Space rock 'on collision course'

Quote:

An asteroid discovered just weeks ago has become the most threatening object yet detected in space.

A preliminary orbit suggests that 2002 NT7 is on an impact course with Earth and could strike the planet on 1 February, 2019 - although the uncertainties are large.

Astronomers have given the object a rating on the so-called Palermo technical scale of threat of 0.06, making NT7 the first object to be given a positive value.

From its brightness, astronomers estimate it is about two kilometres wide, large enough to cause continent-wide devastation on Earth.

Many observations

Although astronomers say the object definitely merits attention, they expect more observations to show it is not on an Earth-intersecting trajectory.

Weapons of mass destruction don't sound that bad now, huh? Are we gonna throw rockets and stuff to destoy it?
Let's hope for good news in the future, I don't want to die so young .


More info here: BBC NEWS

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Go.

Also, do you have any idea not only A) how often rocks fly right on past us B) how miniscule the odds are that a collision will even occur are?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Miniscule, but not impossible.

Of course, it's also conceivable that we can calibrate our missile weaponry to intercept such an object. We've put entire ships into space and sent complex satellites on finely calculated journeys past Saturn. I hold no fears that, by 2019, we'll be unable to throw a few glorified bombs into the meteor's path. One atomic bomb levelled Nagasaki. I think two or three could handle a rock with a span of only a couple kilometers. It doesn't even require much fuel. Just enough for a missile to escape Earth's orbit. From there, the flight path would be calculated and the missile could probably coast toward its target.

If it weren't for oversensationalized films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, the general population would react far more rationally to this kind of news.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

But instead of blowing up the rock and risking a rain of stone over the whole earth, wouldn't it be better to like, "shove" it out of our way and let it fly by? Maybe a single atomic bomb or something could give it a push.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Wouldnt it be cool if nuke mutates lifeforms on the rock and suddenly we have a alien war on our hans =D

no homo

Quote:

Of course, it's also conceivable that we can calibrate our missile weaponry to intercept such an object. We've put entire ships into space and sent complex satellites on finely calculated journeys past Saturn. I hold no fears that, by 2019, we'll be unable to throw a few glorified bombs into the meteor's path. One atomic bomb levelled Nagasaki. I think two or three could handle a rock with a span of only a couple kilometers. It doesn't even require much fuel. Just enough for a missile to escape Earth's orbit. From there, the flight path would be calculated and the missile could probably coast toward its target.

Eh, I don't know. The largest bomb the US ever detonated, "Castle Bravo", (15 MT) only left a crater one mile wide and just slightly less than 300 feet deep. In coral. (The fireball itself was more than three miles wide.) Good luck vaporizing something made out of solid rock (or even worse, iron) and moving at thousands of miles per hour. That's a lot of kinetic energy! Even a huge bomb (such as a Tsar Bomba size bomb, roughly 50MT) probably wouldn't have much of an effect. High altitude test detonations (such as shots "Teak" and "Orange") dissipated almost immediately, and those weren't even fully in outer space. In the vacuum of space, there is no air to form a fireball, or a shock wave. The energy of the bomb would radiate out into space unimpeded. (Supposedly; there has never been a deep-space bomb detonation, so nobody knows what would truly happen.)

Even so, there is no upper limit on how large and powerful you can make a thermonuclear weapon, so who knows. Maybe a truly huge bomb could do it. Maybe. There are also deflection strategies, but you'd have to intercept it very far out to make those kinds of trajectory changes. I guess I'm just a skeptic.

Also:

Quote:

Further observations of the object have since re-rated the threat lower. As of July 25, 2002, the hazard rating on the Palermo scale had been lowered to -0.25. However, the discovery of an object with an initial hazard rating above 0.0 is still a significant event in the history of the NEO observation program.
On August 1, 2002, the object was removed from the list of objects that present a threat, at least for the next 100 years.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Ok, so there is no thread. Useless thread, can be closed now >_>.

FELIPE NO

Cool, free mod action stats.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Dizzy

Ok, so there is no thread. Useless thread, can be closed now >_>.

Ehh, I assume you meant ''threat'', but that doesn't mean that there's nothing to discuss. Crash Landon still has to answer Namek, at least. I will re-open this.

Double Post:
(hehe, mod stats )

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I'm not so sure about hurling nukes at the thing, but according to a popular science mag in Denmark, NASA is working out several ways to get those things out of the way. One of them is a tungsten projectile which, given enough speed, should push the trajectory enough.

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Originally Posted by Zip

Wouldnt it be cool if nuke mutates lifeforms on the rock and suddenly we have a alien war on our hans =D

I think that film was called 'Evolution'...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Don't worry about 2019, it was proven a while ago that the panic was caused thanks to a calculation error. The real impact would be around 800 years later. I'm sure it will be no big deal for mankind by then.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Bad Astronomy

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

Of course, it's also conceivable that we can calibrate our missile weaponry to intercept such an object. We've put entire ships into space and sent complex satellites on finely calculated journeys past Saturn. I hold no fears that, by 2019, we'll be unable to throw a few glorified bombs into the meteor's path. One atomic bomb levelled Nagasaki. I think two or three could handle a rock with a span of only a couple kilometers.

There is a difference between obliterating a city and destroying an asteroid. A city only requires the destruction of what is on the surface.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

That rock better stay away from this planet if it knows what's good for it, or at least tone down its estimated damage. Otherwise someone'll probably sic the Evil Genius Union on its ass for putting us out of job.

Not good for its life expectancy.

FELIPE NO

You know, I have to count myself as gullable for getting worked up about this same story each time it is posted (with a year seperating them.) I should just bother to look at the date in the source article more closely.

That isn't to say that other near Earth objects could already be headed for a simmilar course, but then again any number of things could happen between then and now. The main thing is that the threat is very real, and the possiblity that we would be caught with out pants down (discovering a rock that is weeks away from impact) is also ever present. So, the US (and other countries) should really make meteor defense and funding to identify these objects more of a priority.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Excrono

You know, I have to count myself as gullable for getting worked up about this same story each time it is posted (with a year seperating them.) I should just bother to look at the date in the source article more closely.

That isn't to say that other near Earth objects could already be headed for a simmilar course, but then again any number of things could happen between then and now. The main thing is that the threat is very real, and the possiblity that we would be caught with out pants down (discovering a rock that is weeks away from impact) is also ever present. So, the US (and other countries) should really make meteor defense and funding to identify these objects more of a priority.

Well some of them are impossible to spot in time before it's too late. Comets come to mind here. You really cant see them too well untill they start aproaching the sun. So they're pretty much invisible untill they get closer. Then when we see them there's not enough time left to do anything about it. I dont think any amount of funding could change this because you just cant see them. Then take into account that we can only monitor a small part of the sky.. and it becomes an incredibly hard task to spot them all.

We're actually pretty lucky.. Alot of misses plus we have a big gigantic ball of gas that shields us from most of them. :P

Jam it back in, in the dark.

With all the bomb testing countries have done on earth you'd think at least one test could be done in outer space. Or on the moon.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

That would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'm suprised by that time (or now really) that there would be some sort of counteractting solution to one of these things, but I guess out $$$ is going somewhere else.

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Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

That would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.

But we don't know that we're a part of that!

See, to say we aren't would require us to go all the way to Alpha Centauri.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I am with Crash, I think we'll be able to blow something like that up in a couple of decades also. However, it is less than trivial to shoot a missle at something in space that is only a mile wide and travelling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. I wonder if they even consider talking about that yet at places like the JPL.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Shooting a nuke at it is a bad idea. After the explosion, the fragments will likely come together again, and the earth will receive a shower of radioactive clusterbombing.

FELIPE NO

Well, I guess this means it's time to get a job on an oil rig.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by SemperFidelis

Shooting a nuke at it is a bad idea. After the explosion, the fragments will likely come together again, and the earth will receive a shower of radioactive clusterbombing.

Not necessarily. If the fragments aren't too big, they'd likely just burn up in the atmosphere. It'd have to be a hell of a bomb though.

Jam it back in, in the dark.