Schoolboy Corrects NASA's Math On Killer Asteroid 637
spiracle writes "A German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, has revised NASA's figures for the chances that the Apophis asteroid will hit earth. Apparently if the asteroid hits a satellite in 2029, its path could be diverted enough to cause it to collide with Earth on the next orbit, in 2036. NASA had calculated the chances as 1 in 45,000 but the 13-year-old, in his science project, made it 1 in 450. NASA agreed." Update: 04/16 16:47 GMT by Z : This is not entirely accurate, it turns out — more details.
Impending doom (Score:2, Insightful)
What I want to know... (Score:1, Insightful)
If the entire increase in risk is due to this, that means he's basically giving this thing a 1 in 450 chance to hit a satellite. Somehow, I don't think so.
Re:Damn zeros (Score:5, Insightful)
Or faced political pressure to predict something other than a fairly decent chance of doom. I mean really: does anyone think a 13-year-old outsmarted every scientist at NASA?
Re:Where's the math? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No suprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Btw, in case you are not aware, the NEO office is at JPL--not JSC. And JPL is run by Caltech for NASA--not directly by NASA.
Now that we have that cleared up you should feel free to continue your bullshitting and insinuating via hearsay.
I want to see NASA's acknowledgement he is right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not peer reviewed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, was this by any chance an April Fools paper? (Score:5, Insightful)
So far, doing well.
Then we hit the big problems. First, we have the scare factor of "40,000" satellites surrounding Earth. Most of which, actually, are in LEO, with a few more in geosynchronous orbit. Which makes the space around the Earth only about 99.999% empty space, rather than a few more nines. As it turns out, space is big.
But it sounds good to imply that somehow there's this asteroid belt around the earth, and that the "killer" asteroid might hit a satellite.
Well, WHICH ONE? They have a lot of different masses, they are going in different directions, and we pretty much have to get a specific momentum change in the right direction in order to get just the right perturbation. Hitting a small piece of space junk is one thing, but the variation in weight of those "40,000" satellites is orders of magnitude. And that makes a big difference in orbital perturbation, even if the difference in orbital velocity is small compared to the velocity of the asteroid. We're talking about a subtle effect here.
And let's not figure in things like elastic collisions, off-center collisions, pieces flying off, or anything else. Nope, it's gonna happen perfectly, just like that seven-ball four-cushion bank shot we all can hit again and again.
Heck, they even called the pocket. Right into the Atlantic, after an orbit measuring in the decades. Now I will grant that the orbit is pretty well known, but again, that little "satellite assist" must be just precise as heck.
A nice touch gives us the "destroy both coasts and darken the world indefinitely." While it's good to be so certain, couldn't they be more specific about the method of destruction? Seeing as how they apparently know everything else, and all.
And finally, we have the 450:1 odds. Not 500:1, and certainly not 1000:1, but exactly 450. Cool. About as believable as my old homework excuses, but infinitely cooler. Can you say "significant figures"? I knew you could.
I think it's what you get when you let AFP (my source of news of the world for sure) loose in spring.
Exactly right (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you're below a certain threshold, a few more zeros really does not change anything. Very unlikely vs extremely unlikely is hardly relevant. Increasing my chances of being hit by an asteroid by 500 times still does not put it on the radar. Increasing my chance of a car crash by 50% is much more important.
Re:Hang on ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, but the asteroid has hit a satellite between now and then, a satellite which has, apparently, increased its chance of hitting earth from 1 in 45000 to 1 in 450, which means that its trajectory has changed fairly significantly. In particular, its orbital period has probably changed, which makes it seem unlikely that we can say anything accurate about an impact time 7 years later. There's only a four hour window to hit the Atlantic.
Not only that, but the Atlantic only covers one fifth [wikipedia.org] of the earth's surface, which means that even if, despite all the uncertainty, we knew exactly what time it would hit the earth, the Atlantic would cover at most about one half of the target. So I very much doubt that anyone who knows what they are doing would be prepared to "agree" that it will hit the Atlantic.
So I smell bullshit in the science lab. To be fair, it's possible that a bad translation from the original German article was required as a catalyst.
Re:there's no way this is true (Score:4, Insightful)
seriously ... BS detector is flashing red on this whole article.
But it does raise the point that apocalypse cults are best kept away from space tech.
Re:Where's the math? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Friday the 13th (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that in the same way that ~250k people in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Thailand "got wet" after the earthquake in 2004?
Re:No suprise here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Deflection (Score:2, Insightful)
This makes the physicist in me cry (Score:5, Insightful)
And the answer is... (Score:2, Insightful)
So if this report is true (which I very much doubt), it in itself provides the answer.
Re:Other news stories on this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hang on ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's clearly typical science journalism. For now, though I'm willing to believe there might be something there. I'd like to see an official NASA report on the story.
Of course, no one's mentioned that we'll know much more precisely what will happen by 2029 -- not only whether there's a concern at all, but which satellite would be hit. In which case we could, you know, move the satellite. The do have some station-keeping capability, after all. And even the dead ones could be moved by a tug, given a small amount of notice and a really good reason (I think this qualifies).
Re:Other news stories on this (Score:5, Insightful)
So I'll bite the bullet.
First off... how does a 200,000,000,000 tonne asteroid (200,000,000,000,000 kg) travelling at any substantial inter-planetary speed be deflected by a satellite travelling at 3070 m/s and at most wieghing 10,000kg?
Of course thats presuming an elelastic collision as opposed to the satellite deflecting off the asteroid in a cloud of debris.
Its been a while since I've done any physics, and I'm just grabbing numbers from the article (which are likely to be wrong anyways).
But to bring it all together in a car analogy for the fellow /.ers... How does a .22 bullet deflect an oncoming semitruck forcing into the little old lady on the sidewalk?
Re:Friday the 13th (Score:3, Insightful)
The wikipedia article for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami states that the earthquake released around the equivalent of 1502 Hiroshimas, so we're talking over an order of magnitude difference. That said, a lot of the death toll in 2004 was caused by lack of warning, which certainly won't be an issue in the event of an impact, so I suppose that it will balance out somewhat.
Re:The Heaviest (Score:3, Insightful)
Journalists are the only people worse on Maths than both NASA and German school boys.
Re:That can't be right (Score:5, Insightful)
Err...yes, I would agree with that sentiment, but I think that's exactly why they wouldn't predict doom.
Bear with me for a moment (and feel free to rip the argument apart later): if NASA predicted impeding doom from the asteroid then people would panic and NASA would receive tons of funding, but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of attempting to focus on research and possible Mars visits they would be forced to spend tons of time and effort trying to avert an Armageddon that would likely never come. This would most likely set the program years back.
If they instead ignored the thing until it was certain to collide with the Earth, then they would have several years to find a relatively easy solution, and up until that point they would have twenty years of advances under their belt.
Maybe this is the lack of sleep combined with hours of work and six cups of coffee talking, but I think that NASA had/has very good reasons for keeping this thing quiet.
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
As did everyone else who replied to you. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..
Re:So if it does hit a sat will we know about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So if it does hit a sat will we know about it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Um, was this by any chance an April Fools paper (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Friday the 13th (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh come on, get with the program. Mt. St. Helens was in America so it was obviously the most important. What are you, a freaking communist?
Re:That can't be right (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the track record on space propulsion advances over the last twenty years, I'm not going to put much faith in a game-changing engine appearing in the next twenty.
The "relatively easy solution" is to go push it as soon as possible. The sooner you push, the less pushing you have to do. With Apophis in particular, you want to get your pushing done before the 2029 flyby, as it will magnify the effect.
(of course, it turns out the kid was wrong, but the point stands)
Re:Other news stories on this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Friday the 13th (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll slow down slightly, and the loss in speed will cause it to zip down the funnel.
That's what we're dealing with here. If this thing loses enough velocity, our gravity well will suck it in. If we could give it a push as it is on it's way past us, sure, we could get rid of it, but putting things in front of it is always going to be bad for us.
"Not entirely accurate" (Score:4, Insightful)