Posted on 12/23/2004 8:24:16 PM PST by hole_n_one
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Thu Dec 23, 5:40 PM ET
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By JOHN ANTCZAK, Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES - There's a 1-in-300 chance that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029, a NASA (news - web sites) scientist said Thursday, but he added that the perceived risk probably will be eliminated once astronomers get more detail about its orbit.
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There have been only a limited number of sightings of Asteroid 2004 MN4, which has been given an initial rating of 2 on the 10-point Torino Impact Hazard Scale used by astronomers to predict asteroid or comet impacts, said Donald Yeomans, manager of the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
No previously observed asteroid has been graded higher than 1.
On Friday, April 13, 2029, "we can't yet rule out an Earth impact," Yeomans said. "But the impact probability, as we call it, is 300-to-1 against an impact."
The asteroid was discovered in June and rediscovered this month.
"This is not a problem for anyone and it shouldn't be a concern to anyone, but whenever we post one of these things and ... somebody gets ahold of it, it just gets crazy," he said.
"In the unlikely event that it did hit, it would be quite serious. We're talking either a tsunami if it hit in the ocean, which would be likely, or significant ground damage," Yeomans said.
Its estimated size has been inferred from its brightness, which assumes that its reflectivity is similar to other asteroids that have been observed. At about 1,320 feet in length, it would have about 1,600 megatons of energy, Yeomans said.
Asteroid 2004 MN4 takes less than a year to go all the way around the sun and on each orbit it passes by Earth's orbit twice, Yeomans said. It is also nearly on the same plane as Earth's orbit.
The asteroid will be visible for the next several months and the NEO program has alerted its network of ground-based observers to include 2004 MN4 in their searches.
Yeomans said there have now been about 40 observations, first from the observatory at Kitt Peak, near Tucson, Ariz., and this month from Australia and New Zealand.
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On the Net:
Near-Earth Object Program: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov
Giordano Bruno, the June 1975 Meteoroid Storm, Encke,
and Other Taurid Complex Objects
Icarus (Volume 104, Issue 2 , pp 280-290) ^ | August 1993 | Jack B. Hartung
Posted on 12/27/2004 2:37:46 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1309198/posts?page=1
Maybe I should make this my tagline...
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html
last couple of links:
The Sky Isn't Falling, But Pieces Sure Are
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 11:35 am ET
01 October 2003
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/chicken_little_031001.html
Chac 1.1.1
by Warren Anderson
a Mac program that generates Mayan calendar graphics
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/app/time/chac-111.hqx
"Chac is a mesoamerican calendar for the Macintosh... A prodigious quantity of complete [rubbish] has been published in books and especially on the internet about the calendar. Be careful what you read and believe. You can come to any conclusion you want when you do crappy research, falsify and misinterpret the evidence. Be a skeptic. Research this subject before you contact me with complaints about the way this program does the calculations. I do have a life outside of this program... Mesoamericans did calculations far into the past and future. This program only does them for thirteen baktuns. This is what the Mexicans refered to as the Fifth Sun. It started on September 6th, -3113 using the G.M.T. correlation. This is probably the most mis-stated date written about in books about the Maya. If you don't believe me, do the calculations yourself. The last day of the Fifth Sun is December 20th, 2012."
[note: the book "Lost Languages" places the beginning date on Aug 13 3114 BC, and the end date on Dec 23 2012; it could be that one or both were unaware of the vanishing days stemming from the Julian to Gregorian correction during the 17th through 20th century (depending on the country); chances are neither has read the FR topic about the problems with retrocalculated eclipses]
Impact probability has been revised to zero, using the longer baseline from "found" images.
Rats. Nothing exciting ever happens on this rock. ;')
Heh. Maybe next year, eh? :-)
:')
Odd Asteroid
spaceweather.com ^ | april-15-2003 | spaceweather.com
Posted on 04/15/2003 2:06:02 PM PDT by green team 1999
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/893881/posts
Earth's Little Brother Found
BBC ^ | 10-21-2002 | Dr. David Whetstone
Posted on 10/21/2002 2:37:19 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/773250/posts
Cat-And-Mouse Asteroid Pulls Close To Earth
IOL ^ | 1-3-2003
Posted on 01/04/2003 10:12:20 AM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/816864/posts
Say hello to our new moon
AFP ^ | Fri Mar 26, 2004
Posted on 03/29/2004 12:13:58 PM PST by presidio9
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1107346/posts
Astronomy Picture of the Day 5-04-02
NASA ^ | 5-04-02 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell
Posted on 05/04/2002 7:26:04 AM PDT by petuniasevan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/677904/posts
Astronomy Picture of the Day 10-17-03
NASA ^ | 10-17-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell
Posted on 10/17/2003 5:32:24 AM PDT by petuniasevan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1002885/posts
Mystery Asteroid, Hermes, May Have a Partner
Space.com (Yahoo!) ^ | 10/21/2003 | Robert Roy Britt
Posted on 10/23/2003 1:58:58 PM PDT by Pyro7480
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1006824/posts
Asteroid Hermes, lost for 66 years, is found to be two objects
orbiting each other, astronomers using Arecibo telescope report
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct03/Arecibo.asteroid.deb.html
Near-Earth Asteroid Hermes Re-Spotted, 66 Years Later
Upon Close Observation Long-Lost Object Is Bright Binary
http://www.lowell.edu/press_room/releases/recent_releases/Hermes_rls.html
Drilling Finds Crater Beneath Va. Bay
AP via Yahoo ^ | Tue Jun 1 2004 | Staff
Posted on 06/01/2004 4:21:15 PM PDT by Rebelbase
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1145838/posts?page=1
Jenna Bush's fault!!!
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Several have suggested, and of course I have renewed my own long-standing proposal, to capture this asteroid and do something useful with the material.
Seen it ...Well Aware...all gophered up on high ground with the dogs and a shotgun waiting for the big one ethel while reading Jeff Heads new collectors edition of volumes 1-5 of dragons fury !
Stay safe !
Is this an update from when it had reached Zero? I was a little disappointed when I heard it was certain to miss us lol.
We may survive this! Thank you Viking Kitties!
Yeah, that's correct. It got to "4" for the 2029 pass, and five other of the 41 projected encounters got to "1"; then (as tortoise noted above) prediscovery photos were found, allowing its ephemeris to be plotted over a longer baseline, reducing the Torino number to zero. Now it seems that the newest data adds back four or five encounters, and puts at least one of them at a "1".
I know it's not much... ;')
Still, we can always hope. LOL
Rain of Iron and Ice:
The Very Real Threat of
Comet and Asteroid Bombardment
by John S. Lewis
Yeah, I like that feeling of closure one gets from an epoch-ending asteroid strike. ;')
The problem is, we can't predict it's orbit correctly now (unaltered) much less predict what an (unknown, unbuiltm unlaunched, undirected, uncontrolled ion engine would do to the asteroid.
We don't have the match for a three-body gravitational problem, much less a seven body problem: earth, asteroid, mars, venus, jupiter, and the moon are all affecting its path, and it's path changes after each near-collision.
Equally likely is increasing the chances of a hit.
Also, we don't even know it's current orbit (mass, speed, direction, rotation) accurately enough to predict a future one, even if we could do the calculations.
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