Asteroid threat in 2032? Don't panic, but don't brush it off

NBC News ^ | February 3rd 2014 | Alan Boyle

[SunkenCiv]

A big asteroid sailed past Earth last month, and astronomers haven't yet totally excluded the possibility that it'll hit us when it comes around in 2032. If the past is any guide, we won't have to worry about asteroid 2013 TV135 — but it's a reminder that we'll have to fend off a killer space rock one of these days.

Ukrainian astronomers discovered 2013 TV135 just 10 days ago, well after the asteroid had its close encounter with Earth on Sept. 16. Actually, it wasn't all that close: The distance was 4.2 million miles (6.7 million kilometers), or about 17 times as far away as the moon. But based on the rough estimates of its orbital path, experts rated its chances of colliding with Earth during a follow-up encounter in 2032 at 1 in 63,000.

"To put it another way, that puts the current probability of no impact in 2032 at about 99.998 percent," Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Thursday in a statement. "This is a relatively new discovery. With more observations, I fully expect we will be able to significantly reduce, or rule out entirely, any impact probability for the foreseeable future."

[cripplecreek]

Here’s a video with a better demonstration of the structural printing at work. Its hard to understand the Indian narrator but very interesting just the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YaEEHzU-RQ

[gura]

LOVE this idea.

[Pontiac]

Pity about the asteroids, but we could still drop a couple comets on Mars to add water and gases to thicken up the atmosphere.

[jmacusa]

Stuff hits our atmosphere all day long folks. Only a matter of time before something really does us in. And as far as our dealing with it, well, there’s not a whole lot of people involved in tracking this stuff.

[SunkenCiv]

Large domes extruded in space, and made out of otherwise (in the words of Spock) unremarkable ores (as mineral foams), could be dropped to the surface of Mars. They’d thud into position, and colonists could land nearby and move in.

Choosing the right material could make this idea really cool:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire#Synthetic_sapphire

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/08/why-apple-bought-578m-worth-of-sapphire-in-advance/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_Glass

[SunkenCiv]

The detection of Earth-crossers used to be small independent operations, including an active group in Australia (which is the southern hemisphere; most of the Earth’s landmasses are n of the Equator, but a large impact anywhere screws up the whole Earth). There was persistent resistance to the idea of impact, in part thanks to Aristotle, who stated that stones can’t fall from the sky (Aristotle said, they believed it, that settled it), up until the 1994 SL-9 impacts on Jupiter.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks cc.

[SunkenCiv]

That is a while off yet, I’ll be, hmm, gettin’ up there.

[jmacusa]

With Jupiter life on this planet might never have evolved at all. At least not much past say, the celhlepods (octopus, cuttlefish, etc). Jupiter is our ‘’cosmic short stop’’. It’s massive gravity pulls in stuff that would otherwise come crashing into us. Most of the time though not always. It’s better that the great mass of humanity not know just how much of a crap shoot it is living on this little smote of dust and water. It’s one thing to have some big chunk of iron coming at you at 40,000 mph a second. It’s quite another when 5 billion people find out they have maybe only a few weeks or a month to live.

[jmacusa]

Typo. Meant to say “Without Jupiter’’

[nvscanman]

Mars will never have a magnetosphere unless a way
can be found to create a molten metallic core.
That is the source of the magnetic field that protects
earth. Mars does not have that.....simply making it
bigger won’t change that fact.

[Pontiac]

Mars will never have a magnetosphere unless a way can be found to create a molten metallic core.

I realize that.

Which is why we will have to find an especially large Nickel-Iron asteroid with which to strike Mars; Large enough to essentially pulverize Mars to the point that the NI asteroid will melt and sink to the center of Mars becoming its core.

[Pontiac]

With Jupiter life on this planet might never have evolved at all. At least not much past say, the celhlepods (octopus, cuttlefish, etc). Jupiter is our ‘’cosmic short stop’’. It’s massive gravity pulls in stuff that would otherwise come crashing into us.

The Moon also serves this purpose as evidenced by its cratered surface.

[rmh47]

Yes, Jupiter is the first line of defense for large objects crashing into the Earth. The Moon is next, and if all else fails, we have Russia.

[P.O.E.]

Film at 11

[jmacusa]

The cratering of the Moon was done in it’s early days. The Moon didn’t intercept Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994. Jupiter did. had it not we would have been obliterated.

[Pontiac]

The cratering of the Moon was done in it’s early days.

So you know when the last time the moon took a hit that otherwise would have struck the Earth.

Since recorded history is all of 7000 years I think you are making a reach far beyond your grasp.

[Pontiac]

I guess we would in reality have to include all of the gas giants in that first line of defense.

After all Saturn, Neptune and Uranus although much smaller and less massive still sweep up their share of the debris passing through the solar system.

[jmacusa]

The last time something impacted the Moon was some time in the tenth century and was witnessed by some monks in Italy I believe. The Moon was formed after the Earth was impacted by a Mars size ‘’rouge’’ planet that gouged out massive amounts of material and this material coalesced to form the moon. The impact was not powerful enough for the ejecta to break free of Earths gravity. In it's beginning stage it went through a ‘’bombardment’’ period as did Earth for millions of years until it stopped. Jupiter is our protector but it can't catch everything that might come our way. 7,OOO years of recorded history huh? The Neanderthals left a history of who they were and how they saw their world and in their cave paintings and that was some 35-4O,OOO years ago. “Reaching beyond my grasp’’? Hardly. I'm not Carl Sagan but astronomy is a hobby of mine. Don't be some rude friend. Why not look up the science yourself?

[jmacusa]

Any orbital body large enough to created the kind of gravity needed to capture and asteroid. Mass effects gravity. The large the mass the more gravity it exerts and that's The Big Guy, Jupiter. He's far closer to us( 818 million miles) then Neptune and Uranus are..