Late last night on the evening news there was a report that a meteor has a 1 in 10 chance of smacking into us today.
One of the religious channels was quoting Revelations, specifically the part about the angel riding a mountian into a lake which the guy (I think 700 club…) said represented a meteor, this meteor.
The coffee machine is broken.
So is the earth going to be hit by a meteor today? Will all life on earth as we know it end? Will the tech get off his lazy ass and fix the hot water pipe connecting to the back of the coffee machine???
Actually I think the report said some time tonight. I’ve tried an internet search and, aside from finding all kinds of reports about aliens, nuclear winter, greenpeace, melting ice caps, I haven’t been able to locate anything further. Am I going nuts?*
Please don’t joke about this–does anyone have a link for the 1 in 10 chance? I’ve already seen the main BBC story, but what’s this one in ten stuff for TODAY?
This is every object that jpl/nasa is concerned about. Notice that not one of them has a possible impact date in 2002.
Notice the NT2002 object. This is the one I have seen in the news lately.
First possible impact is 2019.
Current odds of impact about 1/250,000
If it does hit, it would release about 1.15 Million Megatons TNT equivilent of energy.
That would be a big wallop. I doubt that every nuclear weapon ever manufactured would add up to that total.
Wrong girl- Where’s the BBC site? The quote I remember hearing was that the meteor has a 1 in 10 shot, but now that I’m thinking about it I’m not sure whether the news reported that number or the 700 club guy.
What do you mean “Please don’t joke about this”? The fact that anyone will believe there’s a 1 in 10 chance of an asteroid hitting the Earth today and destroying it is pretty comical. It shows how gullible people are. But if you send me some money I’ll intervene with Zeus almighty and he will make the asteriod go away, or turn it into a beautiful princess or something. Just send me money.
January/February 2019 is the next possible deadly pass. It’s a short-run comet, though, so we’ll have plenty of chances to observe it more closely, send probes to determine its composition, even deflect it before it gets too close for comfort.
The damage? Not world-ending, but they were saying things like “destroy a continent” and “global climate change.” So really pretty bad if it hits, but humanity will probably continue. Well, probably at least half of it anyway.
I didn’t say I believed it, I just wanted confirmation and to see what was up. The news report seemed to be pretty bliasé so I was suspicious.
BTW, should I write the check to you or Zeus? I assume a COD is out of the question…
It’s possible that someone got the “1 in 10 chance” thing from the cite scotth provided. There it says the 2002 NT7 asteroid (the one I saw discussed on CNN last night) has a rating of 1 on the Torino Scale, which has a max of 10.
As scott says, it’s won’t strike before 2019 and the odds at present are only 1/250,000. But if a nutcase conspiracy theorist got a hold of those numbers, he or she may treat them like statistics. And we all know how dangerous statistics are. In fact, recent studies indicate that 74% of people whos use statistics develop a brain tumor.
Hey, when you mentioned Torino Scale that rang a bell. That might have been the report that the 700 club guy was talking about. Also it might have been where the 1 in 10 number came from, as the local newspeople are apt to read out numbers wrong and such. Thanks. That clears up the first two questions, now When the hell is the coffee machine going to be fixed??!?!!
The Asteroid 2002NY40 was just discovered July 14. It’s 500 meters across, and will pass within 330,000 miles of earth next month. It’s already visible with a small telescope, and should get bright enough to see with binoculars before the August 18th flyby. Sky and Telescope has its usual great coverage of the discovery.
Apparently the discovery of 2002NY40 was a fluke, as no one is actively looking for near earth asteroids smaller than a kilometer or so.
I guess that “angel riding a mountian into a lake” prophecy is supposed to come as a surprise (kind of like pee in ones cheerios )
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