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Underground > Laboratory >

Asteroid comes and goes...

17:19 / 20.06.02

"Astronomers have revealed that on 14 June, an asteroid the size of a football pitch made one of the closest ever recorded approaches to the Earth. It is only the sixth time an asteroid has been seen to penetrate the Moon's orbit, and this is by far the biggest rock to do so. What has worried some astronomers, though, is that the space object was only detected on 17 June, several days after its flyby. It was found by astronomers working on the Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Asteroid Research (Linear) search programme in New Mexico. Catalogued as 2002MN, the asteroid was travelling at over 10 kilometres a second (23,000 miles per hour) when it passed Earth at a distance of around 120,000 km (75,000 miles)."

Phew!

Here's the story, courtesy of the BBC.

17:56 / 20.06.02

but of course mr.blair and others will continue to seriously underfund the guys and gals who look for the dangerous rocks. i guess it'll take the destruction of washington or london for the suits to waken up to the potential threat.

12:00 / 22.06.02

Oh come on. Legitimately - in terms of risk over reasonable periods of time - it's kind of ridiculous getting worked up about strikes from space. I mean - clearly they happen, and it would be a useful thing to be able to have a better sense of the space that surrounds us, but if we're honest, the risk for any individual state in getting seriously damaged by an asteroid or the like is almost negligible. And it's substantially less than the risk to most states of damage by weather / earthquake / political tensions. Money is not inexhaustible and should - quite reasonably - be generally assigned to fund ideas that are going to have the most positive effect on the world.

Now of course I wouldn't want to say that there is no risk. Nor would I want to say that pure research should not be funded - because I believe that there clearly is a risk and that research should be funded. But if we're honest and realistic and look around us, we're much more likely to die by being stabbed through the head by another resident of this planet than we are to be squished into pulp by rocks from space.

12:20 / 22.06.02

The problem with that assessment, Tom is that though the risks involved are low, the stakes are very high. There is an almost negligible risk of complete extinction. Over a long period there is quite a reasonable risk of a major catastrophe in the shape of a very large asteroid.

You cannot easily predict and respond to these sorts of events in a short period of time. So to neglect the problem means that we are vulnerable to asteroid collisions. This is almost certainly safe, but an almost certain safety is not absolute. The difference between asteroid collisions and other dangers is the potential scale of damage and this should clearly affect funding priorities.

05:23 / 23.06.02

? almost certain safety ?

There's no such thing. And with asteroids, as with breast cancer, there's a huge gap between detection and "prevention." The accepted myth is that money spent on social problems reduces street violence; money spent on astronomy gives us clues as to the origins of the universe as we know it and truly glorious pictures but absolutely nothing for protection.

With all that said, I will still want a large proportion of my tax money spent on astronomy, and sometime in the next three years I want to see one of NASA's shuttles launch....

11:02 / 23.06.02

money spent on astronomy gives us clues as to the origins of the universe as we know it and truly glorious pictures but absolutely nothing for protection.

Well, I just have to disagree there. It is true that at current estimates - which have no real guarantee of accuracy - an asteroid of comparable energy to the one that got the dinosaurs will hit at the rate of about once every 100 million years. No worries?

Slightly smaller asteroids large enough to wipe out a significant portion of the population hit roughly every million years or so.

NASA is tracking as many of these guys as it can find. Theoretically this should provide some protection since an asteroid would usually approach close to the earth, and therefore be observed, before colliding. One of the big guys should be observed years before hitting us. You can bet that Zocher's asteroid will now be constantly tracked.

Asteroids the size of the Tunguska one hit every century or two. These guys are enough to wipe out a city if we are unlucky and NASA cannot track those. The Tunguska event occured in 1908...

We should track the ones we can and we should extend our detection methods. We should not assume that because something happens every million years it cannot happen tomorrow....

Lots of NASA Info:

http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:01 / 23.06.02

As Lurid said...

We should not assume that because something happens every million years it cannot happen tomorrow....

yeah. Just because you roll a six this time, doesn't mean it's gonna be another six rolls before you get one.
Though if the earth is likely to be destroyed by space rock, shouldn't Hawkwind et al at least be being questioned right now?