1-in-1,000 Chance of Asteroid Impact In ... 2182?
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astroengine writes "Sure, we're looking 172 years into the future, but an international collaboration of scientists have developed two mathematical models to help predict when a potentially hazardous asteroid (or PHA) may hit us, not in this century, but the next. The rationale is that to stand any hope in deflecting a civilization-ending or extinction-level impact, we need as much time as possible to deal with the threatening space rock. (Asteroid deflection can be a time-consuming venture, after all.) Enter '(101955) 1999 RQ36' — an Apollo class, Earth-crossing, 500 meter-wide space rock. The prediction is that 1999 RQ36 has a 1-in-1,000 chance of hitting us in the future, and according to one of the study's scientists, María Eugenia Sansaturio, half of those odds fall squarely on the year 2182."
I'll probably be dead by then, right? (Score:2)
In that case, "Cool!"
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Suit yourself. I fully intend to be not just alive, but enhanced beyond all the current boundaries and limitations of our ape heritage by then.
Heck, with any luck I'll have ditched the last of the organic crap at that stage.
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I'll certainly be dead; I'll be 230 in 2182. Actually, barring some fantastic breakthroughs in medicine and biochemistry, nobody alive now will be alive then.
But you have to die from something; dying from a meteor impact would be a way cool way to go. Imagine the fireworks! Talk about going out with a bang...
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So you are saying I shouldn't worry about it then.
I was going to see what I could do to help man kind, but you convinced me it would be a meaningless gesture.
Re:I'll probably be dead by then, right? (Score:4, Interesting)
I seriously doubt it. Humans are adaptable. Sure, we may go into another Dark Age in the next century or so, but the issues you show concern over would fall pathetically short of causing our extinction.
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Well, some potential, unfortunate combination of the few factors he mentions perhaps has a slight chance of ending in something quite, hm, entertaining [wikipedia.org] ;p (especially if coupled with unavoidable, in such case, massive unrest)
Re:I'll probably be dead by then, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not immediately but quite possibly it could indirectly. All the trivially accessible minerals, oil etc have been consumed. Another dark age and we're likely stuck there indefinitely, possibly forever since we wouldn't be able to boot strap through the equivalent of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Getting stuck in that state may prevent our ability to overcome the next hurdle. We're smart but we need resources.
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It's hard to imagine a pre-industrial world being able to make (or even discover) ethanol fuel without oil-powered industry behind them. Keep in mind that humans have been around for many thousands of years and only in the last few decades have we discovered that all this corn lying around is good for fuel. It takes an advanced level of technology to exploit more subtle resources like ethanol.
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Not only you. The whole human species would be extinct by then. We have global warming, pollution, fuel shortage, wars, corruption. These are enough to finish us by 2100.
Humans have been doing that for a lot longer then the 90 years to 2010, more -1 Pessimist then +1 Insightful.
Re:I'll probably be dead by then, right? (Score:5, Funny)
Not only you. The whole human species would be extinct by then. We have global warming, pollution, fuel shortage, wars, corruption. These are enough to finish us by 2100. What happens in 2182 is irrelevant.
Dammit, and 2182 was finally going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
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The real tragedy is that the Duke Nukem Forever port was due the year after.
Re:I'll probably be dead by then, right? (Score:5, Informative)
Not only you. The whole human species would be extinct by then. We have global warming, pollution, fuel shortage, wars, corruption. These are enough to finish us by 2100. What happens in 2182 is irrelevant.
Not really. The human race started off as a primitive ape like species. We managed to survive living in jungles, deserts and caves. How is "global warming, pollution, fuel shortage, wars, corruption" going to kill ~7bn people. Sure it might kill 3 billion or even 4 billion at the very worst (which is still unlikely) But there is no way any of the things you mentioned will kill every single human being.
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1) The "business as usual" scenario is 3.5C rise by 2100, not 1C in a few hundred years. In fact, there's enough inertia out there just from what we've already emitted to rise more than 1C by 2100.
2) The primary "end of all life" concern is that we'll trigger what happened on Venus here on Earth -- a runaway system with self-feedback mechanisms, wherein we reach a tipping point from adding more carbon that leads to continually more to enter the atmosphere and/or less to leave the atmosphere. At this point
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The problems listed might cut the population down to a tenth of it's current size, but you are dimly aware of how most of the world functions on a day to day basis.
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Re:I'll probably be dead by then, right? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think that's enough to completely wipe out our species, I have a bridge to sell you.
It may not be life as we know it, but whether you like it or not humans as a species will survive ALL of that, AND more. All we need is some percentage of newborns to make it to, oh, let's be generous and say age 17. They breed. There's more of us.
You don't need cars, or computers, or even a houses to have humans. All you need is sharp, pointy sticks, a few friends, and some of those friends to be of the opposite sex. That's it.
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I thought food was quite important.
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THat is what pointy sticks are for. And "friends" in a pinch.
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Pointy sticks can photosynthesize without sunlight?
Re:I'll probably be dead by then, right? (Score:4, Interesting)
> Also didn't we have all those things about 100 years ago?
Exactly. If anything, it could almost be argued that the pollution in late 19th-century Britain, France, and Germany (and parts of America, for that matter) were noxious/toxic enough to make the most badly-polluted square mile of China look like the Garden of Eden by comparison. At least people in China don't have to rely on wood and coal-burning stoves & fireplaces for cooking and heating ON TOP of the pollution being produced by factories (at least, urban factory workers who live amidst the worst pollution) don't.
As a species, humans are easy to kill individually, but surprisingly difficult to effectively exterminate. The dinosaurs didn't have preserved food, hydroponics, artificial lighting, and global distribution networks, so when the skies went dark and 99% of photosynthesis shut down for a few years after the impact event, they were screwed. A similar event would be an unprecedented human tragedy, but the likelihood of enough humans surviving to repopulate the Earth eventually is practically assured.
We don't need to worry about it (Score:2, Funny)
172 years people, geeze.
We won't even be alive by then.. why be concerned about something that has a 0.1%chance of happening?
You know this is going to be just like Y2K. Once the chance is realized to be 30% or higher, people will start working on the fix in 2181.
Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine some people have, or plan to have, children which they will have some degree of fondness towards. As it may effect their children, or their children's children, it might be of some concern to you.
Also, I'm pretty sure an unusually high percentage of Slashdot readers are not planning on dying. I mean, that's pretty much what science is for, right? I'm very concerned about how this asteroid will affect my robot-body . . .
Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I'm pretty sure an unusually high percentage of Slashdot readers are not planning on dying. I mean, that's pretty much what science is for, right? I'm very concerned about how this asteroid will affect my robot-body . . .
Sad reality: if the robot-body technology WAS developed within our lifetimes, the vast majority of us couldn't afford it. That's going to be the ugly truth when it gets here: "immortality" will only be for the rich. The rest of us will live and die like we always have.
That said - 500 meters? That's enough to cause some SERIOUS devastation, but it's not an extinction event impact. 6 miles wide killed the dinosaurs, but didn't wipe out EVERYTHING. This is 0.3 miles wide. As long as civilization as a whole goes on then I'm not TOO worried. Afterall, if they fail to successfully deflect it, the survivors could look at it as a learning experience.
Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad reality: if the robot-body technology WAS developed within our lifetimes, the vast majority of us couldn't afford it.
Oh I'm sure that banks will be willing to give you a loan to purchase (or better still - rent) your immortal robot-body, after all - you are going to have hundreds of years to pay it off.
I know some executives who would salivate at the idea of having an indentured workforce like that.
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"I've actually had this same discussion with some fellow business people and we all concluded that if indeed technology that gives eternal life is developed, it will be affordable for everyone that is able to work."
Current facts seem to disprove your point. Corporations prefer young people: more naive and with less social ties; they are more willfull to work long hours for peanuts.
"is how you force people to pay rent for their body with eternal life, if they refuse to?"
You don't do it. It wouldn't be "you
Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:4, Interesting)
I personally am pretty confident that cryonics works. Yes, I have a degree in a related field and I am working on an MD. When I say "works", I mean that if a patient is frozen with a well oxygenated brain within a short time period following legal death (the heart stops), and cryoprotectants are used, then I am confident that nearly all personality and memories are preserved.
The person needs to be kept cold for 100-200 years. Already, there are people that have been kept frozen for 40 years, so this is not implausible.
Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Until the first person has been woken up from cryonic "sleep", I think it is silly to have any kind of confidence in it. But everything will be wonderful when the cargo comes, right?
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Until the first person has been woken up from cryonic "sleep", I think it is silly to have any kind of confidence in it. But everything will be wonderful when the cargo comes, right?
Simply making a comparison to a cargo cult might be rhetorically fun but it doesn't actually help. First, almost no one is claiming that they have high confidence in cryonics. Indeed, most proponents of cryonics estimate fairly low chances of it working. For example, Robin Hanson estimates around a 5% chance that cryonics will actually work http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/break-cryonics-down.html [overcomingbias.com]. Indeed, when proponents have low confidence like this, claiming that there's a cargo cult mentality fails
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Unfreezing is a conceptually simple thing to understand, although of course we are missing the tools to do it today. But we can describe how the tools would work, and point to existing examples of such tools in nature to state with near absolute certainty that such tools are possible and practical.
The tools we need used to be called "nanotechnology", now are called "molecular manufacturing". We need the technology to make any arbitrary object atom by atom, and it's pretty straightforward from there.
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Freezing is not the problem, thawing is. Also, do these cryoprotectants work on cell level so the walls aren't punctured by ice crystals?
Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:5, Informative)
Freezing is not the problem, thawing is. Also, do these cryoprotectants work on cell level so the walls aren't punctured by ice crystals?
Yes, they do. This problem was solved for in the late 90s by using much more advance cryoprotectants which allow the body to vitrify at low temperatures rather than freeze. This has been true for about a decade now. Indeed, they've now successfully brought rabbit kidneys down to liquid nitrogen temperatures and brought back up, transplanted them, and had the kidneys function. See http://www.cryonics.org/reports/Scientific_Justification.pdf [cryonics.org] which includes discussion of this and other research (including direct examination of vitrified rat brains which show the cellular and synaptic structure largely intact.)
But why would the future people "Ressurect" you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes Cryo might even work, in a few years it might even be possible to bring back those that are now frozen... but why should we bring them back?
keep them frozen till 2999 dec 31 (Score:3, Funny)
keep them frozen till 2999 dec 31
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What good does it do to help your kids out if your existence is permanently terminated and you cannot appreciate the results of your actions? Most advocates of cryonics are either atheists or people who rationally suspect that death might actually be as permanent as it appears, with no form of afterlife.
Cryonics : by preserving the information in the brain it should be possible for future people to rebuild a person or to copy the information into another form.
Religion : by giving telepathic information to
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You don't think immortality would be available under say, a 5000 year mortgage plan?
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No I don't because I don't think it would help anyone.
As you increase the length of a mortgage the cost asymtopically approaches that of an interest only mortgage. In other words beyond a certain point (exactly what point depends on the interest rates) increasing the length of a mortgage will have negligable impact on the monthly cost of the mortgage.
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As long as civilization as a whole goes on then I'm not TOO worried. Emphasizes of "civilization" is mine ...
But you should be worried, perhaps mankind would survive, but the civilization "as we know it" certainly not. A few years of "nuclear winter" will cause havoc to our civilization, hunger, no flights, perhaps no sea travel either and possible break down of our energy provision and gone is our "industrial age".
angel'o'sphere
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You can bet on some unrest, but it won't help much with scarcity - which, for a long time, won't have anything to do with resource scarcity - doing complex things takes time, attention of many people, etc. Now compare such realities with the typical number of people dying every day (a number which will only go up). Throw in some groups wanting to ban it and/or destroy what's already there. And hey, most of the world has some funny ideas, due to fear of death, all the time; at least with the ironic case, tha
Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:5, Funny)
"artificially restricting its availability to the financially privileged would cause a mass uprising among the informed."
Yes. The thread, here in Slashdot, will probably reach the 1000 comments.
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At that point, basically any really conceivable (to us) notion of "immortality"...most likely loses meaning. Probably at least to the point which makes the present state, "we live forever in what we do, what we leave behind", damn close.
And generally - beliefs of imminent salvation aren't new...
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"Think of your children" also doesn't convey properly the scales, the stakes involved - most recent common ancestor of us all lived basically in historical times, possibly in Antiquity or so. If looking just at a group like "europeans and those at least partially descended from them", it's a matter of millenium. Even with low fertility rates, quite a lot of people could carry traces of your DNA in 2 centuries; with greater mobility nowadays... Not to mention the possibility for huge number of "spiritual des
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I don't care if they have my genes, I just don't want humanity to get wiped out. If they do, then who will resurrect everyone who ever lived using their fantastic near-magic technology in the far-flung future? Humanity going extinct really messes with my plans to live forever.
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Hence why the level of civilisation, humanity, was the focus. But also our ancestors - most of your genes are decently spread already.
And hey, Omega point doesn't need non-extinction ;p (for that matter, we might as well already exist in it; how do you like your "forever life"? ;) )
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172 years ago (Score:2, Informative)
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Re:We don't need to worry about it (Score:4, Informative)
More like 72 years. NASA says that they would need to start actual diversion operations 100 years in advance, which leaves 72 years to figure it out.
Let's get crackin' (Score:5, Funny)
no, wait, don't stop it (Score:2)
Good news (Score:4, Funny)
NASA can finally have a mission...
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So half of that is 1 in 2000 chance in 2182? (Score:3, Informative)
or more precisely 0.00054 = 1 in 1852 according to TFA.
Call this 1-in-1000 only if you can't do math.
Bad math (Score:2)
100% (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:100% (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tax that fucker to death!
Re:100% (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe an big import tariff?
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The funny thing is there really isn't anything special about government that any
Why you should care (Score:5, Insightful)
Statistically, we've probably discovered 1% of the potentially hazardous asteroids. Now we have a data point for an interesting occurrence: one of the ones we know about has a good chance of hitting us. What about the rest of them?
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They should be sufficient to justify generous research grants for us until 2182.
It was predicted in Revelations... (Score:5, Funny)
2182 - 2010 = 172 years
Subtract 42 ( Life the universe and everything ) And you get 130 ( Hold this thought )
In 1951, Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot heard round the world" (i.e The Asteroid)
Against the Brooklyn Dodgers...(i.e Earth trying to "dodge")
Take 1951 and turn it into a repeating Decimal .1951951951........ ( this is wrong but who cares )
Then take the above 130 and divide by the repeating decimal and you get....
666 !
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Wow, you have WAY more time then I do, and I'm jobless living in my sister's basement.
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2182 - 2010 = 172 years
In the year 258, Pope Sixtus II is martyred. Turn this into a repeating decimal .258258258258
Now divide 172 by the repeating decimal = 666
How convenient that Pope Sixtus II is related to this future event by the number 666.
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2182 is the new 2012...
Misleading, incorrect information for fools (Score:3, Informative)
Actually there are many objects we are monitoring, please see http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ [nasa.gov].
This object's impact probability is 7.1*10E-4. That's 0.00071, and not 1/1000.
The Torino Scale Color says white, which means impact is almost impossible.
Most of the times even if the probability is increased, it is quickly reduced after some investigation.
Currently the most dangerous object is 2007 VK184 (2048-2057) which gets green rating. This article is nothing more than sensationalist and stupid.
Re:Misleading, incorrect information for fools (Score:5, Informative)
But it has no torino scale entry because the torino scale is only defined for impacts in the next 100 years. Hence it is listed as n/a.
And the impact probability you cited is the cumulative probability of 8 events. There is only a probability of 5.4E-04 (1/1850) of an impact in 2182.
I don't quite get the publicity at the moment. It has been at that level for quite a while and is still at a much lower level than (99942) Apophis was (which hit 1% chance). In all likelihood new data will rule out an impact.
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This article is nothing more than sensationalist and stupid.
And the 10 ways of "deflecting an asteroid" are a collection of how not to do it*. The real solutions are to either slow it down or accelerate it, and let it miss Earth before or after it is crossing Earths way. That can be done for example by attaching a rocket to it.
--
* Except for painting
Breaking it apart with a nuke: Hard to do, creates more asteroids.
Attaching a net/sail: Hard to do, asteroids are not static objects
Mirrors/Lasers pointing at it: You need to shoot them up and aim correctly (which is alr
1.000.000 to one (Score:5, Funny)
Odds.... (Score:2)
Interesting... But what are the odds that this calculation is right?
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this is great news! (Score:5, Interesting)
A rock like this heading to our planet and we've got plenty of time to not just deflect the thing, but to move it into Earth orbit where it can be mined, turned into an outpost, and be used as a tether for a space elevator.
Re:this is great news! (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe not - if you're the kind of civilisation that can apply enough delta-v, to such body, to capture it safely into MEO, you might be high enough on the Kardashev scale to not care much about such exercises. If not high enough - it's probably better to move some bootstrapping machinery towards the asteroid; avoids Kessler Syndrome where you really don't want it, too (minining in basically 0g could be a bit messy)
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... not to mention a military platform for use in our war with the Taliban which by then may not be going as well as it is today ..
Statistically (Score:2)
You have 1 in 5,000 chance of a car accident today, while 172 years from now a 1 in 1,000 chance of world wipe out. That is a significantly high chance of extinction! And where I live is a 1 in 101 chance of being in a car accident :( [timeslive.co.za]
And that's how we like it (Score:2)
Hopefully with development of better models, telescopes, etc, etc we can track asteroids extremely far out and get a good feel for if there will be impacts. As stated, it is the kind of thing that could take a long time. So, if you know about one 200 years in advance, no problem. You wouldn't do anything about it now, as such an object would be very far away. But it lets you start planning, and knowing when those plans need to be put in to action. When it is 30-50 years out, maybe that's when building start
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Better telescopes is moot. Figuring out the position and velocity of any specific detectable object in the solar system has been trivial for a long time now. The problem is our ability to predict how it will interact with every other body in the next hundred years. If it was a comet, and ignoring any potential flybys of smaller planets, just calculating how it will interact with Jupiter and the Sun every year for 100 passes adds more than a few earth diameters of uncertainty to the results.
Can't do it (Score:5, Informative)
We cannot predict the course of asteroids over 200 years to within an Earth diameter. I have worked on this area, and the masses and positions of bodies (particularly all of the other asteroids) are simply not well enough known. So, it will come near the Earth, but we won't know if it is a true threat for at least a century.
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Of course they can't predict it accurately. That's why they give odds.
Otherwise they would just tell us "it's gonna crash" or "it's not gonna crash".
Morbid Fascination (Score:2)
I know this sounds morbid , but i'd kinda like to be alive when something like this happens...
N
With any luck (Score:2)
Get tickets for an evening (Score:2)
at the Olympus Mons restaurant. The evening program includes Marsian comedy, drinks, and strippers, and we offer the best view to watch Earth when the asteroid hits!
Somehow (Score:2)
I can't find it in me to care about 2182 as much as I do about 2036. I guess I'm kind of selfish.
(Besides, those future people will all be screwed by global warming anyway; what's an asteroid or two?)
ugh... (Score:2)
PHA == Precursor to ... (Score:2)
the dreaded PHB of doom?
Whatever happens I'm going to check out of here long before the PHA, and hopefully long before the PHB from hell turns up. (Got a few PHB's around but they're of the manageable kind - just listen, nod, say yes and then go back to doing what ever you had in mind before they decided to part some sage-like wisdom (only problme is the sage in this case is a small somewhat bedraggled herb rather than a wiseman))
moot (Score:2)
This is all moot because the world will end in 2012 anyway
it's on the internet, so it must be true.
but if it happens that nothing happens in 2012, i'm sure someone will say there was a slight error in the calculations and say the asteroid will cause the end of the world. after all, what's a couple hundred years on a time scale of thousands of years?
Russian rolette (Score:5, Interesting)
Image 13 boxes each containing 13 revolvers.
One revolver has one bullet in it.
Now imagine being offered $100,000 to pick a box, and then pick a revolver and then shoot yourself with it.
That 1000:1 odds.
-paul
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I'd take that offer, assuming I could ensure the game was fair.
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Just make sure to try to graze your thigh.
Re:Russian rolette (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, duh, if you were allowed to pick a revolver you'd just choose one that didn't have the bullet in it.
I wished they would stop ... (Score:2)
... calling it a 1 in 1000 chance.
It either hits, or it does not, and the actual outcome is 100% certain right now. ONLY we can not calculate it right now exactly. So I assume they are pretty sure the asteroid will miss, but give it a 1 in 1000 chance that they are wrong in that conclusion.
angel'o'sphere
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"I've seen this movie. It hits Paris."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stargate_SG-1/Season_5#Fail_Safe_.5B5.17.5D [wikiquote.org]
Re:1 in 1000? (Score:4, Informative)
The odds are based on the accuracy of the orbit of the asteroid. Every observation has an error and the orbit can be any orbit that fits in these errors. The errors in the future positions of the asteroid increase exponentially and it is not that exceptional that they can predict this event. Another impact candidate is 1950 DA, which has a 1/300 chance of hitting Earth on March 16, 2880.
The come up with these odds by running tons of simulations taking into account the gravity of the Sun, all planets and some of the larger asteroids. This gives a set of possible paths of the asteroid through the Solar System in the future. The odds of the impact are then the number of possible orbits intersecting the surface of the Earth (including the lower atmosphere) divided by the total number of orbits. This is not magic nor arbitrary, but applied physics.
C3-PO's odds would probably be based on the number of ships ever entering an asteroid field and coming out again. In the real world, flying through our asteroid belt isn't that tricky. Current estimates put the odds of a probe traversing the asteroid belt and accidentally hitting something at around 1 in a billion.
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"This is mostly a 'slake my ignorance post' but where do they pull a probability like a 1 in 1000 chance? Either the comet is going to hit us, or it isn't. So wheres the uncertainty coming from?"
Search for the "three-body problem".
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Perhaps they came up with a margin of error
Generally with this kind of thing you don't estimate a hard edged margin of error but rather you estimate a distribution of probabilities, usually a gausian one.
Combine the probailitity distributions of all your inputs and you get a probability distrbution for your output.
I'd agree about taking the numbers with a pinch of salt though since doing it well is reliant on having good knowlage of the error distributions of all your measurements and calculation methods.
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They'll be about 20 years out at that point
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... on Hurd.