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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

#81

Post by thot_experiment »

redeux wrote: post #16

For reference the Tunguska event, which was projected to be a 5MT explosion on the low end, flattened about 2000 square kilometers when it airburst. If this hits the ocean it would no doubt cause some large tsunamis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

Only very locally, the Japan tsunami was an order of magnitude more energy and aiui earthquake tsunamis happen particularly with certain kinds of seafloor displacement. It's not just about the amount of energy but how that energy is applied, impact energies dissipate quickly with distance.

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

#82

Post by chrsw »

lambdadelirium wrote: post #4

What can be done to increase the asteroid impact probability?

The best way I can think of is similar to what I heard from Jaron Lanier (he may not be the first person to explain this). Basically what you do is send something massive out there that will gravitationally tug it into a collision course with Earth. Obviously this will take quite a bit of time but if your calculations are correct it will pretty much guarantee impact.

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

#83

Post by ortusdux »

RandomBacon wrote: post #79
layer8 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a 14 km blast radius it seems.

Unless it lands in the ocean in which case tidal waves, and if on land, probably an earthquake/shockwave.

A comparable ocean impact would be the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which was about 3x more energetic.

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

#84

Post by ddahlen »

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 we saw it so briefly, our knowledge of its orbit is not that great, and running the clock back to 2016 for example ended up with a large chunk of sky where it could have been, and it is quite small. We will almost certainly see it again with NEO Surveyor years before its 2032 close encounter. I have not run a simulation for it, but I would not be surprised if LSST (a large ground telescope survey which is currently coming online) to catch it around the same time NEO Surveyor does.

Our knowledge of the diameter of this object is a bit fuzzy, because of surface reflectivity, small shiny things can appear as bright as dark large things. This is one of the motivations of making the NEO Surveyor an IR telescope, since IR we see black body emission off of the objects, which is mostly size dependent, and only weakly albedo dependent.

There is an even tinier chance that if it misses the Earth in 2032, it could hit the moon. I haven't run the numbers precisely for that one, but it impacted a few times in some monte-carlo simulations.

If anyone is interested in orbit dynamics, I have open sourced some of the engine we are using for observation predictions: https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC/kete

It is relatively high precision, though JPL Horizons has more accurate gravitational models and is far better suited for impact studies. My code is primarily for predicting when objects will be seen in telescopes.

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

#85

Post by 2-3-7-43-1807 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #73
roenxi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're undercalling it, that would actually be completely normal. About 1 million US citizens die every 4 months (technically the number of American deaths would be quite a bit higher). The anomaly was that there were about 0.7 million surprise deaths over 12 months (some minority of which would have been caused by the COVID response itself, mind) You can look it up here - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of…

The hospitals were at their breaking point in 2022, many of my family were there. If we would have had the normal 1 million flu deaths + car accidents etc on top of the 1 million COVID deaths the health care system would have completely broken down and we would have had a couple more million deaths of things that would normally have been treatable but weren't because the health care system was broken.

[flagged]

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

#86

Post by jonstewart »

ta1243 wrote: post #42
jonstewart wrote: post #6

If Mt of asteroid impact roughly equates to a nuclear weapon, then this is pretty bad for a metropolitan area but not enough to put a big dent in humanity.

There's a 3 in 4 chance an asteroid hitting the earth will hit water, and of the remaining change about 50/50 it hits a desert or ice sheet (Antarctica, Greenland).

Hitting an ice sheet might be worst case scenario for global impact.

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

#87

Post by bryanlarsen »

2-3-7-43-1807 wrote: post #85
bryanlarsen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hospitals were at their breaking point in 2022, many of my family were there. If we would have had the normal 1 million flu deaths + car accidents etc on top of the 1 million COVID deaths the health care system would have completely broken down and we would have had a couple more million deaths of things that would normally have been treatable but weren't because the health care system was broken.

[flagged]

Family members that worked in a hospital.

2020 COVID and 2022 COVID were very different things. Few people got COVID in 2020, but a high fraction of those who did got hospitalized. Pretty much everybody got it in 2022, and a low fraction of those who did got hospitalized. But a small fraction of "pretty much everybody" is still a large number.

And yes, the hospitals are full right now. Flu, RSV, COVID & norovirus all going around. One is bad, 2 at the same time can be really bad. Good thing lock downs prevented that scenario from happening in 2022.

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

#88

Post by 2-3-7-43-1807 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #87
2-3-7-43-1807 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Family members that worked in a hospital. 2020 COVID and 2022 COVID were very different things. Few people got COVID in 2020, but a high fraction of those who did got hospitalized. Pretty much everybody got it in 2022, and a low fraction of those who did got hospitalized. But a small fraction of "pretty much everybody" is still a large number. And yes, the hospitals are full right now. Flu, RSV, COVID & norovirus all…

Lockdowns didn't prevent anything that would have justified the harm they brought on society, culture and politics.

I know you don't like Russell Brand and he's definitely not doing well ... nonetheless this interview with Tim Robbins basically summarizes my personal experience to the t:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMdOesJo4h8

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

#89

Post by dang »

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

Link fixed now. Thanks!
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