative)

        by SonicBurst (546373) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:25PM (#11164464) Homepage
        OK, I am totally guessing here and I'm sure I'm so far wrong it is funny, but I'll still say it anyway.... You point out that there wouldn't be any atmosphere. So, much less shockwave, since there isn't much there to carry it. However, the physical energy released by the bomb must go somewhere. Would it not be *more* focused on the asteroid, since it is the most available medium? Please don't flame me too bad for this wild speculation :)

          • Re:Tell that to Bikini Atoll... (Score:4, Informative)

            by ozmanjusri (601766) <aussie_bob@ho t m a i l.com> on Wednesday December 22 2004, @09:30PM (#11164896) Journal
            To really do any good, one would drive the warhead into the asteroid before detonation

            No, that would just break it up and make it worse. Some fragments might be accelerated sideways enough to miss the earth, but more will be accelerated forward or backward along the asteroid's current path. The result would be like being hit by shotgun blasts as the earth rotated through the asteroid fragments.

            The total energy imparted to the planet by the asteroid would remain the same, but it would be spread over a greater area.

            A better idea would be to use a stand-off blast where the nuke is detonated alongside the asteroid to give it a sideways shove and deflect it whole, but even this would be extremely inefficient, and you'd need to identify the trajectories very early.

            NB, to the grandparent poster, the fact that the asteroid is the only object in the vicinity of the explosion would have no affect on the amount of energy it receives.
              • There's a good chance that most, if not all of them will be too small to survive and even if some hit, it will be a number of small smacks, not one big WHAM

                I think the problems will be caused by energy being imparted to the earth by millions of tonnes of rock at high velocities rather than the impacts with the ground.

                What do you think the result of flash-heating the upper atmosphere to several thousand degrees for several hours is likely to be?
                • What do you think the result of flash-heating the upper atmosphere to several thousand degrees for several hours is likely to be?

                  Several hours? How long do you think it takes a rock to fall through the atmosphere? Less than a minute or so. And, unless all the fragments go through the exact same spot one after the other, the energy will disperse. The reason you have to worry about the impact is that the energy is transferred to something solid (At those speeds water can be considered solid because it c

                  • Re:Tell that to Bikini Atoll... (Score:5, Interesting)

                    by Stealth Potato (619366) on Thursday December 23 2004, @01:34AM (#11166069)
                    Well, let's run some numbers, shall we?

                    Warning! Gross oversimplifications and estimates follow! :-)

                    For the purposes of this problem, we'll assume the ginormous million-year doomsday rock, a 1000-m diameter chunk of iron. A 1000-meter sphere of iron has a mass of 3.30 × 10^13 kilograms. At an impact speed of, say, 30 km/s (approximately Earth's speed of orbit around the sun), that rock has a total of (1/2) * (3.30×10^13 kg) * (3×10^4 m/s)^2 = 1.5 × 10^22 Joules of kinetic energy.

                    Now, let's make some assumptions about the atmosphere. We'll assume the atmosphere is of uniform density, distribution, and composition, and about 120km high (not a terrible approximation, but not a good one either). The volume of the atmosphere is then (4/3) * pi * ((6.498×10^6)^3 - (6.378×10^6)^3) = 6.25 × 10^19 m^3.

                    The density of air at sea level is approximately 1.29 kg/m^3, so the mass of our atmosphere is then (6.25×10^19 m^3) * (1.29kg/m^3) = 8.06 × 10^19 kg.

                    If we assume the volume remains constant, the specific heat of the atmosphere is 716 J/kg*K, so the introduction of 1.5 × 10^22 Joules of energy will result in a temperature increase of dT = E / (m*s) = (1.5 × 10^22) / (8.06 × 10^19 kg * 716 J/kg*K) = 0.26 K

                    So, in summary, a 1-km diameter asteroid made entirely of iron, travelling at 30km/s relative to the Earth, and assuming all the kinetic energy was converted to thermal energy and spread evenly across the entire globe, would raise worldwide temperature by less than half a degree celsius.

                    Now, if we assume a rock like the one supposed to have extinguished the dinosaurs, i.e., a 10-km rock, which consequently has 1000 times the mass, then the global temperature change could be as high as 260 degrees celsius, which is where things really start cooking.

                    If I made any slip-ups in my math, please point them out. It's entirely possible, since I didn't bother double-checking. Although I made so many liberal assumptions anyway that if you use these numbers for anything, you're crazy. This was more a diversion into the sort of problem you'd find in an elementary physics textbook than an actual scientific exercise. :-)

                    • Re:Tell that to Bikini Atoll... (Score:4, Interesting)

                      by Benm78 (646948) on Thursday December 23 2004, @06:09AM (#11166745) Homepage
                      I didn't check the calculations, but I see a few problems with the assumptions:

                      We'll assume the atmosphere is of uniform density, distribution, and composition, and about 120km high (not a terrible approximation, but not a good one either).

                      The atmosphere is not that thick really. There is atmosphere up to this height, but its density is minuscule at an altitude of say 100 km. If you would assume constant density, it would be safe to assume a thickness twice the altitude where pressure is half that at sea level. This equates to around 2*5km, since at 5km pressure is 0.5 atm, and 50% of the air mass is contained below this level.

                      This would increase the temperature rise 60-fold, an increase of 15K... which would probably not kill us all, but would have great impact on life.

                      On the positive side, much of the energy generated will be radiated into space (over half of all radiation produced is directed away from earth). As the whole process probably occurs at high temperature, much of the energy will be radiant.

                      Finally, the other half of the radiant energy will strike the ground, heating up soil and water, increasing the total amount of mass that absorbes the energy.

                      Pretty complex stuff ;)

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:52PM (#11164195)
    Someone wants us dead.

    Sounds like we need to send an exploratory force out towards the sun to find out who the bastards are! Maybe they're on venus or mercury or somethin.

    Oh wait. We don't _have_ an exploratory force. Oh well, guess we'll just have to be sitting ducks.

    Or hope this was just a freak coincidence.

    Sounds like a plot for a new movie...

  • Well if I'm going to be obliterated by an asteroid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:53PM (#11164204)
    I'd rather not see it coming.

      • Re:Well if I'm going to be obliterated by an aster (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fyngyrz (762201) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:10PM (#11164362) Homepage Journal
        No, no -- you must be from some other earth. Here, we don't spend money on planetary defense, we spend it on sports figures, actors, and politicians. And porn, of course.

      • No they couldn't (Score:4, Informative)

        by BrianH (13460) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:19PM (#11164421)
        Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, ICBM's aren't designed to be launched into space and they have neither the thrust to propel a warhead out of our gravity well, nor the accuracy to hit anything smaller than 50km wide even if they did (and that's assuming that the asteroid is close). ICBM's were designed for one purpose...to put a small warhead within a few hundred yards of a stationary target less than 15,000 km away from the launch point. They are useless against moving targets hundreds of thousands of km away.

        There is nothing else we could throw at an incoming asteroid. The simple reality is that if we humans spotted a big rock coming at us, even with a month or two to prepare for it, all we could really do is dig a shelter, store food away, and pray that it comes down on the OTHER side of the planet.
          • I should have been more specific. We can predict where and when it would come down but the course alterations due to its entering the gravity well would probably prevent the exact point of impact from being determined until the weeks, and possibly even days, before impact. Prior to that you're not going to get any more accurate that "it'll come down somewhere in north or south America, the Atlantic, or the Pacific", or possibly "Europe, western Asia, or Africa".

            So yeah, the people on the side of the planet
        • I would think that even the least socially-gifted geek would have no trouble finding someone to screw if the world was going to end tomorrow.

  • Everybody PANIC!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by ChuckleBug (5201) * on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:55PM (#11164217) Journal
    My God, we're doomed! I mean, if an asteroid too small to hit the surface can go undetected, how will we blast it out of the sky with our Planetary Orbital Defense Network?

  • Oops? But does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by agent dero (680753) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:55PM (#11164220) Homepage
    While that does kind of suck that we had no idea of it before it passed "close" by, one has to ask, does it matter if we see it coming or not?

    If an asteroid does head for us, will it matter if we see it coming or not? Or will the grandiose idea presented in "Armageddon" be employed (despite being cool as hell.)

    Personally, i'd rather be blindsided by a sixteen-wheeler, than sit by and see it head towards me for hours/days/weeks.

  • Let's see (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Linguica (144978) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:56PM (#11164225)
    The diameter of the earth is about 8,000 miles, so take the globe on your desk (you have one, right?) and imagine an object a little less than 3 diameters away...

  • 16-foot ASTEROID? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * <seebert@aracnet.com> on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:57PM (#11164235) Homepage Journal
    Heck, I've seen BOULDERS bigger than that (if you ever visit Central Oregon, the High Desert Museum has one about that size sitting on top of a car- it's pumice obviously). That ain't no asteroid, that's a meteor.

    • asteroid, meteor, meteoroid, meteorite (Score:5, Informative)

      by Animaether (411575) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:05PM (#11164311) Journal
      Just to correct something...

      Asteroid:
      Any of numerous small celestial bodies that revolve around the sun, with orbits lying chiefly between Mars and Jupiter and characteristic diameters between a few and several hundred kilometers. Also called minor planet, planetoid.
      I.E. still in space and orbiting.

      Meteor:
      A bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the earth's atmosphere. Also called falling star, meteor burst, shooting star.
      I.E. that which is shooting through the atmosphere, heating it and itself up in the process due to friction.

      Meteoroid:
      A solid body, moving in space, that is smaller than an asteroid and at least as large as a speck of dust.
      I.E. still in space, not necessarily orbiting, smaller than an Asteroid. I think you meant this one.

      Meteorite:
      A stony or metallic mass of matter that has fallen to the earth's surface from outer space.
      I.E. Fallen onto the Earth. It's what you may find if you're either lucky, or very observant.

      So just to conclude.. this is indeed a Meteoroid, as it's not big enough to actually be an Asteroid. But it's more fun to say, and less confusing to the masses - especially the Nintendo owners out there.

  • Planet saving == funding drive (Score:5, Funny)

    by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @07:59PM (#11164245)
    How people love to play on our fears to get power, money etc.:

    Church: "Give us your money and listen to us or you BURN IN HELL!"

    DOE: "Give us your money etc or YOU'LL RUN OUT OF GAS!"

    NASA: "Give us your money or YOU'LL GET KILLED BY AN ASTEROID!"

  • Yay... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Scrab (573004) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:02PM (#11164279)
    Stealth Asteroids....

    I'm not worried though.

    I have my teeny triangular space ship, and I'll destroy it before it becomes a problem....

  • WARNING! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spy der Mann (805235) <spydermann@slashdot.gmail@com> on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:08PM (#11164347) Homepage Journal
    Asteroids may be closer than they appear.

  • well known cosmic blind spot? (Score:4, Funny)

    by zanderredux (564003) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:17PM (#11164408) Homepage
    how is it well known?

    I've never heard of it, until today!

    • It's known by people who work in the field. There are several other blind spots in astronomy, though:

      1) the moon (although the moon itself is only ~0.5" across, telescopes need to stay far away from it...
      2) the earth (jokingly for earth-based stuff, serious for space telescopes)
      3) the galactic plane (unless of course you're looking at stuff in the galactic plane...)
      4) andromeda (it's friggin huge!)

  • Near-misses unnoticed (Score:4, Funny)

    by adam31 (817930) <adam31@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:21PM (#11164437)
    But many near misses by small asteroids likely go unnoticed

    I think the Slashdot effect is very similar...
    submit a story, it gets rejected, and a server admin sleeps quietly through the night.

    One day... Mr Beer-Powered Robot Man. Just keep that site running......

  • Literally (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UnpopularOpinion (839794) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:54PM (#11164641)
    So... when you say 'literally', you mean 'metaphorically' right? As in not literally under a radar... *sigh*

  • Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by Brad1138 (590148) <brad1138@yahoo.com> on Wednesday December 22 2004, @09:03PM (#11164716)
    Homer: "So there's a commet. Big deal. It'll burn up in our atmosphere and whatever's left will be no bigger than a Chihuahua's head."
    Bart: "Wow, dad. Maybe you're right."
    Homer: "Of course I'm right. If I'm not may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow."

  • Is this a problem? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HarveyBirdman (627248) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @09:14PM (#11164802) Journal
    This is like worrying about that dust particle that almost hit me when I was walking out to my var Monday.

    We don't have to spot the 16 footers.

  • Saw one Explode at Football Game... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by also aswell (781190) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @11:27PM (#11165486) Journal

    It was back in maybe 1965/66? Dark night with no moon, playing an away game of jv football in Albemarle? NC.

    That sucker arced across 20% of the sky with a really orange red tail and exploded. Almost looked like dawn was coming, I waited for sound, started counting off seconds to range it's distance, but no sound ever came.

    Just for a moment I thought it was the Russians, but that's another story.

    Something I will never forget.

    And some asteroids come even closer, entering the atmosphere. Most never reach the ground because they break apart under the stress of entry. One study [space.com] of data collected by U.S. military satellites logged 300 in-air asteroid explosions.

  • Politician mocked for supporting asteroid research (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus (6935) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @11:53PM (#11165657) Homepage Journal
    It's interesting to note that when Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) tried to introduce a bill to provide additional funding for tracking near-earth asteroids, he was mocked [spacepolitics.com] by some of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's aides. In general, supporting things like this (even though they're actually pretty important) is a good way to get yourself targeted for "not caring about things here on Earth."

    • Re:meh (Score:5, Informative)

      by jc42 (318812) on Wednesday December 22 2004, @08:12PM (#11164369) Homepage Journal
      Yeah. A couple years ago, I ran across an article that contained a graph of object size versus frequency of entering the Earth's atmosphere. The 1-per-day frequency was for objects of about 3 meters diameter.

      Several objects of this thing's size enter our atmosphere each week. Most of them disintegrate in the atmostphere. A few have pieces that hit the ground, though they're usually rather small by the time they (or the pieces) hit.

      To do serious damage, we'll need a rock at least a few hundred meters across. Of course, one of those may hit us next week. Or 10,000 years from now. (Or both. ;-)

      I wonder if I could find that graph again?

      • If you compress a gas, the temperature of the gas increases, When you expand a gas, the temperature of the gas decreases (which is why those compressed air cans get cold when you use them). Quite a bit of the heat generated by a meteor is caused by the compression of the atmosphere as the meteor enters the atmosphere. As the atmosphere re-expands behind the meteor, it cools back down; but the meteor is in a constant hot-spot.

        Friction does play a part. Heat is created as the potential energy of the mete

    • Re:true but (Score:3, Informative)

      by Shanes (141586)
      As others have pointed out the chances for that hapening are very remote, but anyway, here's an interesting graphic [hohmanntransfer.com] showing the 2004 YD5's position when passing compared to all Low Earth, GPS, and geosynchronous sats. As the page says, it passed 1.88 earth radii from the orbit of GPS satellite BIIA-19 [tbs-satellite.com].

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