Posted on 12/23/2004 8:24:16 PM PST by hole_n_one
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
I see 1:60, but not the 1:43. Can you post the URL? Thanks.
Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 Reaches Highest Score To Date On Hazard Scale
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html
no gir. that's BAD.
one more try...
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Books, Magazines, Movies, Music
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(Update: Death toll now tops 11,500)
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Asian Tsunamis Surge Against East African Coast
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The URL of the official JPL/NASA tracking data page for this asteroid is:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html
Even if the final analysis does not move much, some of the supporting data is updated as observatories report in and it is added to the model. This page seems to be changing daily.
Right now, almost all the data is coming in from observatories south of the equator, as the asteroid is somewhere in the vicinity of the South Pole currently, making the participants a bit sparse. It will become visible in to observatories north of the equator in a little bit, which is also where a lot of the observatories that can track this thing actually are.
Oh, yeah... I had that one...
Looks like 1:45 right now, per their translator, or 2.222...%
Yours is an interesting proposal. To show how interesting it can be, let's assume that an ion rocket will be attached to 2004 MN4 tomorrow.
Where will we attach it? The asteroid is undoubtedly rotating, creating a monumental problem in determining where the rocket should be attached in order to force the asteroid away from Earth.
Over the next 25 years the asteroid will travel about 14.5 billion miles. From that distance (imagine the asteroid's orbit is stretched out into a straight line 14.5 billion miles long) target Earth subtrahends an angle of about 0.1 arc seconds. Out of the uncountable possible scenarios, one is if the persons deciding where to place the ion rocket make an error of 0.1 arc seconds in directing the force of the rocket in the proper direction, they may cause the asteroid to hit Earth rather than miss it.
It might be less risky to attempt to blow the sucker up into lots of smaller, less threatening chunks, IMO.
At the top of the table on http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html, the most recent numbers are 2.2e-2, or about 1 in 43.
Updated: The link I posted earlier is showing a 2.7% impact probability, updated from 2.2%. Impact size revised slightly upward by JPL/NASA.
:') An alternative is to use the ion drive to speed up the rock at perihelion to alter its trajectory. Any rotation would be addressed first.
as I noted, the NASA figure given for 2.2e-02 is 1:45...
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ip?2.2e-02
Impact Probability: 2.2e-02
2.200000000% chance of Earth impact
or
1 in 45 chance
...and as tortoise noted, now there are some more observations, and the odds of impact have improved a little.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ip?2.7e-02
Impact Probability: 2.7e-02
2.700000000% chance of Earth impact
or
1 in 37 chance
or
97.30000000% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth
I always thought Torinos were highly over-rated.....
"Number of Potential Impacts 41" up from 39 I think it was, and now five of the calculated close approaches are 1 on the Torino scale. This is fascinating.
I just heard that Spacewatch has found some images containing the rock from March 2004, several months earlier than the official discovery. This will greatly extend the baseline, making a much more accurate prediction possible than what they have to work with now.
I start getting social security in 2016. That is fine with me.
:')
If ya plan for everything "they" or mother nature will just do something else........work, live, and play like today is the last day everyday SLB !.........but carry that 1911A1 for the smaller bumps on lifes road......:o)
off the subject, I'm pretty sure you are going to love the "mummies" video. I've been watching it for quite a while; it's detailed, it's beautifully shot in various quiet corners of Asia and in labs and such, and Malk's narration enhances the entire thing. Back to topic. Related topics:
Moon's Youngest Crater Discovered
BBC ^ | 12-20-2002
Posted on 12/19/2002 7:42:01 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/809572/posts
NASA Solves Moon Mystery (+Geology Picture of the Week, February 16-22, 2003)
February 20, 2003 | Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Posted on 02/21/2003 1:47:27 PM PST by cogitator
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/848926/posts
New crater revives Moon mystery
11 January 2003
New Scientist
Jeff Hecht
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3242
"A mysterious flash on the Moon caught on camera 50 years ago is still provoking disagreements about its origin. Astronomer Bonnie Buratti says her new results show that the flash was caused by a 20-metre asteroid hitting the Moon... In a future issue of the journal Icarus, Buratti reports a fresh impact scar at the site of the 1953 flash on images collected by the Clementine spacecraft as it orbited the Moon in 1994. A bright blanket of ejected material covers an area that is about 1.5 kilometres across, and the colour of the debris indicates that the crater is relatively new."
Squashed by an asteroid....vs.....stuck in a shelter with SPAM to eat. I'll take my chances with the asteroid.
Great! Now we'll get the good news a little faster. :')
the search results in the abstract for "Giordano Bruno, the June 1975 Meteoroid Storm, Encke, and Other Taurid Complex Objects", Jack B. Hartung.
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