NASA Counts 4,700 Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Asteroids 99
coondoggie writes "NASA continues to get a better handle on the asteroids buzzing around in space saying today that there are roughly 4,700 potentially hazardous asteroids, or as NASA calls them PHAs. NASA says these PHAs are a subset of a larger group of near-Earth asteroids but have the closest orbits to Earth's – passing within five million miles (or about eight million kilometers) and are big enough to survive passing through Earth's atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale."
In coming! (Score:1)
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Eh, the MyFilthyPC ads are funny, if nothing else, because they make fun of that obvious scam group.
Not familiar with GNAA, but I remember the others.
MyCleanPC is Dangerous (Score:2, Funny)
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Obligatory [picardfacepalm.com]
PHA (Score:5, Funny)
PHA - Pointy Haired Asteroid?
Re:PHA (Score:4, Funny)
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Profitably Harnessed Asteroid
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Yah, it is probably cheaper to alter it's orbit to crash into Earth than to go back and forth to mine it..
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Pointy Hats Ascendant.
Basically, the Unseen University has moved into space.
(note, the ENTIRE university, not just one member, so no saying "it's already been done", and citing "The Last Hero")
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We have hairy black holes already, despite people thinking they couldn't exist, so it wouldn't surprise me that much.
What I have a problem with is the word "potentially". Not a lot of people instinctively understand what it means. We also have several hundred million potential child molesters in the US, and 47 European countries who may potentially declare war on the US next year.
It must be budget time again if NASA plays the populist card.
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47 European countries who may potentially declare war on the US next year.
Finally, a policy I could vote for!
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Wrong unit (Score:2)
Why does TFS indicate that the distance in miles is accurate when it is just as much an approximation as the one in km?
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I TFS they meant that 8 million kilometers is an approximation for 5 million miles.
All well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
So what are we going to do when one the size of texas comes heading for DC I mean aside from putting marshmallows on extremely long sticks :)
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And a duck is gonna help us how?
Oh, Affleck not Aflac. Sorry, need more coffee here...
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We need a nationwide network of marshmallow repositories to be kept on permanent 24/7 standby. And long sticks.
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Even cooler would be to build an improbability drive for the whole planet and press the button just about the last seconds before impact.
Im betting the asteroid turning into a financial document with a surprisingly small budget of just $42.
If it all fails, well, at least there will be space for a hyperspace express way.
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70% of the worlds surface is water. Since there is an equal chance where space can lay a brick on the planet, there are 1410 PHAs left to worry about (30% of 4700). Then the population density is about 50 people per km2 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#Human_population_density ) so that you end up with only a handful PHAs. And then there is a good chance that those will not even reach the planet because they wondered off some
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Re:All well and good (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure your post was meant as a redneck parody, but in case someone takes it seriously:
The damage to humans is likely to be worse if it hits water.
A majority of the major cities of the world are near an ocean - 35 of the 40 largest ones are coastal.
An estimated 700 million people live less than 10 m above sea level.
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Not to mention the weather effects of dumping that much vaporized water into the atmosphere. Obviously there'd be some minimum energy threshold, but once crossed the planet could be plunged into a "nuclear winter", minus the fallout. The resulting famines could potentially be even more damaging than the tsunamis. After all, we would probably get at least a few weeks of warning, and asteroids rarely change course or break up in flight like comets do so the impact zone could be calculated much more accurat
Re:All well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
You saw what happened to Japan when there was an earthquake in the ocean? Now, imagine the tsunami that would be cause by a meteorite strike.
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I personally think in the middle of a desert would be the ideal situation. Preferably as far from any major fault lines as possible.
And I imagine that a meteorite strike for instance in the Gulf of Mexico would also result in millions of casualties. All the islands and coastal cities at less than 50 foot altitude would be wiped out. Never mind the chaos looters would cause in the aftermath. And that 50 foot estimate is very conservative.
Sure, an ocean strike would give you a little extra time. But how many
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Well the odds are in our favor that it will hit the ocean... However. If it is a big enough one, it won't help much.
And extincion level asteroid well see the ocean as a small film of water. It would be like pouring water over your body to try to stop a bullet.
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Offer the asteroid Texas and call it Springtime in America.
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I find it's best to quote from the bible:
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
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So what are we going to do when one the size of texas comes heading for DC
Cheer for Real Change!
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So what are we going to do when one the size of texas comes heading for DC
Sheesh! Why is it people always need to be reminded of the standard emergency protocol?
Write a tweet, update facebook status, check into foursquare, write a new blog entry, start following the #fucksie hashtag, and re-tweet everything Stephan Fry says.
Re:are you so hopeless at spotting bullshit? (Score:2)
how is that insightful??
"another asteroid between 4.5 and 10 meters (14-33 feet) wide" just missed the Earth. Go look at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/ [nasa.gov] for real data. Thing is we are in estimated 95 percentile about potentially hazardous asteroids now.
Star Tram (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm going to beat the drum for Star Tram again here, we need this built to have a defence against asteroids, since Bruce Willis is a bit long in the tooth to be leading a gang of roughnecks to the rescue at this stage.
12/21? (Score:1)
So, which one is going to hit us on Dec 21st? :)
I know, I know, NASA says there isn't one. Every good tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut knows it's coming.
For a special limited time, I am offering tinfoil hat adjustments, should you not see the "truth". Paypal me $499.95 and your hat size, and I'll send you out a properly adjusted tinfoil hat.
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Are they real tin, or are you using aluminium foil?
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For the special low price of $499.95, the default option is a tinfoil hat of 100% real tin, certified by our own staff metallurgist.
(Note: His only real qualification is that he can read the box that says "tin foil", but we keep him on staff because he does have a Doctorate in Metallurgy from Wossamotta U.)
For the finer tastes, we will alternatively provide foil hats in aluminum, copper, or a variety of stylish foil bonded papers.
Gold and platinum foil hats are a
More of this please (Score:5, Interesting)
It kind of disappoints me when I read an article on slashdot that is about something worthwhile that humanity really needs to get behind and fund, yet there won't be many comments. This is one of those types of articles. Normally the surefire comment magnets are trolling articles, or feature a topic that has a lot of fanbois, or better yet a technological holy war between several factions of fanbois.
However, that shouldn't be a sign that no one is interested or cares about such things. We do. This site is about Stuff That Matters. Researching and preventing low probability cataclysms now we have the technology to attempt it is a very important and noble goal. Whether the average person realizes it or not, those goals are more important than 99% of other charitable goals, because without a habitable earth or human population there is no point to any charity.
So in future while I can't usually add much more than a boring "this is great, more of this please" or a dumb joke if at all, this stuff is important and yes, we need more of it. Don't take low numbers of comments for lack of interest or perceived priority.
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The market has decided that defending against asteroid impact is a waste of money.
Re:More of this please (Score:4, Interesting)
This complaint above is however of the biggest legitimate flaw of a market. Namely, if it doesn't trade on the market, it doesn't exist in the viewpoint of traders on the market. While there are (as I gather) a few businesses which can and do legitimately offer insurance or whatnot against asteroid impacts, the cost of such insurance is way out of line with the risk.
It's much cheaper at this time to self-insure, that is, use your own resources to prepare against such low probability events.
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*To remember if ever filing a lawsuit against an insurance company*
In this contract they only restrict liability against 'acts of god' but i have not seen any proof that a god exists.. Judge, can you please order company X to provide evidence of:
A: That a god exists
B: That a god did indeed cause the incident
C: That the laws of physics where cancelled the day of the incident and it was all controlled by some omnipotent lifeform.
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Maybe step one would be asking your lawyer what "acts of god" means in a legal context...
I know, I know: whoosh.
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a truly innovative new idea can unseat the old huge established players
...and that's where patent minefields come in. Make it virtually impossible to build anything within a given "solution space" without licensing dozens or hundreds of patents from the major players and you can mostly prevent any upstarts from joining the game.
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Stratification and class structures aren't very good terms to describe the wealth concentration problem. It would be more true to say that in an undirected market there is a positive feedback effect in which success gets you enough money to have a higher chance of succeeding the next time. It is a process with no upper limit to how much power you can gain with an early advantage, and partially locks out new players from the game.
But does this dynamic exist in the real world? The King or Queen of the United Kingdom has long been the wealthiest person of that realm, yet they aren't particularly wealthy given how long their families had that wealth. Forbes, for example, currently pegs the Queen of England at $420 million [forbes.com]. That's a princely sum, but far short of what past monarchs of England used to own.
What it means is that there are mechanisms for dissipating large concentrations of wealth, mostly through inheritance in the above
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Isn't that exactly the position you're trying to oppose? That the market has decided asteroid defence is a waste of money?
No? They said this is a legitimate weakness of the free market and as a result the only thing being done about asteroids are some companies offering insurance at a rate that is way out of line with the actual risk.
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Wait, did you just say that it's fine to exploit poor people as long as they think they are happy? Or even just "doing fine"?
Why would one think I had said that? I merely pointed out that societies can oppress people nearly effortlessly. Markets don't make that job easier.
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Just read through your argument. [slashdot.org]
You seemed to misapprehend a lot of valid points being made by your debating partner.
I think the problem stems from the notion of what a Free Market can be when used appropriately by a conscientious population, and our present reality which contains psychopaths and psychopathic thinking.
As it stands, the "Free Market" is an illusion. It's not free at all. (If one's definition of "Free" means unrestricted opportunity for everybody to exploit the market as they see fit.) I s
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I think the problem stems from the notion of what a Free Market can be when used appropriately by a conscientious population, and our present reality which contains psychopaths and psychopathic thinking.
The markets work the same no matter who's trading on them. And it strikes me that markets provide a positive way to interact with psychopaths. I imagine for example, a psychopath would rather deal with someone via informal (and pretty unaccountable) spoken word agreements than interact through an impartial market. The former leaves plenty of room for scamming and liberal reinterpretations of what was said and agreed to. The market completely filters out the tricks in the psychopath's toolbag unless he can f
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I was just observing that you and your debating partner were not seeing eye to eye due to differing understandings of what a Free Market is actually composed of; you seemed to understand it as an ideal, whereas the other fellow was seeing the ways the current system has been abused through the psychopathic understanding of what "Freedom" is.
I'm pretty sure I understood him just fine. My take is that the difference in our definitions is a matter of who we take as authorities on the meaning of words? Do we take a relatively objective definition such as found in an economics textbook or do we base that definition on the current whim of psychopaths? Frankly, I think even acknowledging the psychopaths' definition means that fight is lost.
What language should I use to say that I think "free markets" (or at least close enough to the ideal) are goo
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Well being that we don't have any good theoretical models to stop said asteroids, it is difficult for the market to invest into a defense.
It would be like spending billions of dollars to paint a No-Asteroid sign on the United states (Europe and Asia, or Africa might make it bigger), In hope the asteroid will see the sign and decide to not hit the planet.
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Well being that we don't have any good theoretical models to stop said asteroids, it is difficult for the market to invest into a defense.
Nonsense. There are fantastic models that will definitely work to prevent asteroid strikes given enough lead time. The math has been done. E.g. Let's say Apophis looks like it's going to go through the keyhole and come around and hit earth -- a one ton spacecraft equipped with ion engines operating for 2 years as a gravity tractor bam done earth is saved let's have a parade.
What's lacking is sufficient funding for discovering and tracking asteroids to make sure we find any dangerous ones far enough ahead
Re:More of this please (Score:5, Interesting)
Aren't we way ahead on this with asteroid mining?
I mean the first step of that company is rolling out a mass-producible telescope specifically for spotting near Earth asteroids - something with a dangerous orbit also happens to be a great candidate for resource extraction, and their long term plan (deflect the targets into stable orbits around the moon) - has the benefit of developing the exact tools and techniques we'd need to employ for any type of practical asteroid defense.
I mean, I'd say this is very much on its way to being a solved problem. Go go private sector (and potential piles of platinum).
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Who cares about unobtanium? Even gold, platinum, etc. is just icing on the cake. The real prize is megatons of virtually pure iron and nickel in high orbit, where it can be used as-is and doesn't cost thousands of dollars per pound like it would if we boosted it from Earth. That's the prize that finally gets us into space in a big way.
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Good point, an orbital fueling station is probably the highest priority if we want to explore the solar system, though mining water might be even more involved than iron since unbound water would likely be virtually nonexistent on a carbonaceous asteroid in a near-earth orbit, unless the asteroid was massive enough to shelter an icy core. More likely you'd need to refine water from hydrated minerals, which might not be a simple task. It might be better to mine the moon for fuel - there's potentially consi
Re:More of this please (Score:4, Insightful)
So yeah, let's just hope that the first one to hit won't cause too much damage, but enough to scare the shit out of people.
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I think it's interesting from an academic standpoint, but hardly something that needs immediate expenditure of massive resources.
"those goals are more important than 99% of other charitable goals, because without a habitable earth or human population there is no point to any charity."
From the article, NASA states that there are no asteroids that are capable of an extinction type event of the type we believe wiped out the dinosaurs.
As usual, we'll wait for a major destructive impact before closing the prover
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A miss is as good as a mile.
It's not really that interesting until we know when and if the big one is going to hit because nature has many other ways to cause catastrophes yet there's no way to prevent them either.
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What a relief (Score:1)
Tracking orbits within orbits? (Score:2, Interesting)
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They almost certainly aren't, because it doesn't make any sense to do so.
For the vast majority of the bodies in question (99%+), they aren't big enough to survive a collision that generates sufficient energy to divert them. For the tiny percent that are big enough (up above the "smash a city" size) the odds against such a collision are truly enormous - in the "happens less than a handful of times in the entire life of the solar system" range. Anything else (I.E. accumulations of smaller collisions
dont cower in fear (Score:1)
Asteroid Discovery from 1980 - 2011 (Score:1)
http://youtu.be/cKT1VGIDEd4?hd=1
Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010 (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a cool video showing all known asteroids with a time-lapse revealing the year they were discovered: http://youtu.be/cKT1VGIDEd4?hd=1 [youtu.be]
counter-weapon (Score:2)
We'll destroy the PHAs with our Super Energy Ray.
And that's the true origin of the PHASER !