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To: In Search of Freedom
"rating on the so-called Palermo technical scale of threat of 0.06"

Cool. I didn't even know that there was a "Palermo" Technical Scale of Threat. But what is 0.06? What if utter certainty is 0.10?

13 posted on 07/24/2002 7:22:37 AM PDT by robertpaulsen
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To: robertpaulsen
From the space geeks:
The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale was developed to enable NEO specialists to categorize and prioritize potential impact risks spanning a wide range of impact dates, energies and probabilities. Actual scale values less than -2 reflect events for which there are no likely consequences, while Palermo Scale values between -2 and 0 indicate situations that merit careful monitoring. Potential impacts with positive Palermo Scale values will generally indicate situations that merit some level of concern.

The scale compares the likelihood of the detected potential impact with the average risk posed by objects of the same size or larger over the years until the date of the potential impact. This average risk from random impacts is known as the background risk. For convenience the scale is logarithmic, so, for examples, a Palermo Scale value of -2 indicates that the detected potential impact event is only 1% as likely as a random background event occurring in the intervening years, a value of zero indicates that the single event is just as threatening as the background hazard, and a value of +2 indicates an event that is 100 times more likely than a background impact by an object at least as large before the date of the potential impact in question.

Not being a math kind of guy, I can't tell if a +2 means you're going to get smacked or not.

19 posted on 07/24/2002 7:43:34 AM PDT by Prodigal Son
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