April 13, 2036. That’s how long you’ve got, folks. At least according to some Russian scientists, that is.
It seems that they believe there is a non-zero chance that Asteroid Apophis, which will just miss us in 2029, could pass through something called a ‘gravitational keyhole’, which in turn could perturb its orbit just enough to result in an earth-shattering ‘kaboom’ on the aforementioned date in '36. So, start thinking about staking out your preferred vantage point; I’m sure the good spots will sell out fast.
Now, apparently NASA says that there is only a 1/250,000 chance that the ‘gravitational keyhole’, which sounds like something out of an early Doctor Who episode, will affect the asteroid’s orbit. Nevertheless, they state that they will carefully monitor the asteroid during close approaches that will occur during 2012 and '13, and if the odds of a later impact appear greater than they do now, they will take steps to attempt to alter the asteroid’s orbit. Apparently this plan consists of launching a 1967 Plymouth Satellite on an interception course and smashing it into the rock at high velocity, if they can find one that isn’t completely rusted out, which, as a former owner of such a vehicle, I know will take some doing. OK, I think I made that last bit up.
Hey, at least you won’t have to worry about being late filing your income tax return that year.
I think we need a plan. A plan that needs to be carried out by a completely untrained but very select group of celebrities, driving that 1967 Plymouth.
Only they can save us.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Earth,
This Must Be Done
For The Good Of All
I nominate Paris Hilton, Michael Cole and Miley Cyrus, with the mission captained by that proven great leader, Sarah Palin.
Hmm…according to Egyptian lore, Apophis (aka Apep) was an evil god representing darkness and chaos. The Mayan Prophecy also says the world will end in late 2012, same time frame as the asteroid passes nearby.
Among other things, Apep represented snakes & serpents – similar to the 13th Zodiac sign (Ophiuchus) which was discovered just a few months ago.
On Bad Universe, our very own Bad Astronomer discussed an alternative method: launch a relatively small satellite, about a ton, to Apophis, and have the satellite use its gravity to “tow” Apophis into a different orbit. Time consuming, but workable, apparently.
Will all due respect to Phil Plait, I’d have to disagree that this is a workable solution. The gravitational coupling between two such articles would be minuscule, and we don’t have means to provide sufficient propulsive force to drag both the satellite and the asteroid enough to make a measurable difference in its trajectory.
[THREAD=573725]Here[/THREAD] is an old thread that details why attempting to blow up or shatter a Potentially Hazardous Object (PHO) is not a practicable solution. You would have to render the PHO into objects roughly no larger than a basketball to render it unlikely to survive to impact, and even then unless it was sufficiently dispersed such that most of the debris field misses the Earth you’d still have to account for the enormous amount of kinetic energy that will be suddenly converted to heat in the atmosphere, which on this scale would be equivalent to the detonation of thousands of large nuclear weapons simultaneously. Even if you could pulverize it into sand-sized grains (which is not feasible for reasons detailed in the linked thread) it would still pose a major hazard to orbital objects like satellites, costing tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. Better to push it aside using a plasma-modulated nuclear pulse similar to the Project ORION propulsion system, again as detailed in the linked thread.
Ok, so we’re going to use a plasma-modulated nuclear pulse to move it out of the gravitational keyhole, eh? Awesome. All we need are some dilithium crystals and we’ve got a Star Trek episode.
Agreed that the danger from this particular asteroid is low, and our ability to track and identify PHOs is so abysmal that far greater unknown threats exist. I was just addressing the feasibility of deflecting this or any other identified PHO.
“Plasma-modulated” merely means that you absorb some of the energy from the nuclear detonation into an energetic gaseous cloud which then delivers the kinetic energy over a longer time interval, hence “modulating” the impulse. This is not a novel technology, and in fact is used in staged thermonuclear devices to use some energy from the fission Primary to confine and compress the Secondary to fusion temperatures.
If you were hoping to discourage Star Trek references by adding “energetic gaseous cloud” and “impulse” to the discussion, I’m afraid this was a misguided missive.
Sooo… even with a 20 year fore knowledge of the asteroids orbital path and impact ('16 to '36), we can’t do anything about it? I thought early warning was the key to asteroid defence.
