Asteroid 4179 Toutatis Will Miss Earth, This Time 301
EtherAlchemist writes "National Geographic News reports in this story that a giant, peanut shaped asteroid known as 4179 Toutatis will pass within 1 million miles of Earth on Weds, the 29th. When it does, it will be the closest any known object of this size (3 miles) has passed near Earth in this century. No worry about impact yet, it should pose no threat until at least 2562. An interesting note: the asteroid believed to have caused Earth's biggest mass extinction is thought to have been between 3.7 and 7.5 miles as reported here in 2001." 2004 FU162 came closer, but is a much smaller object.
Wow, the biggest this century!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! You mean to tell me it's the largest object to pass near here in over 3 years!!!
OK, one of those things that sounds impressive, then when one thinks a little, isn't all that big a deal...
Re:Wow, the biggest this century!!! (Score:2)
Re:Wow, the biggest this century!!! (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_impacts [wikipedia.org]
However, our current programsto track asteroids that might hit the earth is extremely limited.
Re:Wow, the biggest this century!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Hey! Someone tell Bush quick that there are weapons of mass destruction out there!
That would help
Re:Wow, the biggest this century!!! (Score:2)
I think you've summed-up just about every discussion point that ever existed.
Damn (Score:4, Funny)
what if...? (Score:5, Interesting)
it's a similar problem to global warming, except there are no asteroid-impact-dependent business models funding research and laws like with oil.
Re:what if...? (Score:2)
Re:what if...? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what if...? (Score:5, Insightful)
in couple of generations people would start making up some plans to escape from the disaster.
Re:what if...? (Score:2)
Re:what if...? (Score:2, Interesting)
Meanwhile, global warming remains a nearly unknown "problem" ignored by all but a few geeks on specialist websites, never mentioned in the news media or turned into a political issue. The oil barons have buried their dirty secret where no one (but rokzy) knows about it.
Re:what if...? (Score:2)
What do we do when there's no sun hitting the earth's surface for six months?
Re:what if...? (Score:2)
Get hooked up as living batteries to keep the computers running, of course!
Re:what if...? (Score:2)
Rely on oil, wave, wind and nuclear power sources for energy and invest in halogen/UV light bulbs to illuminate fields, and research atmospheric cleansing methods. I'm sure researchers would find chemicals that could be released into the atmosphere and make the dust particles condense into heavier particles and wash out of the sky.
Re:what if...? (Score:2)
plus, with global warming/environment change we'll be fucked within 100 years let alone 500, except for those who are already being fucked rigt now by hurricanes etc.
By toutatis... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:By toutatis... (Score:2)
Re:By toutatis... (Score:3, Informative)
The village chief - Vitalstatistix in the English translation - was only frightened of one thing - the sky falling on their heads.
Alright people (Score:2)
Peanut-shaped? (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, would like to welcome our new oven-roasted overlords... [planters.com]
Here's the proof. [gearlive.com] Free 27" flatscreen TV. [freeflatscreens.com]
peanut of death (Score:3, Funny)
Not especially close (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not especially close (Score:2)
Re:Not especially close (Score:2)
The moon would win.
Astronomers would learn a lot if it hit the moon (Score:5, Informative)
But the moon doesn't have an atmosphere or oceans, so most of those things simply won't happen - lots of dust goes ballistic and lands, a chunk of the moon's surface gets vaporized (ok, causing a temporary localized atmosphere of sorts, but not enough to care about), and the dust covers some existing craters, but if there's a new crater on a side of the moon we can see, maybe it'd be deep enough to get some real insight about the inside of the moon.
Certainly lots of business for astronomers for a while. It'd be much more annoying if it hit the far side of the moon where we can only see it from spaceships.
Re:Not especially close (Score:2, Interesting)
Depending on the angle of impact effects would range from 'basically nothing' to 'global winter'.
* Near side hit: Asteroid passes by the Earth *then* smacks into the moon
* Far side hit: Moon plays left tackle; catches asteroid before it goes by the Earth.
A 'near side' hit would probably throw enough ejecta into Earth orbit to have global concequences, possible ranging all the way up to the
Re:Not especially close (Score:2)
Any scenario where the moon is hit by something large enough to end the tides, would almost certainly also result in large chunks of debris falling out of orbit. Prolly more of an immediate problem than lack of tides...
I am not an oceanographer (but I'm willing to play one on /.), but it seems to me that the sun's heating action is at least as important to maintaining ocean currents as the moon's
seems to be an awful lot of 'close calls' (Score:3, Insightful)
Though I am curious to know if their is an official plan for countering a colliding asteriod? What would our options be realistically if an asteriod going to impact in a matter of months?
Re:seems to be an awful lot of 'close calls' (Score:5, Funny)
We wouldn't get months probably. Days, perhaps. If we're really unlucky, hours.
That would make one hell of a slashdot headline while it lasted, though.
Re:seems to be an awful lot of 'close calls' (Score:2, Funny)
Asteroid going to strike earth.
You're new here, right?
Re:seems to be an awful lot of 'close calls' (Score:5, Funny)
And again another two days later, and yet again after a week. Anyone who survived the impact will be killed by heart failure.
Think of the polls!
"After the impact, I will be..."
[ ] Dead.
[ ] Surviving.
[ ] Cowboy Neal will deflect the asteroid.
"Having only hours to live, I will..."
[ ] Find a beautiful woman and shag her until the earth shakes!
[ ] Post some more on slashdot.
[ ] Read a good book I never had time for before.
[ ] Make sure my backups are in order.
[ ] Position my webcame outside so people on other continents can see it come and watch me die.
[ ] Set up that webcam, find Cowboy Neal, shag him until the earth shakes, then post about it on slashdot, and still have the satisfiction that noone will survive to talk about it.
[ ] Same as above, but then find out the asteroid thing was a hoax.
Re:seems to be an awful lot of 'close calls' (Score:3, Informative)
What would you do if you thought civilization would end in the next few hours?* His treatment of it is by far the best I've ever seen in a short story.
SB
* Hmm... poll material there also?
Re:seems to be an awful lot of 'close calls' (Score:2)
I agree, the media needs to stop hyping up these near misses and write the news story AFTER it hits us.
Probably just launch a few hundred nukes at it. (Score:2)
Re:Probably just launch a few hundred nukes at it. (Score:2)
dont go there nobody wants that [affichescinema.com]
Frying pan -> fire (Score:2)
ICBMs typically reach velocities of about 15,000 MPH for their sub-orbital trajectories. Getting into orbit requires about 18,000 MP
Re:seems to be an awful lot of 'close calls' (Score:2)
Damn it, you were supposed to KEEP QUIET about that!
Too bad it will miss Earth. (Score:2)
Maybe next time.
Considering (Score:2)
Learn all about Near-Earth Objects (Score:5, Informative)
Between 3.7 and 7.5 miles? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's too bad... (Score:3, Funny)
sigh.
Asteroid, or volcano? Which is it? (Score:4, Funny)
I was just watching something the other day on the History channel about a recent find. A huge lot of dinosaurs buried under meters of volcanic ash - sort of hinting a giant volcano blast may have done all the dirt work.
I tried to google for some more info, but came up empty-handed. I did find this article [findarticles.com] though, about dinosaurs found in Alaska. It states that if they had managed to adapt to an arctic environment, then the "nuclear winter" effect of a large meteor hitting earth may not hold as much water.
Then again, I doubt we'll ever truly know - maybe the dinosaurs just got tired of living and went the way of the Heaven's Gate members.
Re:Asteroid, or volcano? Which is it? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Asteroid, or volcano? Which is it? (Score:2)
Re:Asteroid, or volcano? Which is it? (Score:2)
Chances of getting hit soon are ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it would be bad.
Yes, it's going to happen if we don't stop it.
No, it's not going to happen in your lifetime.
No, I'm not giving you lots of money to try to stop one with primitive turn-of-the-millennium technology. When legitimate investments in space travel bring the cost of launch down and our robotics/sensors are better and our deep space propulsion systems are better, THEN I'll vote for spending money on a decent system.
Or I would, if I wasn't going to die in the global bio-weapons apocalypse of 2027.
Almost... (Score:2)
Replace with:
It's not likely to happen in your lifetime.
One word (Score:2)
Re:Chances of getting hit soon are ridiculous (Score:2)
The chances of being hit by an asteroid are EXACTLY THE SAME no matter what generation of humans observes the phenomenon.
FU162 (Score:5, Funny)
How long before we can reach it with rockets (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the goal? (Score:2)
Besides, you probably want to get your shielding material sooner rather than later, and not wait for the approach of a dangerous rock to set your schedule.
Orientation never repeating exactly? (Score:2, Funny)
I call bull.
It isn't clear to what the orientation is compared (...an observer on a fixed point on Earth?, ...a fixed point in the asteroid's orbital plane?), but at some point it will have the same orientation with regard to anything in a periodic motion relative to it.
Let's take the simple ex
Re:Orientation never repeating exactly? (Score:2)
Humans are not dinosaurs (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if such an object hit Earth, I seriously doubt that it would lead to human extinction. In fact, it probably won't even kill as many people as the tens, or possibly even hundreds, of millions we have killed during the 20th century in two world wars, many other wars, and persistent indifference to humanitarian crises of famine or disease. This may be a young crowd, but those of us old enough who have grown up during the heat of the cold war will probably have less to worry about from a meteor hitting than all those tens of thousands of ICBM the USA and USSR seemed willing to unleash on each other and everyone at a very short notice.
Many species survived many mass extinction events, and, ironically and in fact, many of such species have been, or are being, driven to extinction by none other than us. Soon we will have successfully driven biodiversity to the minimum we have allowed to survive because we want it, such as dairy and poultry farms, and pets.
I am willing to bet that the last surviving species on Earth will be humans and microbes.
Re:Humans are not dinosaurs (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely not. One of the reasons our species is so successful is our ability to deal with a very wide range of environments, from the hottest deserts to the artic circle.
Most likely aquatic life will be the survivors.
This is probably true. It seems that the main period of death after the 'dinosaur-killer' impact was a few hours after impact. The survivors were almost all aquatic creatures and burrowers. And insects, of course - they seem to survive just about anything.
Bring 'em On! (Score:2)
Now look whose winning! 1million miles! Ha try harder next time.
I'm Disappointed (Score:2)
The reason you hear about these things (Score:2)
A bit like our President and his terror alerts.
Moon? (Score:5, Interesting)
Too many questions -- no idea of the impact (pun intended.)
Define "problem" (Score:4, Informative)
We do have some meteorites which are known to have come from the moon, so it's proven that stuff kicked off of there can wind up here. [wustl.edu] It's also pretty obvious that the pieces that wind up here are nowhere near as big as what smacked the moon in the first place.
I hope it's not just me... (Score:5, Funny)
Braxxis009A - "Idiots! How many times do I have to tell you anthropods even a trillionth of a degree of miscalculation will cause a complete and total miss! Now reload the Meteoro 2000 Planet Blaster XL with another rock and GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME!!!!"
Re:I hope it's not just me... (Score:2)
Definitely worth it (Score:5, Funny)
(It's funny. Laugh.)
Re:Definitely worth it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
Method 2 plain wouldn't work. Asteroids aren't solid objects so they can absorb a lot of shock, plus if you managed to break it up all the little bits would have the same total velocity as the original asteroid... death by a thousand cuts.
Idea is not to obliterate the asteroid. (Score:3, Insightful)
That is the meaning of the grandparent post.
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:5, Informative)
1000 pieces of a 3-mile asteroid are each 0.3 miles (0.5km) in diameter. The atmosphere is barely going to singe a rock of that size before it impacts.
Even if were blown to tiny pieces, that wouldn't help. Scientific American had a recent article that hypothesized that one of the worst parts of a big impact is the rebound of billions of tiny fragments into space, which then rain down all over the globe. Each one burns up individually, but the overall effect heats the entire atmosphere to hundreds of degrees, incinerating just about everything on the planet.
Sliced big or small, that much mass coming in from outer space would be a major problem.
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:2, Informative)
3 miles = 4.827 Kilometers
4.827 / 1000 = 4.827 meters
Volume is proportional to diameter cubed. Now you're talking about 1 billion asteroids, not 1000. Come on, this is 6th grade-level math. It can't be that hard to understand.
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:2)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:2)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:3, Funny)
I dunno. My experience with asteroids is that the smaller the chunks, the faster they travel. Same with the flying saucers.
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:2)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:2)
They're smarter this time. They don't do obvious stuff like checking skin color. Now they just send hurricanes to disenfranchise everybody.
Agent Bush: How can you vote... when you have no power? DEC
BLOWING UP AN ASTEROID DOESN'T WORK (Score:5, Insightful)
If you blow up an asteroid of some arbitrary tonnage, say, a nice round billion tons, the planet is STILL fucked. Why?
Simple, and I repeat, a billion tons of gravel is still a billion tons of rock. Sure: there is more surface area and greater heating, BUT - all you have done is taken a catastrophic impact event of a billion tons of rock hitting several quintillion tons of rock (earth) into a billion tons of rock hitting a few million tons of air. At 25,000 mph, the kinetic energy of a billion tons of gravel will get converted directly into heat. So instead of a giant pinpoint nuke going off, it would turn a larger area of the planet into something like a broiler set on HIGH, and this heat event would last quite a long time, as anything that can burn will burn (explosively). Net effect: we all die.
Also: hitting it with a nuke ASSUMES it will *ALL* be reduced to gravel, and this isn't necessarily true. Many asteroids aren't that well put together, and there is a greater chance that by setting off a nuke on an asteroid, instead of a billion ton rock hitting in one spot, you could as easily end up with, say, four 200 million ton rocks all plowing into roughly the same little patch on earth AND 200 million tons of sand, gravel, frozen gasses, and other crap to turn the place into the solar system's biggest hibachi.
I can assure you what I speak is true - IANAAP (I am not an astrophysicist) but I have friends who are, and they all tell me the exact same thing:
blowing it up only works in (bad) hollywood movies.
You can't live outside the law of the conservation of mass and energy. A billion (or more) tons of rock is still a billion tons of rock, and when it's travelling at 25,000 miles per hour, it'll blow through 100 miles of atmosphere in about (but not a lot more) than a quarter of a second. BOOM. Game Over.
So, to re-iterate for the jillionth time:
BLOWING UP AN ASTEROID REALLY DOESN'T WORK. PERIOD. REALLY.
RS
Re: You need early warning (Score:2)
But for good effect, it needs to apply over extended period of time. So you need early warning. With the speeds of these objects, that means looking into deep space in all directions, so that you see the thing coming, months or years ahead. And there's the problem: roughly speaking, we are lookin
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Because a billion tons of gravel travelling at 25,000 miles per hour is just as deadly as a billion ton chunk of rock travelling at 25,000 miles per hour. It's not the rock itself that's the problem. It's the kinetic energy from the object's mass that's the problem. Gravel - rock - it's all the same at 25,000 miles per hour...
The only way a nuke really would work would be if it were small enough to nudge it off course, wihich would mean getting a BIG lead time on it. and that assumes that the asteroid is solid. It seems a lot of them aren't all thet well put together and a nuke would only turn the bullet/asteroid into a shotgun blast, per my previous description.
RS
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:3, Interesting)
And dump the heat into the atmosphere. Congratulations you have just managed to convert the energy from a kinetic impact into a heat event probably affecting a much wider range than before.
The choices
A) smashed: solid ground absorbes energy
B) broiled: atmosphere absorbs energy
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:2)
A) smashed: solid ground absorbes energy
B) broiled: atmosphere absorbs energy
I definitely take choice B. While the hit on the solid ground will certainly have direct effect on all of us, it's not necessariliy the same with slight heating of the stratosphere (where it's freezing cold, anyway: like -50 degrees or so). We will most probably feel it somehow down here in the troposphere, and we won't like it probably (even worse weather etc.), but it won't kill us instantly as in choice A.
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:2)
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's do the math on burning the asteroid up in the atmosphere. Assume you have a 3-mile diameter asteroid going at 50,000mph. That's 5.7e10 m^3 of rock; assuming 5 tons/m^3, mass = 2.9e14 kg. Energy = 0.5mv^2 = 7.2e22 joules.
Assume a blob of gravel of this mass hits one side of the earth evenly distributed over an entire hemisphere over a 1 minute time span. That deposits the energy over
Oh, Nukes can work all right. (Score:2)
Furthermore, if the original mass is broken down into small masses, there was a great deal of energy applied, yes? What part of your asumption shows that
Re:Oh, Nukes can work all right. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they're not. The arguments in those posts assume that the rubble hits just as the main body would have; that's only true if the blast is very late. The arguments in those posts assume that 100% of the energy of the impact is radiated downward. That's not true at all. Those arguments assume that all of the rubble delivers all of it's kinetic energy as heat directed downwards. Neither is true - it's not all heat, and it'
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a bigger surface area, so more friction, greater heating and a greater proportion of the mass becomes vapour or gets deflected when it hits atmosphere - so a lot of the energy goes somewhere other than on the ground.
It all depends on how big it is, how fast it is, and where it is going, where it gets turned to gravel and how big the gravel is. If it is far enough out most of the gravel will completely miss, if it
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:3, Interesting)
The most likely result of such a fracture would be a small number of rocks with diameters ranging from a few tens of meters to hundreds of thousands of meters, and a small amount of gravel. A lot of that depends on what the composition o
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety - half right (Score:2)
You're still wrong, because of the masses, velocities and time involved, and I've discussed that elsewhere.
Your simple mental experiment is rong as it is simple minded. Now, to scale your experiment, take the bullet travelling dir
Re:Sorry Ralphyboy, but you're a tripper! (Score:4, Informative)
Take a one cubic mile mass of solid granite. 5280 x 5280 x 5280 (cubic mile) x 170 lbs (one cubic foot of granite) and you get:
25,023,651,840,000 pounds, or
12,511,825,920 tons
this is an object MUCH SMALLER than the asteroid in question. In fact, I would say it is 1/4 the size of the obect in question, but I doubt the asteroid Toutanis is made completely of granite. It's probably part rock, iron, and ice like most of these things, and so it's mass (my pure out of my ass guess) is probably only 2 - 3 times that a 1 cubic mile of granite. so let's be generous to the ice-side and say 2.5 times. that would be:
31,279,564,800 TONS.
THIRTY ONE BILLION TONS.
OK....
And it's what?: 2.7 miles x 1.3 miles (roughly). Which means it is probably tumbling through space and is (obviously) not spherical. so you blow it up in the middle and you get TWO big chunks of say 15 billion tons each and a billion or so tons of gravel and million ton objects.
So, what say we put THAT in a trajectory through space in such a way that it directly impact over your head. Better yet: I'll even give you some room: I'll put you 500 miles away.
And THIS is what would happen, and this is assuming it's made out of average loose crap and I averaged it to a 2 mile object:
(per this site: asteroid impact effects calculator [arizona.edu]
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 805.00 km = 499.90 miles
Projectile Diameter: 3218.68 m = 10557.27 ft = 2.00 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 20.00 km/s = 12.42 miles/s
Impact Angle: 90 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
Energy: Energy before atmospheric entry: 5.24 x 1021
Joules = 1.25 x 106 MegaTons TNT. The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 5.4 x 10^6years
Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 75100 meters = 246000 ft. The projectile reaches the ground in a broken condition. The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 19.9 km/s = 12.4 miles/s. The impact energy is 5.19 x 1021 Joules = 1.24 x 106MegaTons. The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension 3.32 km by 3.32 km
Transient Crater Diameter: 25.2 km = 15.6 miles. Transient Crater Depth: 8.89 km = 5.52 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 38.5 km = 23.9 miles. Final Crater Depth: 0.888 km = 0.551 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 46.2 km3 = 11.1 miles. Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 93 meters = 305 feet
Seismic Effects: The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 161 seconds.Richter Scale Magnitude: 8.7.Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 805 km:
III. Felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings. Many people do not recognize it as an earthquake. Standing motor cars may rock slightly. Vibrations similar to the passing of a truck.
IV. Felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day. At night, some awakened. Dishes, windows, doors disturbed; walls make cracking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motor cars rocked noticeably.
Ejecta:
The ejecta will arrive approximately 436 seconds after the impact. At your position the ejecta arrives in scattered fragments
Average Ejecta Thickness: 7.99 mm = 0.315 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 1.01 mm = 0.0396 inches
Air Blast:
The air blast will arrive at approximately 2440 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 13600 Pa = 0.136 bars = 1.93 psi
Max wind velocity: 30.3 m/s = 67.9 mph
Sound Intensity: 83 dB (
Re:Painting Your Way to Safety (Score:2)
What painting does (Score:5, Interesting)
- Both solar and thermal radiation exert pressure.
- The incoming solar radiation pushes away from the Sun, but the thermal re-radiation from the asteroid pushes away from the hottest parts.
- Asteroids rotate, so the thermal-radiation pressure is not directly away from the Sun but away from the "afternoon" part. The lower the albedo (darker) and the greater the thermal conductivity (lag between peak insolation and peak temperature), the greater the difference between the direction to the Sun and the thrust vector.
By painting the asteroid whiter (or, in theory, darker) you change the amount of heat absorbed and thus the ratio between the thrust from the reflected light (tracks exactly with incoming light) and the thrust from the radiated heat. Given enough time this will let you change the orbit of the rock enough to miss (or possibly hit) what you want it to. This works best with smaller bodies and long (very long) lead times.Not smashing; you use a stand-off device (Score:2)
Re:ummm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not at all. The news would probably leak out, and there would still be a panic.
What you really want to do is tell people about the rock, but tell them it'll just a be a near miss, a million miles or some such. Nothing to worry about.
asteroid runs gentoo (Score:2, Funny)
Re:we're safe (Score:2)