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Space Science

Stealth Asteroid Misses Earth 510

Posted by timothy from the they're-sneaky-like-that dept.
Paradoxish writes: "Gah. According to cnn.com an asteroid hiding in an astronomical blindspot nearly blindsided Earth. The scary part is that scientists didn't notice it until four days AFTER it passed by. Apparently, it would've been similiar to the Tunguska explosion. Scary." As long as they keep missing Earth, we're OK.
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Stealth Asteroid Misses Earth More

Stealth Asteroid Misses Earth

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  • Oh, no... (Score:3, Funny)

    by O2n ( 325189 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:28PM (#3190116) Homepage
    Now I'll really get to live to see the HURD released...

    [ducks]

  • Actually... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gergi ( 220700 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:30PM (#3190127)
    The asteroid was installed with a propulsion system and aimed at New Jersey. Unfortunately, due to a conversion factor from metric units, the asteroid missed Earth completely.

  • Does anyone know (Score:3, Interesting)

    by linzeal ( 197905 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:30PM (#3190129) Journal
    What would happen if an asteroid of a given size hit the moon? A place with equations on velocity, density, and angle of entry for the meteor would be nice.

    I would imagine that impact material from the moon could make secondary impacts on earth and the ocean would be a little whacky. Could a tsunami be born out of such an event if the asteroid was large enough?

    • Take a look at the moon sometime and see the nice (bigger) craters on the moon. It's been hit before, it will be hit again, it will still be there tomorrow.

    • Hitting the moon (Score:2, Informative)

      by roberto0 ( 242247 )
      Unless the rock was travelling at an enormous velocity, the moon would remain intact and any fragments sent into space from the impact would probably be burned up in Earth's atmosphere before colliding.

      If the rock were going fast enough and was coming in at the correct angle, it might have provided a fantastic show for telescope aficionados. (of course, Someone would have had to seen it coming!)
    • What would happen if an asteroid of a given size hit the moon?

      If it had the same mass as the moon and collided on a tangent to the moon's orbit, it would replace the moon in our sky. Our "old" moon would go flying off into space.

      That would be cool. Kind of like one of those executive toys [aboyd.com]. Of course, I'm assuming an unlikely inelastic reaction...

    • Re:Does anyone know (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SrlKlr ( 219192 )
      What would happen if an asteroid of a given size hit the moon?

      What is more interesting is if you think about what would happen if the moon was to go away (like maybe knocked out of orbit or something like that). Forget the simple things like screwing up light at night and night time criters. Think about tides and how they are directly affected by the moon. And since the weather is extremely dependant upon the temperature of the ocean, this would completely, change the weather across the globe. Colder areas would become colder and warmer areas would become warmer without some type of climate circulation. Lots of factors for a hunk of rock flying around the globe...
    • asteroids hit the moon all the time... it doesn't have an atmosphere, that is why it has all those craters.

      i have no idea how big an asteroid would have to be to completely fuck things up, but there are some HUGE craters already there.

    • Re:Does anyone know (Score:3, Interesting)

      by denzo ( 113290 )
      Equation for momentum: m_a*v_a + m_b*v_b = m_a*v_a' + m_b*v_b'

      The LHS is initial velocities, and RHS is final velocities. Since an asteroid collision would likely be a plastic collision (i.e., object stick together), the final velocities for objects A & B would be the same. Assume that the moon's velocity is zero, since we are determining the relative change in velocity. Thus you would get an equation like thus to find the final velocity of both objects combined:

      v' = (m_asteroid * v_asteroid)/(m_asteroid + m_moon)
      Where m_moon = 7.35E22 kg. Assume that v_asteroid = 10km/s, and in order to get a significant change in the moon's velocity (say 1 m/s), the asteroid would need to be going 7.35E18 m/s. If the asteroid was the same density as the moon (3340 kg/m^3), then that would mean a spherical asteroid of a diameter of 16 km. (assuming that I did that all right).

      Pretty big asteroid, I think a global killer is considered to be a 1 km long asteroid. Recalculate the above equation for different assumptions.

  • It seems like (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DeltaBlaster ( 300386 )
    It seems like we are starting to hear about some asteroid missing us a few times a year now. Has anyone ever heard of Nasa having any sort of plan on what to do if an asteriod ever was going to hit earth? (Even though according to that article the odds are currently 1 in 10 million")

    • Calculations (Score:5, Funny)

      by nucal ( 561664 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:34PM (#3190174)
      But don't tell the grandchildren to head to the hills just yet. The odds of a collision are currently 1 in 10 million and could become even more remote with more refined calculations.

      If we could just get the calculations more refined, then the asteroids will never hit us.

    • Re:It seems like (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 )
      > Has anyone ever heard of Nasa having any sort of plan on what to do if an asteriod ever was going to hit earth?

      Has anyone ever heard of Congress giving NASA the budget required to come up with any plan more effective than "Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

      The dinosaurs are extinct because they lacked a space program.

      More the pity homo sapiens, who was smart enough to invent rockets, smart enough to realize the nature of the threat, but too dumb to do anything about it.

      Prediction: 24 hours after the asteroid impact, the surviving Congresscritters call upon the surviving sheeple to burn down and lynch all aerospace industry personnel because "NASA should have been able to warn us!"

      Maybe our descendants, 500 years after the Great Burn, will do better.

      • I dunno, I think that the airport security should have been able to prevent Sept 11, and I don't see a big hue and cry to lynch the metal detector jockeys and their bosses.

        I wonder why?

        • Re:It seems like (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Darby ( 84953 )
          I think that the airport security should have been able to prevent Sept 11, and I don't see a big hue and cry to lynch the metal detector jockeys and their bosses.

          Well, since the government knew about it beforehand they could have prevented it but chose not to. This is not conspiracy theory or speculation, since they warned many VIPs not to fly that day.

    • Simple, hire a bunch of oil rig hands and send them up into space after a few days training and give them lots of really high tech toys and let them try to drill a hole in the asteroid and drop a nuke into it.

  • Meteorites DO Screw Stuff Up (Score:3, Informative)

    by EricKrout.com ( 559698 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:31PM (#3190145) Homepage
    ...as is apparent at this site [branchmeteorites.com]. The page includes a large table of data with a listing of meteorites that have hit man-made objects (or people/animals).

    PostScript, PDFs, Printing, Oh My! [monolinux.com]

  • ELE (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crumbz ( 41803 ) <[<remove_spam>ju ... spam>gmail.com]> on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:32PM (#3190147) Homepage
    That's great. Just wonderful. Our species keeps squabbling over the same pice of dirt for 5,000 years in the Mid-East and completely misses one of the top threats to humanity. We have the technology to give us some protection against this type of thing. Let us implement it since we apparently got a 2nd chance.
  • They say the asteroid is a little bigger than the Tunguska object, but they depict something that looks a little bit smaller than the moon. It's a file picture, though, because it's their conception of the asteroid that allegedly did the dinosaurs in. Still seems like something THAT big would be even more devastating.
  • ...Willis could have saved us this time.

    Seriously, that picture they have with their story is hilarious. A chunk 70 meters in diameter would only make a crater 700 meters in diameter (give or take). So if one assumes that picture is correct, the Earth is about 5km in diameter. :-)

    But now that I'm thinking about it a smaller, closer piece like 2002 EM7 might make a good test for NEA destruction systems. It's coming back in 90 years, too...

    -B

    • 2002 EM7 might make a good test for NEA destruction systems.

      I had no idea the National Endowment for the Arts had such systems.

      It's good to know that when scientists fail to protect our planet, we can always rely on the artists!

  • I know what we need! (Score:3, Informative)

    by nigelthellama ( 563606 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:33PM (#3190163)
    It's too bad Scott Safran [slashdot.org] is dead. He'd be perfect at eliminating these pesky asteroids.

  • People use the moons orbit as a benchmark for closeness. This guy was 1.2 times distant the moons orbit. Remember, this is going to happen *a lot* and only a small fraction of the observations are really going to be worrisome. And besides, even if this rock did hit earth the probability that it would hit something important is small. Tsunami would be the biggest worry I think.

    -Sean

    • Re:Chances are still pretty slim. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Phosphor3k ( 542747 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:39PM (#3190237)
      Just remember, every Asteroid is a potential "Britney killer", and should be viewed as such.

      I can't live without my Britney Spears.
    • Tsunami would be the biggest worry I think.

      Hits in the mid north atlantic, bye bye washington, boston, new york, florida (including our shuttle launch facilities) and the eastern seaborad of the us & canada, most of the carabiean, west coast of europe (lisbon, boudeaux, cornwall, maybe upto southampton, le harve and bristol), azores, canaries, north west africa and northen south america.

    • Re:Chances are still pretty slim. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:46PM (#3190322)
      The moon's orbit is used for a couple reasons, most noticably the "lensing" effect both the earth and moon have on close misses. Something that passes this closely is going to have its orbit affected by the gravitational attraction.

      As for the impact of the rock, we no longer have the luxury of only caring about the area immediately adjacent to the impact point. During the first Gulf War there was a brilliant flash seen by military satellites from an impact that exploded over the Pacific Ocean. Had circumstances been slightly different the flash would have been seen over the Persian Gulf or Middle East, and it's virtually certain that the flash would have been initially interpreted as a nuclear detonation. (Watching for such flashes is exactly why these satellites were launched.)

      If the error was not quickly determined -- and it could be very difficult with another Tunguska-level event where the *only* way to distinguish it from a nuke is the lack of radiation -- then the deaths from the subsequent "retaliation" could easily dwarf the deaths from the initial impact.

      • Re:Chances are still pretty slim. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:38PM (#3190527)
        > Had circumstances been slightly different the flash would have been seen over the Persian Gulf or Middle East, and it's virtually certain that the flash would have been initially interpreted as a nuclear detonation. (Watching for such flashes is exactly why these satellites were launched.)

        The flashes from nuke detonations have certain characteristics that the flashes from asteroid/cometary fragment detonations don't.

        (That said, the nuke-detecting satellites are doing a good job of keeping track of upper-atmosphere flashes from asteroid/cometary fragments. To the extent that such data can be given to NASA folks, we're getting some good science out of these things.)

        Yes, a human observer on the ground may erroneously conclude they've been nuked, but any rational chain of command involving release of nuclear weapons will include verification that the supposed nuke really was a nuke and not an unfortunately-timed meteorite.

        (Unfortunately, convincing the other side's troops that we hadn't developed some sort of new superweapon might be another story. The less technologically-advanced the opponent, the more the risk that they'll be able to understand the evidence that it was just Really Bad Luck.)

        Thankfully, the odds of asteroid impact itself are pretty slim, and I'm much more worried about those odds - anywhere on the planet - than I am about the rock hitting the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.

        (Also thankfully, the solution to both problems is the same - a bit more spent on gear to watch for rocks, and assloads more spent on R&D into cheap, heavy-lift capabilities so we have a hope in hell of deflecting them when/if we find one with our name on it. If we never find a rock with our name on it, we've got a heavy-lift capability to make space tourism, offworld solar power stations, and eventual colonization a reality. Win/win.)

        • Seeing as how a large percentage of the muslim population of the world believes that the WTC attack was either actually perpetrated by Mossad, or the CIA (or both) in conjunction with a secret airliner remote-control system, I think that if an asteroid flew out of the sky and killed a cow in rural Iraq, we'd be hard pressed to convince them that it was anything other than a failed nuclear attack by the US.

  • Dear God, No! (Score:3, Funny)

    by papafink ( 264897 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:35PM (#3190177)
    The way he specifically pointed out Atlanta as a population center that could be flattened reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons with the Bart's comet and they specifically pointed out the damage it would do to Moe's bar.

    • Re:Dear God, No! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jbrecken ( 107271 )
      The way he specifically pointed out Atlanta as a population center that could be flattened

      I figured that was because it was a CNN interview, and he tailors his examples so that the interviewer is always destroyed.
    • If it were over a populated area, like Atlanta, it would have basically flattened it,"

      lol here too.

  • The world could be a better place... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:35PM (#3190178) Journal
    if governments would listen to scientists who are interested in preserving the human race, instead of businesses that are interested in enslaving it.
    • Foolish teamhasnoi...don't you understand that the businesses have realized that they can't enslave us if we aren't here? Enslavement = preservation, and don't you forget it.

      This message was NOT brought to you by a member of the conspiracy...
    • if governments would listen to scientists who are interested in preserving the human race, instead of businesses that are interested in enslaving it.

      Yeah, that was the promise at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, that Science, with new improved Central Planning would rid of us of all this chaos and exploitation. Anybody remember how that turned out?


      Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

  • Oh god no!, NOT the earth... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:39PM (#3190244)
    That is where I keep all my stuff....

  • One of my favourite conspiracy theories (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Edmund Blackadder ( 559735 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:41PM (#3190259)
    The Tunguska explosion was not caused by an asteroid.

    1) there was no crater
    2) noone has been able to find any asteroid materials in the area.
    3) plants in the area have been discovered to have mutated DNA.

    It is quite clear to me that the Tunguska explosion was caused by a miscalculated experiment of the great eccentric inventor Nicola Tesla.

    BTW the official theory is that the asteroid consisted of nothing but water, it flew down to close to the surface, and then it exploded. Thats as difficult to believe as the Tesla theory imo.

    • Re:One of my favourite conspiracy theories (Score:4, Informative)

      by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:15PM (#3190361) Homepage
      From space.com:

      Almost no one lived near blast site, however, save a few hunters and trappers. No one studied the site until 1930. And while scientists have long presumed an asteroid or comet exploded just above the surface, no consensus has been reached. Some even suggested a miniature black hole did the work.

      The object seems to have approached Tunguska from the southeast at about 11 km per second (7 miles a second), the BBC reported.

      Why did the asteroid break apart in the air?

      "Possibly because the object was like asteroid Mathilde, which was photographed by the passing Near-Shoemaker space probe in 1997," researcher Luigi Foschini told the BBC. "Mathilde is a rubble pile with a density very close to that of water. This would mean it could explode and fragment in the atmosphere with only the shock wave reaching the ground."

      A scientific paper on the work will be published in an upcoming issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

      From bbc.co.uk:

      They analysed seismic records from several Siberian monitoring stations, which combined with data on the directions of flattened trees gives information about the object's trajectory. So far, over 60,000 fallen trees have been surveyed to determine the site of the blast wave.

      Over 60,000 fallen trees have been surveyed to determine the site of the blast wave

      "We performed a detailed analysis of all the available scientific literature, including unpublished eye-witness accounts that have never been translated from the Russian," said Dr Foschini. "This allowed us to calculate the orbit of the cosmic body that crashed."

      The object appears to have approached Tunguska from the southeast at about 11 km per second (7 miles a second). Using this data, the researchers were able to plot a series of possible orbits for the object.

      Of the 886 valid orbits that they calculated, over 80% of them were asteroid orbits with only a minority being orbits that are associated with comets.
    • Everyone knows that the Philidelphia expieriment was based on tesla's theories of time portals and Giant magnetec lenses... That was nothing more than a test that the lense imploded causing a massive radiation explosion... We studied that in history along with the military tests in 2012 with magnetic propulsion of submarines that created the first 700mph underwater vehicle that makes interdimensional travel possible today.

      Oh wait, my professor told me to not say things like that when using this internet time portal... Shit... oh well being on slashdot noone will believe it anyways....

      CiaO!

  • Thanks for picking on us, CNN... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Blackwulf ( 34848 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:41PM (#3190263) Homepage
    If it pierced the atmosphere, the approximately 70-meter-long rock could have disintegrated and unleashed the energy equivalent
    of a 4-megaton nuclear bomb, researchers said.

    "If it were over a populated area, like Atlanta, it would have basically flattened it," said Gareth Williams, associate director of the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

    Thanks for telling me how dead I'd be if it hit here. Couldn't you have talked about it hitting somewhere where I don't live? Like Kabul, or something? Maybe Baghdad?
  • ..is tell us when we're all going to die.
    • Actually, with a good monitoring system you could (gasp) evacuate the affected area before it hits.

      Fortunately, most asteroids are not THAT big.

    • Imagine if something like this had hit near Washington DC without warning. We'd probably assume that the terrorists had a big boomer. We might have responded...

      Imagine if this hit in Pakistan or India? They might assume that it was the first salvo in a Regional nuclear war and responded in kind. Tens of Millions could be dead.

      Imagine if this hit in Israel...

      I could go on. Best that we know when and where it's going to hit, even if we don't have any defense yet.

      Better still to build up some sort of defense. I wouldn't think that a 70 Meter long rock would be that difficult to deal with. If we have sufficient warning, we might be able to alter the course of objects like these so they crash harmlessly on the Moon or into the Sun.

      Monitoring would be the first step. If we had a really good handle on the objects crossing our orbit, we could then develop some plans to handle the smaller ones, working up to more elaborate plans for the larger ones. For the really big ones, perhaps we could just nudge them a little every so often so as to either greatly decrease their chances of intersection with the Earth.

  • Not that hard to believe. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by guamman ( 527778 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:42PM (#3190271)
    Most likely, some equipment picked it up. The problem is that there are not enough people and computing power to monitor it all. With the exception of the seti@home experiment and other distributed computing projects, all the telescopes and observatories on earth can only monitor approximately 1% of the sky at any given time. When you take this into consideration, I'd bet that there have been several meteors that have gone unnoticed completely. In this case, Ignorance truly is bliss.

  • Whats the point? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by red5 ( 51324 ) <gired5@gm a i l.com> on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:43PM (#3190279) Homepage Journal
    From the article

    Nonetheless, astronomers maintain that constant surveillance is necessary to identify more killer rocks in our neighborhood and ensure that none take our planet by surprise, in particular those traveling near the blinding light of the sun.
    What's the point if an asteroid is going to hit what are we going to do exactly?

  • That picture on the CNN article... (Score:5, Funny)

    by victim ( 30647 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:43PM (#3190282)
    That picture on the CNN article shows an asteroid something like 1000 miles in diameter crashing into the earth.

    The article talks about a rock something like 0.04 miles in diameter. Even the alleged dino-wiper asteroid was only something like 10 miles in diameter.

    tweeeeet - 5 minute major penalty to CNN for distorting scientific information with sensational graphics.
  • This is so bogus. Everyone's all worked up, but they don't realize that there's no possibility at all that human space activity could possibly have brought the asteroid close to us. Besides which, even if they did, nobody ever points out that, just like all the other asteroids, this one *missed*. All the evidence is indirect, there's no scientific proof whatsoever that any particular asteroid is really, actually going to hit. Until the hysterical doom-sayers abandon their political agenda and pay attention to the science, we shouldn't do anything that incurs any cost whatsoever.
  • So now I know how I missed the moving van when the people across the street moved in. Since they appear to have just "shown up" one day, they must have beamed down off the asteroid.

    Maybe this explains the green glow coming through their windows every night too.

  • From God's memo pad... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jvl001 ( 229079 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:53PM (#3190327) Homepage

    Note to self: Adjust pitch by 1 degree.

  • What would we do if... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Schwamm ( 513960 )
    we could see it coming, anyway?

    We don't have the technology right now to deflect it. We'd just be starting at a big rock speeding toward us, like a deer caught in the headlights (a more appropriate analogy in my case might be elementary school dodge ball).

    And don't tell me we could evacuate the area. I don't trust that we could determine even a general area where the asteroid would hit, and we can't really evacuate the planet...

  • I Need My Meds Now (Score:5, Funny)

    by nickynicky9doors ( 550370 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:11PM (#3190340)

    Get the editors off the Crack and into detox... You're frickn scar'n me.

    Ice Shelf Collapses

    Resident Evil

    Child Porn

    Killer Asteroids

  • Pulitzer prize winner Dave Barry[Miami Herald] commented on this a few weeks ago:

    Asteroid Nearly Destroys Earth [miami.com]

  • This fine book is about this very thing happening (asteroid hitting earth). Lucifer's Hammer [amazon.com] by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle. (Both kick-ass authors) Another book by them, that is somewhat similar (aliens throwing the asteroids at us) is Footfall [amazon.com]. Both are very good. If you don't have time to read 600 pages, here [rinkworks.com] is a slightly shorter version.

  • Tunguska? NOT! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tuxlove ( 316502 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:16PM (#3190367)
    An impact by an asteroid of similar size to the Tunguska asteroid is not possible. Siberia was not hit by an asteroid in 1908 - it wasn't even "hit" technically. The destruction was caused by a comet.

    Hunters have looked for the remains of the asteroid that hit Siberia for years, but have found nothing, and for a very good reason. Simulations have shown that the blast pattern on the Siberian landscape could only have been caused by an object moving moving at a particular angle and exploding at elevation over the ground.

    Asteroids do not explode like that, but a comet would quite possibly. Made mostly of frozen liquid, the heat of atmospheric entry could cause a comet to explode as it rapidly vaporized. This would leave little or no large remains as an asteroid would, would probably not cause a crater, and would throw up less debris than an asteroid. All of this seems consistent with the Tunguska event.

    I'm no expert by any means, but if an asteroid of the same size as the Siberian comet hit the earth, my guess is that it would be much more destructive and have more worldwide effect.

    • Re:Tunguska? NOT! (Score:3, Informative)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      do you know what it takes to throughly search Tunguska? its mostly marsh. and trees.

      An astroid can explode in the atmosphere, depending on its "structual integrity".if its cracked a certian way, the pressure ot getsexposed to as it punched through our atmosphere.

      Im not saying it was or was not an astroid but,
      To say, "we have no evidence it was this one thing, so we're going to say its this other thing, which we don't have evidence of" is just bad science.

  • And also in October- (Score:3, Informative)

    by purduephotog ( 218304 ) <hirsch&inorbit,com> on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:17PM (#3190370) Homepage Journal
    MIT labs pointed out the miscalculation that there were MORE NEA objects than being reported.

    IT's on their lab page, which was included in my submission of the story. Basically, they've come to realize there is a hell of alot more junk floating around than they've thought about.

    Go figure- we haven't learned yet.

    2002-03-19 13:52:31 Another near miss: Asteroid buzzes earth (science,news) (rejected)
    • 2002-03-19 13:52:31 Another near miss: Asteroid buzzes earth (science,news) (rejected)
      2004-08-01 15:00:12 Comet misses earth (science,news) (rejected)
      2005-01-12 01:51:02 Another stealth asteroid misses earth (science,news) (rejected)
      2007-12-23 23:33:58 Asteroid hits earth, wipes out civilization (science,news) (rejected)

      I still have no idea why the last story was rejected.

  • Actually, that was Armageddon showing on TV.

    I almost ran to the basement myself, when I saw Bruce Willis with a NASA spacesuit....

    Hmm, never has my sig been more appropriate. Except, of course when that trawler caught a cow dropped from a russian cargo planel [angelfire.com]...

  • The heat incinerated herds of reindeer and charred tens of thousands of evergreens across hundreds of square moles.

    I guess the comet/asteroid/whatever didn't bother to get permission from Greenpeace. Also, I bet those square moles were pissed. What did the cool moles do?

    In all seriousness, how long did it take the herds to recover? Probably not that long. This certainly should put all the arguments over Alaskan drilling into perspective.

  • Wish (Score:2)

    by suso ( 153703 )
    Frankly, I wish one would hit the earth.
  • No more mortgage! Woohoo!

    Unfortunately the chances of such a thing happening are about as slim as Slashdot having a pro-microsoft article, or a bill-gates tribute when/if he dies.

  • Are these really near misses? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Performer Guy ( 69820 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:32PM (#3190483)
    OK time for some back of the envelope math to counter the hysteria.

    461,000 kilometers was the distance it missed by. The projected target area of that circle is PI*R^2 or about 667 billion square kilometers.

    Radius of the Earth is around 6360 kilometers give or take. Projected target area of the Earth is therefore about 0.12 billion square kilometers. So the probability this class of object would collide with teh earth is roughly .12/667 or around 1/5600. Then IF it hit it would be more likely to do no damage than not depending on the impact zone.

    Of course they don't just count objects inside the 1.2X distance to the moon, range when they scream "near miss". Inside the moon, beyond the moon, they all count for the headlines.

    Excuse me for not losing any sleep.

    • Re:Are these really near misses? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Performer Guy ( 69820 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:38PM (#3190532)
      P.S. I know it's bad probability math to post facto take the range and use that in calculations, however, it is correct to say that the chance that any future object passing within that distance would have this probability of hitting gives some simplifying assumptions. The big assumption is that theere is an even poisson distribution of events in the circular target cross section. There may not be for reasons of orbital mechanics and the gravity of the Earth skewing the results. It seems to me that these would likely work to increase the probability of a strike, unless you consider that the Earth hoovering up rocks could skew results the other way, I think when you're this close with a near miss anyway the latter effect is negligable.

  • asteroids (Score:2, Funny)

    by tGOw ( 12452 )
    omg, it's commin right for us!

    btw, i wanted to yell

    Post aborted
    Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
  • Is it just that they're getting reported more often, or is the frequency of asteroids near-missing the Earth increasing?

    While this sounds a little paranoid, there's a big difference between being able to see them better (or reporting them more loudly when we do) and them zipping by more often. The image I have is of some malign asteroid artillery unit ranging on the Earth, and the next (or the one after) will be the beginning of a barrage.

    I'm just being a worrying nellie, right? Right?

  • Torino Scale (used to classify collision threats) (Score:5, Informative)

    by volpone ( 551472 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:53PM (#3190677)
    If you're interested, check out nasa.gov [nasa.gov]'s description of the Torino Scale [nasa.gov] , the method in which the scientific community classifies an object's likelihood of striking and damaging the Earth.

    The rating goes from zero (the object is certain to miss the Earth) to ten (the nasty asteroid thingy is definitely going to "cause a global climatic catastrophe"). Read it, it's very unsettling...

    Does anyone know what Torino rating this most recent near-miss was?

  • Came from the direction of the sun? (Score:5, Funny)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @07:00PM (#3190739) Journal
    The space boulder passed Earth within 288,000 miles (461,000 kilometers) -- or 1.2 times the distance to the moon -- on March 8, but since it came from the direction of the sun, scientists did not observe it until four days later.
    In other news, President Bush has declared the sun to be part of "the axis of evil."

    "My advisors have just informed me that the sun has been hurling dangerous, radiation death rays at the United States and its friends for millenia. And they have a 'solar flare' weapon they use to disrupt our electronics."

    "Mark my words. We will smoke them out of their holes and wipe them off the face of the planet," Bush stated, before a reporter pointed out that the sun is not on Earth. "It don't make no difference -- don't interrupt me with the politics of details, son. We're still going to hunt them down and put a stop to them."

    The president refused to answer questions about whether he plans to detain the sun in Cuba.

  • Hey! Atlanta? (Score:3, Funny)

    by phreakmonkey ( 548714 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @07:35PM (#3190963) Homepage
    From the article:
    "If it were over a populated area, like Atlanta, it would have basically flattened it," said Gareth Williams, associate director of the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

    Why Atlanta, huh? You Bostonians have a problem with us or somethun?!?! Shee-it, I gots neighbors with pickup trucks bigger than that damned rock anyday. Bring it on, we'll haul it off for ya!

  • Some Perspective (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Militant Apathy ( 99335 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @07:44PM (#3191013)
    1.2 Lunar diameters is not the relevant number here. 288,000 miles is 72 Earth radii.

    That means that if you draw a circle around the Earth with a radius at the distance of closest approach, the Earth's cross-sectional area fits into that circle 5,200 times.

    In other words, even if someone were heaving rocks at us at distances this close or closer at a rate of one per year (a grotesque overestimate), we would expect to get hit once every five millenia or so, neglecting gravitational attraction effects (which don't contribute much).

    As "near misses" go, that's not so near. The Earth isn't that big a target. This is a nice frothy story for CNN, especially the "blind side" angle, but not a great reason to start repenting sins.

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