Can I presume that they always have an eye to the sky? Or, do they take the attitude of "World According to Garp" - if a meteor hit a town once, the chance of it EVER happening again is absolute zer0.
Posted on 03/08/2012 1:15:15 PM PST by presidio9
Asteroid 2012 DA14 is making headlines this week, despite the fact that the "incoming" space rock, as it has been described, definitely won't hit Earth.
The 150-foot-wide space rock will pass within 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) of us next February. That's nearer than the orbits of some geosynchronous satellites, and the closest shave of a mid-size asteroid ever predicted before the actual flyby has occurred. But even so, NASA assures the world that there is no chance of asteroid 2012 DA14 hitting Earth next year. Zero, zip, zilch.
Why, then, all the terror about this unthreatening space rock? And why the recent doom and gloom about another space rock, the big asteroid 2011 AG5, a football-field-size rock that NASA says will almost certainly not collide with the planet in 2040? Don Yeomans, head of the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, blames the upsurge in asteroid panic on two main factors.
"One problem is that the Internet is wide open to anyone to say anything," Yeomans told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to SPACE.com. In the past, claims about asteroids were written up by scientists and submitted to peer-reviewed journals, a critical process that "would filter out nonsense," he said. "If something was published, it was reliable."
But today, hundreds of scary blurbs about the latest asteroid get written and posted to blogs and tabloid-like sites before NASA scientists can vet the claim and publish their official, less-terrifying statement regarding the asteroid's trajectory.
"In the case of this asteroid, you get hundreds of hits on the Internet, and in the case of the 2012 [Mayan calendar] business, millions of hits suggesting disaster. And you get a few folks in the media and at NASA who put out the truth. But people go online and see millions about disasters and a few saying 'no disaster' and they think, well, the majority of these say I should be worried," Yeomans said. [When Space Attacks: 6 Craziest Meteor Impacts]
The other half of the problem is that many people do not know how to judge the validity of the pseudo-scientific information they read. "There are millions of people out there who have not been trained in the scientific method, and don't understand that evidence is critical for supporting any new idea — especially any dramatic departure from the current state," he said.
In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who lack knowledge in a given area, such as science, are unable to accurately assess their own abilities in that area, and so they aren't aware that they are coming to blatantly false conclusions.
David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University who first characterized the phenomenon, recently explained, "Many people don't have training in science, and so they may very well misunderstand the science. But because they don't have the knowledge to evaluate it, they don't realize how off their evaluations might be."
There is no obvious remedy for the one-two punch of widespread misinformation and a lack of mental tools for evaluating it, but Yeomans said scientists need to do a better job engaging with the public. He and his group regularly address people's fears regarding near-Earth asteroids by making statements and issuing news releases.
"The hope is that people will understand that we are the more trusted sources of information," Yeomans said.
And in the case of 2012 DA14, the information is this: There is zero chance of the asteroid hitting Earth next year. The chance of a collision is slightly higher — 1 in 80,000 — when it swings past in 2020, but radar and optical observations of the space rock during next year's flyby will help the scientists nail down its trajectory, which will in all likelihood reduce the 2020 risk estimate to zero.
There are better things to worry about even than the absolute worst-case scenario. If observations next year show that current estimates are way off and the asteroid and Earth are on track to collide in 2020, then NASA would try to deflect it by bumping it with a space probe sometime before then — a move Yeomans says is doable.
Even if that failed, any Earthbound asteroid has a 70 percent chance of plunging into the ocean, and a much higher chance still of impacting only an ocean or an unoccupied land region.
An asteroid this size strikes Earth every 700 years or so, Yeomans said. Humanity has survived innumerable such events.
“Where’s the Ka-Boom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Ka-Boom.”
very large values of zero approach one.
Can I presume that they always have an eye to the sky? Or, do they take the attitude of "World According to Garp" - if a meteor hit a town once, the chance of it EVER happening again is absolute zer0.
Yep, they'd make up some story that it crashed harmlessly into the ocean, much like the story about Bin Laden "crashing into the ocean".
If it hit it could be good for us......can I say Mecca?
This article was posted from space.com.
//////////////////////////////////////////////
The 150-foot-wide space rock will pass within 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) of us next February. That’s nearer than the orbits of some geosynchronous satellites
///////////////////////////////////////////
all geosync satellites are at 36,000 miles. You would think that someone writing for space.com would get at least the simple things correct.
Can we bribe the asteroid to do a quick turn so there’s no warning?
“all geosync satellites are at 36,000 miles. You would think that someone writing for space.com would get at least the simple things correct.”
Really? For someone making such a comment you might want to get YOUR facts right.
OK Code toad!!! 36,000km and 26,000 miles is that better?
Jeeez I mix up my KMs and miles. the world is going to end. oh my.....oh my......woe is me
“150 feet across is not even very big. Not dangerous at all unless it lands nearly on top of you. Well, within a mile maybe.”
Depends if that is the size in space or the size of what hits the ground.
Meteor Crater in Arizona was formed by a meteor about 150’ diameter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater
Wouldn’t have wanted to be very near when that puppy impacted.
It will happen. We know that for a fact. There will be a large asteroid strike in the future. There is one out there right now with our number on it. It has happened at least 6 times in the past. Most likely we will develop the tech to stop one from hitting us before too much longer though, unless all these damned socialists take us into another dark age.
“I climbed part of the way down into the crater when I visited. From what I remember, I heard that Apollo astronauts trained at this crater before their moon missions.”
True story.
It’s not even 26,000 miles. Even with Internet searching you can’t get that fact right? Come on, you were the one complaining about facts.
A lot depends on it’s angle, a glancing blow might only
result in a Tunguska type explosion, if on the other
hand it came in steeply, the atmosphere might not do
much to it.
Yep sure wouldn’t want to be within many miles of it.
I posted on #51, by the way, that semi synchronous could be considered geosynchronous, like Obi-Wan says, “from a certain point of view”.
It’s 26,000 miles semi major axis, not altitude.
Another reason to prep. This one may miss us, but there are others that won’t . . .
That is a really good question. Any time I have had significant insider information about a news story, there were major chunks of the report that were wrong or misleading.
It’s not even 26,000 miles. Even with Internet searching you can’t get that fact right? Come on, you were the one complaining about facts.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
A geostationary orbit (GEO) is a circular geosynchronous orbit in the plane of the Earth’s equator with a radius of approximately 42,164 km (26,199 mi) (measured from the center of the Earth). If you insist on altitude from mean sea level then its 22,236 miles.
MY son is a for real rocket scientist. He and all his peers round of to the nearest k in either miles or KM. The only time they would figure the 199 is never because the 26,199 is only an approximation due to gravity anomalies encountered as a satellite passes over the earth. Figuring an orbit is very difficult. The wiki article leaves out a lot.
And your problem is?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.