# Impact of Asteroid Defence **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 27, 2001, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329 "2001-08-27T15:20:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Phoenix\_Dragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Phoenix\_Dragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phoenix_Dragon)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/61 "2002-04-19T18:02:30Z")
This AGAIN? Yes, we all know that an asteroid impact is a Bad Thing[sup]tm[/sup]. In a word (Or three, anyway), big f’ing deal. An impact in the water is bad. Oh no. The asteroid 1950 DA has a 1-in-300 chance of impacting earth in 880 years. Oh no. Two asteroids passed within 1.2 million kilometers of earth. Oh no. (And just how big were these rocks, anyway? On the UK NEO page, I could only find reference to six asteroids passing within that distance that measured more than 20 meters, in the past 65 years!) Asteroids might be “hiding” by the sun. Again, oh no. (And this seems _incredibly_ alarmist, seeing as this little fear was taken from an article about a new satalite that will detect them!) And to top it all off, there are more asteroids in the asteroid belt! Sorry if if I’m not too surprised by that 🙂 As for 2002 EM7, it was 60 meters wide traveling at 10KPS. If it impacted on earth, it would have caused little damage. In the ocean, it wouldn’t have enough energy to be noticable over normal variations in the tide (There was one about 40 meters wide and traveling 12KPS that impacted in the pacific a few years back. I doubt many people have even heard of it). And wasn’t that the one you brought up a while back, having only a week’s warning before it passed? I thought it was 2002 EM7, or was it a different one? So I guess to sum it all up… And? So what? We’ve got a new asteroid-tracking sattalite going up to track asteroids in a previously blind spot, NASA is launching the SENTRY program to compliment the NEODyS CLOMON impact monitoring system in Italy, sharing information and able to double-check eachother’s work for better accuracy, and the ability has already been shown to not only identify potential impacts, but to be able to predict them up to 880 years in the future! And to top it off, of all the asteroids plotted for near-earth tracks in the next 80-some years, and of any significant size, only one of those has a Torino scale level higher than zero (And it’s a 1, or extremely unlikely to impact). The risk of an impact is no higher than it has been for the past thousand years, and despite how much you complain that NASA isn’t doing anything, they _are_, as are other nations. The ability to detect NEOs is increasing rapidly, and radar imaging is enhancing the ability to analyze detected NEOs to determine their exact trajectory and orbit. So, uh… What’s the big deal? ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/62 "2002-04-20T04:55:40Z")
Tiny quibble: I’m pretty sure the job of NASA administrator is Civil Service, so not only can they not impeach him, they possibly can’t even fire him, without some kind of cause, like embezzlement. Other tiny quibble: The tsunamis quoted so hysterically in the Guardian killed “hundreds!” of people. Woo, hundreds! Wait, “thousands!” And Dr. Steven Ward’s modeling of an asteroid impact off the coast of Cornwall would merely “swamp the coasts of Europe”, taking out, what, maybe “thousands” of people? What’s the population of the Earth nowadays–about 6 billion? So that would leave only, um, lemme see–billions and billions of specimens of _homo sapiens_ to repopulate the Earth… You’ll pardon me if my panties remain unbunched, Sorbust. 😃 And, won’t some kind statistics geek explain to me exactly what’s wrong with this? > [@](#): > > How often does such an event occur? Asteroids around 200 metres in size strike the Earth about once every couple of thousand years. The Atlantic has about a one-in-10 chance of being the next target. I sense instinctively that there’s some deep, fundamental logical flaw there, some sort of very basic mistaken assumption, but I don’t know enough about statistics. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/63 "2002-04-20T05:08:04Z")
> [@](#): > > New research, summarized in this story in The Guardian (link), says that even a smallish 200 meter/yard asteroid would result in a huge tsunami. Relatively smallish? **Relatively smallish**?!? That’s bigger than a football stadium. It’s hardly “small” (or even “relatively smallish”). > [@](#): > > They just keep a-comin’ and a-comin’—closer and closer. You speak as if the Universe is deliberately trying to take us out and is slowly getting more accurate as time goes by… the mother of all persecution complexes, perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![Sea\_Sorbust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Sea\_Sorbust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sea_Sorbust)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/64 "2002-04-20T15:10:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by \*\*Phoenix Dragon \* > \*\* > …{Misc. stuff deleted}… > > So, uh… What’s the . . . deal? Great Balls of Fire, **Phoenix Dragon**! Not only are you a fellow **Pink Floyd** fan but you use the title of one of their tracks as your main (–and perhaps “only” [worthwhile]–) argument. **Shine on,** you crazy dragon! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sea\_Sorbust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Sea\_Sorbust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sea_Sorbust)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/65 "2002-04-20T15:47:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SPOOFE \* > \*\* > Relatively smallish? **Relatively smallish**?!? That’s bigger than a football stadium. It’s hardly “small” (or even “relatively smallish”). > > You speak as if the Universe is deliberately trying to take us out and is slowly getting more accurate as time goes by… the mother of all persecution complexes, perhaps? \*\* Well, **SPOOFE,** I confess that I had set aside worries about impacting asteroids for the past couple of months. When my NASA E-mail subjects announced that one might impact in 800+ years, I didn’t even open the E-mail to read the details. It was the observant and astute **Duck Duck Goose** that got my attention through her posting far above. My attention returned to asteroids (–recall, if you will, that the OP is on the opposite side of “Panic! Panic!!”—‘Forget asteroids and send the money to, say, CDC or NIH’–saith the OP–), reluctantly. The more I read about asteroidal research that had been published during my hiatus, the more concerned I got. I began to “Panic! Panic!!”; and I don’t feel any less concerned having read the rebutals in this thread. **SPOOFE:** I agree that a 200 yard wide asteroid is hardly “smallish”, but relative to the “big guys”–the kind that take out entire classes of life–it is pretty small, and not very **un** common,–no matter **Phoenix Dragon’s** near-vacuous counter-argument above. I **believe** that the Universe is alive, aware, and sentient. I **believe** that were the Universe interested in “taking us out”, we’d be “took out”. Kaput. Twenty or thirty minutes after the Universe so decided. (Note that these are beliefs–I can not, nor will even try to, offer proofs.) Oh the other hand, having served two years in a heavy-artillery battalion, I know how one adjusts rounds. It is a sloppy soldier who watches the earth boofing up, ever closer and closer, and ascribes it to natural phenomena,–without considering that his unit might, _just might_, be under an artillery attack. ---
**Author:** ![Sea\_Sorbust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Sea\_Sorbust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sea_Sorbust)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/66 "2002-04-20T16:28:59Z")
A counter-quibble, **Duck Duck Goose:** I think that the NASA Administrator is not a civil servant but is a political appointee;–who was just, in fact, appointed to his position by a fellow-FlyBoy. The new NASA Administrator (–May Congress impeach him rapidly!!–) is primarily interested the second “A” in NASA: Aeronautics;–unlike the last administrator who was primarily interested in “Space–[sub]on the cheap[/sub]”. I have absolutely no idea where those probabilities come from, **Duck Duck Goose.** The way one usually estimates a probability is take the number of actual occurrences–you count them–and divide that number by the number of total possible outcomes. In the case of asteroid impacts, you would take (–or “estimate” :rolleyes: --) the number of years in which a 200-yard (or thereabouts) asteroid impacted during the past 5 million years, and divide by 5 million. **How did ‘they’ count??** All of those probabilities are, to my mind, utterly phony;–vague, best-guess, yank-it-out-of-your-a\*\* percentages. If not, if it’s otherwise–I, for one, would _LOVE_ to hear how they arrived at any one of the touted probabilities. (BTW: I have some formal training in Statistics.) “Tsunami kills hundreds, maybe thousands”, reads the headlines. Who could get excited about such smallish numbers’ you ask, **Duck Duck Goose**? Well, let’s see. Hmmmm. History: That’s the place to look for good estimates. Ah, ha! Let’s see. There were about 2,500 killed at Pearl Harbor. There were about 3,000 killed in the World Trade Center. There were 266 men killed aboard the U.S.S. Maine [(link)](http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq71-1.htm). Etc. In all three cases, we have gone to War–twice legally and once extra-legally;–in each case, at extremely large cost-outlays. BTW, **Duck Duck Goose,** I failed to attribute my source for the link to The Guardian story about asteroidal strikes in deep sea waters: The original story came from a very excellent April 15 [**Cosmiverse.com** Space-News story](http://www.cosmiverse.com/space04150206.html). 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/67 "2002-04-20T18:50:06Z")
> [@](#): > > I agree that a 200 yard wide asteroid is hardly “smallish”, but relative to the “big guys”–the kind that take out entire classes of life–it is pretty small, and not very uncommon Got any stats on how “not very uncommon” they are? ---
**Author:** ![Sea\_Sorbust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Sea\_Sorbust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sea_Sorbust)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/68 "2002-04-20T19:49:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SPOOFE \* > \*\* > Got any stats on how “not very uncommon” they are? \*\* No. Wish I did. Just got back into the ‘business’ of asteroidal defence. It seem that the more the space-scientists actually look, the less uncommon the 200-yard asteroids seem to be. Until only very recently, Planet was sparsely occupied; communications were nil. Trusty **Bad Astro** has talked about a “big” asteroid/comet which landed in Amazonia during 1900’s but no one seems able to find any specifics about it–including the B.A. ☹ I’m beginning to think that when it comes to asteroids, we know very little. Planets? Glitzy. Comets? Pretty. But cold, dark asteroids? I’m also beginning to think that most–if not all–of the near-rabid opponents to finding out more–_much_ more–about asteroids have one thought in mind: Asteroidal impacts are scary and if we find out too much, we may end up spending lots of money defending against the possibility of an impact. And I’m including in this catagory quite a few astronomers who would rather spend “AstroMoney” on telescopes of many different races; on cosmological experiments; or on planetary explorations: Glitzy stuff, fun stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/69 "2002-04-21T03:34:15Z")
Well, this should make you feel better. If the Sentient Universe does decide to off us with an asteroid, at least it won’t be able to sneak up on us totally. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid\_1937000/1937575.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1937000/1937575.stm) > [@](#): > > Thursday, 18 April, 2002, 14:05 GMT 15:05 UK > UK asteroid centre opens > > The UK’s first government-backed centre to provide public information on asteroids and other near-Earth objects opens to the public on Saturday. > > Part of the National Space Centre in Leicester, the project is receiving £300,000 of government money to feed an increased public appetite for knowledge about objects relatively close to Earth. > > “By setting up an information centre we are helping the UK play a full and prominent role in an area that requires international rescue,” Space Minister Lord Sainsbury said. I wanna be a Space Minister, too. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Phoenix\_Dragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Phoenix\_Dragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phoenix_Dragon)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329/70 "2002-04-21T12:48:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sea Sorbust \* > **Great Balls of Fire, Phoenix Dragon ! Not only are you a fellow Pink Floyd fan but you use the title of one of their tracks as your main (–and perhaps “only” [worthwhile]–) argument.** I’m a Pink Floyd fan? Well that’s news… And here I thought he might actually try to address some of the issues I mentioned, instead of just dodging them all. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/impact-of-asteroid-defence/78329.md?page=3)