Asteroid Poses Tiny Danger, but It May Be Lured Away

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/science/space/22aste.html ^ | November 22, 2005 | HENRY FOUNTAIN

[BenLurkin]

From a human perspective, Earth-crossing asteroids can have good timing or bad timing. Good timing is when the asteroid and the Earth don't meet. Bad timing is when they do.

Astronomers say that a 1,000-foot diameter asteroid discovered last year may have bad timing. There is a slight possibility that the rock, 99942 Apophis, will hit Earth in 2036 after coming within about 20,000 miles in 2029. A collision could cause regional devastation on a scale far worse than last year's tsunami.

"The most likely thing is that it is not going to be a threat," said Rusty Schweikart, the former Apollo astronaut and chairman of the B612 Foundation, which is concerned about protecting Earth from asteroids. "There's 5,499 chances out of 5,500 that it's going to miss us."

The trouble with Apophis, Mr. Schweikart said, is that that one chance cannot yet be ruled out. Better optical and radar observations are needed to determine the asteroid's orbit, but the best measurements cannot be made until 2013.

[samtheman]

Want some candy, little asteroid?

[LIConFem]

"There's 5,499 chances out of 5,500 that it's going to miss us."

Wouldn't it have been simpler to say, "One chance in 5,500"?

[BenLurkin]

[BenLurkin]

Space Ping

[samtheman]

Interesting idea.

[sandbar]

>>>Wouldn't it have been simpler to say, "One chance in 5,500"?>>>

They just like saying large numbers. Makes them feel smart.

[Boundless]

>> "There's 5,499 chances out of 5,500 that it's going to miss us."

> Wouldn't it have been simpler to say, "One chance in 5,500"?

Rusty has apparently encountered government school graduates
who buy Lotto tickets and think 1:5500 is good odds. The way
he put it, only the totally innumerate victims of public
schools can conclude we're all going to die.

[LIConFem]

Yeah, they're a bunch of fart smellers, them scientists!

;o)

[KevinDavis]

[kingu]

Radioactive fragments? Oh, yeah, that dust would be OH so dangerous. Ghads. Why can't the NY Times at least import the only good thing about France - the lack of innane fear of nuclear energy.

[ASA Vet]

Install the rockets, control it's path, and use it as a hammer where needed.

[P.O.E.]

Who are we to interfere with the asteroid's free speech rights? If it cannot afford a lawyer, the courts should appoint one.

[lexington minuteman 1775]

So we just send Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Willis and some others go out there and blast this thing to smithereens!
Or, we can dig up Slim Pickens and have him ride it back into earth?

[Strategerist]

I've never seen it mentioned in these articles but this asteroid HAD to have been named by fans of Stargate SG-1, correct? (Apophis once tried to destroy earth on the show by diverting an Asteroid towards it.)

[GSlob]

Gravitational pull of a small vehicle is minuscule, and to keep it suspended over the asteroid for a long time would waste all the fuel. [Besides, the jet exhaust will impact on the asteroid and will start pushing it in the opposite direction with much greater efficiency].

[LRS]

Perhaps nuclear propulsion? Man, what's wrong with you? What if something went wrong? You want to poison us all with an "unnatural" death before we all die the "natural" way by being smashed?

[contemplator]

Apophis? There's a Stargate SG-1 joke in here somewhere.

[A CA Guy]

With our luck, the Japanese will land on an asteroid and direct it to earth.

[TalonDJ]

From a human perspective, Earth-crossing asteroids can have good timing or bad timing. Good timing is when the asteroid and the Earth don't meet. Bad timing is when they do.

Someone got paid actual money to write this garbage?

[Caipirabob]

Karl Rove strikes again? Women and minorities hit hardest?

[geopyg]

Actually, if the odds on winning the big powerball lottery was that low I might actually buy a ticket now and again!

[Trampled by Lambs]

[geopyg]

Odds:

Winning the powerball lottery 1:80,089,128
Death from falling from furniture 1: 5,700
Death from food asphyxiation: 1: 5,558
Death from Earthquake 1: 77,326

Granted the odds of this asteroid hitting us is not great. But it's interesting to put it in perspective.

[manwiththehands]

I would buy a ticket every day if there were a 1 out of 5500 chance for a mega-millions jackpot. I don't like these odds for an asteroid hitting the earth.

[azhenfud]

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!

[darth]

Sooner or later, one will come along with our name written on it. 10,000 years ago a big one (1000 megatons) hit Argentina and killed almost every land creature in South America. Probably changed the Earth's climate too.

[Strategerist]

Actually it works about that your chance of dying in an asteroid impact is about the same or a little higher than the chance of the average American dying in a plane crash.

[R. Scott]

[orionblamblam]

> to keep it suspended over the asteroid for a long time would waste all the fuel.

Actually, no. The only "waste" involved in a process like this would be the cosine losses imparted by directing the engines - likely ion engines - slight off-axis so that they don't hit the asteroid. If the system is a big heavy lump hanging from a tethered propulsion syste, the cosine losses can be quite minimal.

The idea has merit, but it's only useful for *long* lead time impactors.

> Besides, the jet exhaust will impact on the asteroid and will start pushing it in the opposite direction with much greater efficiency

Impressively wrong. "Publik Skool" level wrong.

[babygene]

Smash it into Macca.

[Redcloak]

It was Anubis who sent the naquadah-laced asteroid. Can't these newsies get anything right?

[festus]

I'm thinking this is just Cosmic Skeet

[BenLurkin]

"Push me push you"

[airborne]

If it comes by every 7 years, why not attach a probe (or somethins) of some sort?

Seems like a ggod chance to gather some data.

[ASA Vet]

Might better use it against an enemy who actually will have the future ability to
destroy us, rather than waste it on some supernaturalist symbol.

Think China.

[BenLurkin]

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html

[babygene]

Nuclear explosion would be the ticket. If this thing were blasted in every direction, then logically almost none would reach earth. Conversely, when a nuclear weapon is exploded on earth (which has been done thousands of times) almost all of it hits the earth.

You'd just have to make sure you had a big enough blast to completely pulverize it.

[BenLurkin]

[BenLurkin]

[willgolfforfood]

Thanks...

[Strategerist]

Actually the nuke explosion thing has basically been rejected by scientists (not out of morals, just that when you really study it it doesn't work very well.)

[Chances Are]

That was a good book!

CA....

[Verginius Rufus]

It looks like this asteroid was discovered in 2004, so they must have passed the 100,000 mark for known asteroids by now.

[babygene]

"Actually the nuke explosion thing has basically been rejected by scientists (not out of morals, just that when you really study it it doesn't work very well.)"

To rephrase what you just said, "somebody said that wouldn't work"

It may be that you couldn't break it up, I don't know. However if you blew it into 100,000,000 pieces traveling in all directions, at worst only one of them would hit us.

[orionblamblam]

> the nuke explosion thing has basically been rejected by scientists

Not accurate. The idea of putting the bomb on or in the asteroid is not very popular, as all you're likely to do is fragment the thing. But the idea of standoff explosions, using either neutron bombs to irradiate the surface with neutrons and prompt X-Rays and the get the surface to blast off (thus giving the asteroid a gentle shove), or using a bomb such as was designed for Project Orion, with directed blast and vaporized propellant to give the asteroid an all-surface shove, is still quite alive. Nukes are the only fast-acting and rapidly employable solution we have so far.

[orionblamblam]

> However if you blew it into 100,000,000 pieces traveling in all directions, at worst only one of them would hit us.

Not correct. If you blew it into 100,000,000 pieces traveling in all directions, 100,000,000 could still hit us. The bulk of the energy of the bomb would be consumed in simply fracturing the astoid. The now-separate bits might be individually only given a delta velocity of a fraction of a millimeter per second. Depending on how long until impact, you might well accomplish precisely squat.

If you ahve a big, 10-km "dinosaur killer" coming in, you'll need on the order of one *gigaton* in yield just to break it up. And that leave you not with a rapidly diffusing cloud of rock dust, but a big clump of large rocks flying in formation.

[babygene]

"If you ahve a big, 10-km "dinosaur killer" coming in, you'll need on the order of one *gigaton* in yield just to break it up. And that leave you not with a rapidly diffusing cloud of rock dust, but a big clump of large rocks flying in formation."

Small objects would burn up in our atmosphere, and the radiation would be insignificant.

[wolfcreek]

Those odds aren't good enough, We're all gonna die!

[orionblamblam]

> Small objects would burn up in our atmosphere

And how small is "small?" You have a spherical, uneven rock 10 km in diameter and blast it apart... you're likely to wind up with a hemispherical rock 10 km in diameter and a collection of 1 to 4 kilometer diameter rocks, and a vast cloud of hills, boulders, rocks, pebbles and dust all drifting apart from each other a the staggering rate of maybe an inch an hour.