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Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

cneos.jpl.nasa.gov

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Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#191

Post by SR2Z »

mmooss wrote: post #188
SR2Z wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that small objects like this suffer greatly from the 3-body problem, and multiple trajectories are generated from various starting points inside our measured error bars for the current states of these objects. Small inaccuracies compound over the years.

> My guess is that small objects like this suffer greatly from the 3-body problem What bodies? My impression is that the only objects around Earth with enough gravity to significantly impact trajectories are the Earth and Moon. Will the other small objects have any significant gravitational impact on this body? I also understand that in cislunar space, the Earth-Moon dynamic does create a three-body problem and traje…

Clicking the link, I found this visualization of the approximate orbit:

https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=2024%...

This orbit is around the sun (as asteroids tend to) and the apoapsis is closer to Jupiter's orbit than Mars.

Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#192

Post by dylan604 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #186
dylan604 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? People don't leave hurricane zones. People don't heed tornado warnings. I just have very little faith in humanity, and fell like "Don't Look Up" would be not too far off. Also, if you evacuate New York a year in advance, who's to say that the prediction isn't just a skosh off so that New York is left untouched but the real impact location was hit unprepared?

A lot of people do evacuate hurricane zones, even when death and destruction are not absolutely guaranteed. If we knew with certainty that a particular place was going to be hit by an asteroid, and we had time to evacuate, I am confident most people would do so.

The accuracy issue is the thing. I’d venture a guess that our prediction of the path of a hurricane 7 days out is more accurate than predicting where an impact will be.

Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#193

Post by bqmjjx0kac »

thekevan wrote: post #96
layer8 wrote: post #20

Working link: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20Y... 8.1 megatons of kinetic energy. According to the Torino rating, only risk of “localized destruction” (less than “regional devastation”): https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/torino_scale.html

[flagged]

I don't want to come off too harsh here -- not a personal attack -- but I genuinely don't understand why folks are sharing the output from LLMs. It's usually too long, it's not written by a human (which is why I came to HN), and I could have trivially asked an LLM myself!

Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#194

Post by thg123712 »

neilv wrote: post #149

Maybe it will start climbing in probability, giving us a chance to reflect, and to improve our ways. Since, if we're already doing Nazi salutes at a US Presidential inauguration, less than 100 years after we'd learned that Nazis are pure evil, then I'd understand if some higher power was ready to hit the reset button. Maybe tardigrades would evolve better. (ProTip: Be sure to send a second asteroid, to Mars, ahead of…

That salute stuff is just to distract people, maybe it was even carefully planned.

I'd rather focus on Bitcoin, AI and Blockchain scams as well as nepotism. The official excuse for Ramaswamy's DOGE exit is that Musk has a tech approach to solving (?) the efficiency problems:

https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamy-asked-if-elon-musk-...

Expect a lot of blockchain nonsense infiltrating the government, perhaps even a digital currency. That must be avoided at all costs.

Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#195

Post by me-vs-cat »

ddahlen wrote: post #84

I work on the Near Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) writing simulation code which predicts which objects we will see. This one has drummed up a bit of interest due to its (relatively) high chance of impact. I actually spent quite a bit of time yesterday digging through archive images trying trying to see if it was spotted on some previous times it came by the Earth (no luck unfortunately). Since w…

> if it misses the Earth in 2032, it could hit the moon.

Oh, that's not so ba--- Wait, isn't that what happens in Seveneves?

Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#196

Post by [deleted] »

NL807 wrote: post #164
VierScar wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there's a reason, but it seems like an unusual use of Monte Carlo - it's all deterministic and there is no opposing player making choices. Must have something to do with uncertainties in projected orbits or imperfect simulations maybe?

>it's all deterministic and there is no opposing player making choices It's not deterministic, it's chaotic. That is the nature of the N-body problem. We can only approximate trajectories in such a system using numerical methods, within a certain margin of error. In principle, the object is gravitationally interacting with everything else in the solar system. But for the most part, most interactions are negligible an…

[deleted]

Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#197

Post by varelse »

i_am_a_squirrel wrote: post #178

Is there a "sweet spot" for asteroids where they don't impact the earth, but come within like 20 meters of it? Like is it possible for an asteroid to give a city a "buzz cut" and then continue on into outer space?

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Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#198

Post by ars »

School-Cotton wrote: post #174
ars wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would see it years before, and we would know with certainty years before. If the object really looked like it might impact I'm sure someone would get time on a powerful telescope to lock in the orbit.

How far in advance would we know exactly _where_ on the Earth it will hit? If, say, New York is going to be destroyed, it makes a big difference if we know that a year in advance vs. a day.

Knowing if it will hit is a lot easier than knowing where.

Knowing where, will depend on the angle of impact - if came basically straight in (tangent to the surface) we can be pretty accurate, but the more shallow the angle the harder it will be.

With a shallow angle, we'll probably be able to tell the latitude pretty well, but not the longitude.

Re: Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

#200

Post by ahazred8ta »

dylan604 wrote: post #183
i_am_a_squirrel wrote: post #178

Is there a "sweet spot" for asteroids where they don't impact the earth, but come within like 20 meters of it? Like is it possible for an asteroid to give a city a "buzz cut" and then continue on into outer space?

> but come within like 20 meters of it? like is doing some heavy lifting here. We have had asteroids pass by at a distance closer than the moon. That's pretty damn close in my book relative to the size of the cosmos. At that scale, that's pretty much a ringer in horse shoes. The buzzcut is a very strange question though. If the thing enters the atmosphere and does not burn up, it is hitting the ground.

You are slightly mistaken. There have been hit-and-run asteroids that entered the upper atmosphere and skipped through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Great_Daylight_Fireball The Grand Teton Meteor / The Great Daylight Fireball of 1972 came within 35 miles of the surface. A huge iron meteor might survive a low pass but this would be a very rare event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Earth-grazing_firebal...

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