It currently has a 1.2% chance of hitting earth in 2032. Not high odds, but still I wish I had any confidence at all that the current world leadership could get together to deal with the risk.
I think I meant to put this in a different forum. But it probably works just as well here. Nothing much to be done but wait and see how the world reacts. The odds of anything terrible happening with this are very low, but not impossible. There are almost eight years to figure out a solution that depends on trusting science, thoughtful leadership, and the world working together. Since we know none of that can happen with the current leadership, I feel like we are reduced to hoping for the best while knowing we would get the worse if probabilities of disaster increase. Don’t look up.
So, some sort of hat is probably in order.
Considering the current state of the world, maybe it’d be best to be hit by an asteroid in 7 years and get done with it. At least that’s not the scariest outcome for the next years I can imagine.
You guys. This asteroid is between 40 and 100 meters in size. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 10 to 15 kilometers. And by the square-cube law, it was many, many, many, many, many, many, many times more massive.
On the large end, this asteroid could be on the scale of the hypothesized asteroid that caused the Tunguska Event.
This is by no means a world ending scenario. It might be the sort of event we issue evacuation warnings to a couple cities over.
Are y’all just memeing?
It’s actually relatively small and, since we know its trajectory and due date, it is entirely possible that we could influence its trajectory even with our present level of technology. In terms of the 1.3% threat of impact, that’s impact with the earth in general. The chances of it hitting close enough to any one of us to kill or severely affect any one of us makes those odds much smaller. I’d say those odds aren’t any greater than the odds that, between now and then, something else might kill or severely us.
Well, my response certainly was in jest, I didn’t even read the article and knew the size of the asteroid. But we’re in the Pit and not FQ, right?
Sure, I just see so much doomerism lately that I’m not sure how much of it is people in desperate need of touching grass, versus how much is dank memes dunking on the aforementioned grass deficient.
1.2% does not sound all that low to me. However, this isn’t a species-annihilating object.
Well, if it survived atmospheric entry and squished the last breeding pair of a nearly-extinct species…
But other than that, yeah.
Probably not a species wake-up-to-the-reality-of-our need-to-work-together-to-prevent-calamities event either.
Would a dino-killer asteroid be that, either?
I think the technology and techniques to redirect an asteroid exist, and are within the grasp of countries like the US or China. No global cooperation needed.
And you don’t need to be some peace and love hippie with deep concern for all mankind to have the thought, “I can’t let the Earth get destroyed… It’s where I keep all my stuff!”.
Movies (like the aforementioned “Don’t Look Up”) always show the rich running off to another planet. Which is fine as social commentary, but realistically doesn’t make any sense. Redirecting an asteroid is a trivial problem to solve compared to interstellar travel. It’d be much easier for some mega-billionaire to redirect the asteroid and charge the world’s governments fees for it, then to flee Earth.
The rich people in Don’t Look Up were able to solve all of these problems, each of which alone is much harder than redirecting an asteroid, all because they didn’t want to bother saving Earth I guess:
- Detect enough information about an exoplanet to determine it is habitable to humans right out of the box
- Invent cryogenic freezing that’s relatively reliable (a few of them die, but we can’t do that at all yet, while we can redirect an asteroid)
- Build a ship capable of escaping the sun’s gravitational well on a trajectory to intercept another star in a reasonable timeframe, which is also capable of braking once arriving and then landing
- Build AI that can run the whole thing for hundreds of years in transit
- Build all machinery involved to last hundreds of years
Each of those problems in isolation is many times harder than redirecting an asteroid. All of it is doable, but not with a time crunch and current day tech. Unlike an asteroid redirect mission.
If that’s what Musk will do to divert Asteroid 2024 yr4, I’d say good riddance.
Yeah, Musk is the sort of asshole I was thinking of who, while a terrible person, might decide to save Earth just because it’s where he keeps his stuff.
If there is money to be made and power to be gained in saving the Earth then something just might get done for future generations. Otherwise, I doubt it.
“This asteroid is a threat that only I can address by consolidating our nation’s wealth and directing it to my smart friends and family to prevent the inevitable collision. I will also need the power to crush any opposition to the confiscation of resources needed for this endeavor.”
Yeah. There’s a potential threat here, but it’s not the big rock in space.
This would be similar in scale to the Canyon Diablo/Meteor Crater impact. So not a planet-killer, but definitely a city- to county-killer. I found this study estimating the impact of that impact:
If one combines the direct and indirect effects of the blast wave, it seems likely that the vegetation would have been almost completely destroyed over an area of 800 to 1500 km² around the Meteor Crater impact site and damaged over an additional area of 200 to 600 km² (Fig. 10). Likewise, the megafauna within 3 to 4 km of the impact site (or an area of ~30 to 50 km²) would have probably been killed. Severe injuries that may have crippled their ability to feed and defend themselves may have affected the megafauna to distances of ~16 to 24 km (or an area of 800 to 1800 km²). Clearly, the impact would have been devasting to the local population of plants and animals. These effects, however, would not have produced any extinctions and most of the area was probably recolonized within a few to 100 years. Indeed, new species may have joined the community because of the additional habitat provided by the springs and lake inside the crater.
This could be a great opportunity for a dry-run for dealing a real potential extinction-event candidate. Can we find out if it’s a risk, and put together a mission that would alleviate that risk, in time to deal with it? Even if it’s just for practice, this could be a useful tool.
I say we put Donald Trump at ground zero with a really big catcher’s mitt.
All of the world’s top scientists should get together to try to figure out how to aim the asteroid…