DOOMED!
Posted on 12/24/2004 8:13:41 PM PST by Fitzcarraldo
Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office December 24, 2004
2004 MN4 is now being tracked very carefully by many astronmers around the world, and we continue to update our risk analysis (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk) for this object. Today's impact monitoring results indicate that the impact probability for April 13, 2029 has risen to about 1.6%, which for an object of this size corresponds to a rating of 4 on the ten-point Torino Scale.
Nevertheless, the odds against impact are still high, about 60 to 1, meaning that there is a better than 98% chance that new data in the coming days, weeks, and months will rule out any possibility of impact in 2029.
We must learn everything we can about these objects, and take the threat seriously and learn how we can detect and divert them early enough.
Naw.... just sit back and relax. Bruce Willis will take care of it.
If Bruce Willis is still depending on not 1 but 2 simultaneous Space Shuttle launches, he may want to re-think that plan.
DOOMED!
"Naw.... just sit back and relax. Bruce Willis will take care of it."
My thoughts exactly.
An 80% hit probability would be the best thing that could possibly happen to the world economy.
With 25 years to go we could easily develop the technology to divert the threat, and the benefits would be as great as the moon program.
I wonder if we could capture it and make it another satellite? I bet it would be an awesome space station.
I for one would get right with God and prepare for the end
We can only hope.
........... Can you imagine the endless debates with politicians, anti-nuke types, environmentalists and other assorted wackos each claiming ....
Clearly it is Bush's fault, .... and Cheney's and Haliburtons and, of course, Rumsfeld's.
But never fear by 2029 global warming will have melted the ice caps and the higher sea levels will cushion the impact and save the day for everyone except those living on the coasts.
All those coastal red states will be washed out which of course proves it is all Bush's fault..... Ooops that would include Florida ..... never mind.
Well, I should get back to the eggnog .... Merry Christmas to all.
Women and minorities will be hardest hit!
(NYAAAAHAHAHA... I'm FIRST with that!!)
Could they to be surreptitiously diverted just a bit to impact on the hostile states?
Maybe it'll land on North Korea.
A 4 already? It was just a 2 the other day, and at that time was still the highest rating on record. If it hits a 7, I'm moving to another planet.
Funny, I had the same thought. Barring a rapid infusion of free enterprise, it will take a threat to spur us on to the stars.
Some people are mocking this like it is an enviromentalist wacko scare story. I guess people can mock astronomy and mathematics and maybe old Newton was a commie subversive, getting people all worked up about invisible things like gravity and doing all that fancy egg-headed stuff with numbers. But maybe, just maybe, objects in space have orbits that can be predicted and maybe a big rock smashing into the Earth is not such a good thing.
But now we can actually have the means to deal with preventing asteroids from hitting the Earth. Some leftists (sadly, probably a majority) won't like it because an asteroid hitting the Earth is a "natural" event -- it is every bit as natural as the snail-darter and STDs. Those who haven't bathed since Woodstock will no doubt object to mankind imposing its will on an asteroid that just happens to be way out there "doing its own thing." Next to them will be some "conservatives" (thankfully a minority) who don't want to spend money on newfangled rockets and who seem to think that Newton's theory of gravity is a bunch of pseudo-science.
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