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Astronomers have been keeping their eyes on a 1,200 foot wide chunk of space rock that has been hanging around the neighborhood lately. It’s an asteroid called Apophis, and it’s named for an ancient Egyptian spirit who was bent on plunging the world into eternal darkness. Scientists are concerned because this modern incarnation may succeed where its namesake failed.
In 2004 NASA gave Apophis a 1-in-37 chance of hitting the Earth in 2029, but after further observations of its path through space, NASA recently revised the odds to a 1-in-5,500 chance of colliding in 2036. Such an event, though unlikely, would cause an explosion about 100,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and throw huge amounts of dust into the atmosphere, posing a grave risk to any humans who manage to survive the Avian Flu.
Scientists are now urging world governments to decide on a strategy for preventing the potential impact. Experts in near-Earth objects (NEOs) warn that it would take decades to design, test, and build technology to deflect or destroy a substantial asteroid. According to Monica Grady, an expert in meteorites at Open University, “It’s a question of when, not if, a near Earth object collides with Earth. Many of the smaller objects break up when they reach the Earth’s atmosphere and have no impact. However, a NEO larger than 1km [wide] will collide with Earth every few hundred thousand years and a NEO larger than 6km, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every hundred million years. We are overdue for a big one.”
Update: In 2021 scientists’ new models suggest that the Earth is safe from Apophis for at least 100 more years.
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If you suffer from an excess of bejeezus, and want some scared out of you, read Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell. It’s all about the aftermath of such an impact. Very scary, and very well researched stuff.
oh crap, so when 2029 comes, I will be 29 years old, weeird. I hope the goverments do something about this, FAST.
htid said: “oh crap, so when 2029 comes, I will be 29 years old, weeird. I hope the goverments do something about this, FAST.”
Like create an energy shield to surround the Earth. Or perhaps assemble an elite squadron of our best military space fighters (because we will have established an orbital space station around Earth, Mars and Venus) and have them plan a flight with the one-and-only goal to destroy the asteroid. Or better yet! Develope robot mercenaries to rocket into outer space and simply surpentisously deconstruct the space rock. Yeah, that would be cool.
htid said: “oh crap, so when 2029 comes, I will be 29 years old, weeird. I hope the goverments do something about this, FAST.”
You’re five years old?
Gini said: “htid said: “oh crap, so when 2029 comes, I will be 29 years old, weeird. I hope the goverments do something about this, FAST.”
You’re five years old?”
Which is probably why “Alex” was mocking “htid”…
That kids not really 5…right?
-L.
thatsmyname said: “That kids not really 5…right?
-L.”
being 29 in 2029 ain’t so bad. if he said he would be 29 in 2036, i’d be a little worried…
It seems a little unusual to me that NASA can’t calculate the path of this massive rock with greater certainty. I thought we had a better grasp of physics than that.
Marius said: “If you suffer from an excess of bejeezus, and want some scared out of you, read Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell. It’s all about the aftermath of such an impact. Very scary, and very well researched stuff.”
Your comments always make me laugh or think. Because of your posts Dear Marius this is the first blog where I had the nerve to post. Thank you.
And thank you DI! authors, I love this site!
sh0cktopus said: “It seems a little unusual to me that NASA can’t calculate the path of this massive rock with greater certainty. I thought we had a better grasp of physics than that.”
Finding something in space where it’s size is measured in feet and not in Earth oribt is difficult enough. For it to be an Earth-crossing asteroid means that a good part of the time it is in the sky during the day – which means it is very difficult for telescopes to see it. I’ve only been able to see Mercury once through my telescope, and that was when it was at it’s maximum distance from the Sun in our perspective. Other articles I’ve read also stated that they only had two obersvations of it where they could extrapolate it’s speed and position – the more sightings (photographs with accurate times attached) the greater the accuracy of those extrapolations.
Comet Hale-Bopp that appeared in our skies about 10 years ago was 10 miles across and was discovered independently by two amateur astronomers – one in New Mexico (Hale) and one in Arizona(Bopp), while it was still as far away as Jupiter. And the comet’s tail (which began to appear as it approached Jupiter) was a lot larger – by the time it reached it’s closest approach to Earth the sodium tail alone was 50,000 KM in length.
Something as small as 1,200 feet that doesn’t reflect nearly as much light per square foot isn’t going to be nearly as easy to see.
Alex said: Or better yet! Develope robot mercenaries to rocket into outer space and simply surpentisously deconstruct the space rock. Yeah, that would be cool.”
I know this is a way late comment, but this comment almost got me in trouble at work, I was laughing so hard at my own imaginings. I’m sure Alex meant “surreptitiously” but with the slight spelling error sounding like “serpentitiously”, I’m picturing that our robot mercenaries are armed with giant snake-monsters (dragons or some kind of basiliks maybe?) somehow destroying the asteroid…maybe they have sharp horns on their heads that can crush through the rock, breaking it up, then the robots have some way to take those smaller pieces that the giant snake monster broke off, & send them off into their own orbits, and make sure those pieces are small enough that if they hit our atmosphere they’ll burn up! Maybe the robots are RIDING on necks of the snakes…like at the end of beetljuice, with the sandworm!
I’m terribly surprised that with all the people that nitpick over grammar so much on this site, nobody has commented on this yet. (Not to nitpick at your grammar Alex, if you still frequent here, as it’s a hard word to spell and I had to check three times to make sure I had “surreptitious” spelled correctly, but the image brought to mind by the spelling error was just too humorous for me not to comment!)
sh0cktopus said: “It seems a little unusual to me that NASA can’t calculate the path of this massive rock with greater certainty. I thought we had a better grasp of physics than that.”
Actually, the n-body problem in physics is notoriously difficult. Even for just 3 objects, solving for their subsequent gravitational motion is very difficult. With each additional object, it becomes vastly more difficult. We have to rely on computers crunching out answers numerically. With that in mind, you can imagine the difficulty in predicting the motion of an object like an asteroid 30 years in the future, when it’s unclear what other large objects it may even pass near.
Maybe Ultra Man and Gamera?
Lemme think about this. Yeah, I think I got it now.
The U.S. has a wide variety of agencies, each of which has issued lies on a repeated basis.
And we are supposed to believe NASA when one of their spokespersons tells us that we have nothing to worry about for a long, long time?
Yeah, right.
I would love to know everything that they are not telling us.