201–210 of 252 posts
Also both these entities are "lost" but not "high priority" https://newton.spacedys.com/neodys2/NEOScan/index_nspl.html
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That's because Earth has gravity, and an asteroid that comes close enough can get deflected onto the planet even if right now it seems to be on a trajectory to miss it entirely. The closer they get and the lower the relative speeds the larger the chance that they will collide and that's not a linear relationship. Beyond a certain boundary impact is certain, then the question is what the time of the impact is and how…
I wouldn't expect earth gravity to affect it sufficiently enough to cause it to crash unless it was moving very slowly, but I'm not sure asteroids ever move that slowly?
Now think of what that kind of force would do on a much lighter object that moves faster.
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When a new potentially-hazardous asteroid is discovered, it's normal for the probability of impact to go up a couple times before abruptly plummeting to zero, as the radius of uncertainty shrinks until it shrinks past the Earth. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale#/media/File:Apoph... . A 3% chance of impact right after discovery with the initial error ellipse isn't all that unusual; it will almost certain…
This makes sense, thanks. However, it doesn't mean that the 3% estimate of the chance of impact was wrong at the time of initial observation given data available, and that still makes it a huge deal at that time. At minimum, it would seem to justify using the best available instruments to characterize the asteroid more precisely as soon as possible. If these large numbers happen so often that asteroids with initial i…
It makes no fucking sense.
There is 3% chance it'll be revised to 100% chance and 97% chance it'll be revised to 0% chance.
Are you Yogi Berra?
It'll be reported like possible hurricanes hitting landfall.
If this has happed ~33 times then one will hit us.
If it's 400m it will kill 200,000 people assuming Vox is reporting correctly - https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/26/8931776/near-ea...
That will be 9 in 10 it hit's boring ocean and looks cool on satellites and one in 10 kills 2 million people and there will be some cool live streams.
Or the 3% in the title is a lie.
Impact time is in the past. Mission accomplished, everyone!
Am I reading this data correctly?: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/scout/#/object/ZTm0038 Because it looks like today is the most probable day of impact at 10%, but there is a good 25%+ chance it will impact sometime in the next two weeks.
Impact time is in the past. Mission accomplished, everyone!
Am I reading this data correctly?: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/scout/#/object/ZTm0038 Because it looks like today is the most probable day of impact at 10%, but there is a good 25%+ chance it will impact sometime in the next two weeks.
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Yep, they've added a ChatGPT answer on top of all the human answers. Although in this case the human answer isn't really better, but it's the fault of the person who asked the question for being vague about the kind of speed they meant.
How could Quora suck worse? Rub a little AI on it.
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Imagine you see a car 1 mile away as you're preparing to cross the street. 1 sec later, it's a bit closer. You wonder "will this car hit me?". It's hard to say since the car is so far away and your measurements of its speed are so poor. You wait 5 sec and it's still only imperceptibly closer. You realize there is no way it could possibly hit you. You cross the street unconcerned.
3% seems much higher though. If I crossed the street at 3%, I probably would be dead by now. Cars may not be a great analogy, because they swerve, but it is quite high. Space is pretty damn big too so the odds are really low of being hit by space things. But unlike cars, space stuff tend to swerve towards the larger bodies.
That's exactly it. And at the speeds these objects are going and the uncertainty of the observations you would have to be observing an object for a really long time to get the kind of accuracy required to pick a mitigation method that would work. And even then, assuming you could nail the point of impact of something going 2000 km / second of unknown mass in a strong gravity field: given the COVID response I have a hard time believing that the response to 'Houston, Texas is going to be obliterated on Jun 1st 2024' would be met with anything but skepticism and laughter. Right up to the moment of impact.
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When a new potentially-hazardous asteroid is discovered, it's normal for the probability of impact to go up a couple times before abruptly plummeting to zero, as the radius of uncertainty shrinks until it shrinks past the Earth. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale#/media/File:Apoph... . A 3% chance of impact right after discovery with the initial error ellipse isn't all that unusual; it will almost certain…
What percent of the times when the initial probability is 3% will it later be revised to zero? Is it more than 97%?
Here's a visualization of its orbit, Earth in green, object in teal: http://orbitsimulator.com/gravitySimulatorCloud/yr/gsim2023.... It passed about 9 hours ago.
VSauce with packages summary for passive consumption. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wrc4fHSCpw And jacquesm's replies to my other comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37139144
Yikes
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This paper is an interesting read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457651... Not my area of expertise, but it sounds like a deep ocean impact would not be completely catastrophic. With only ∼1% of the asteroid kinetic energy being converted into tsunami waves and with the stronger decay with distance implies that moderate size asteroids (100–500 m in diameter) striking the deep ocean basins off…
If it hit land anywhere other than Siberia or the Sahara, it would be pretty bad!