Reality Check

SPACE.com — Asteroid With Chance of Hitting Earth in 2029 Now Being Watched ‘Very Carefully’

This article:

Asteroid With Chance of Hitting Earth in 2029 Now Being Watched ‘Very Carefully’
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 24 December 2004
09:58 am ET

States that the risk of impact from 2004 MN4, an asteroid known as “Apophis” now has an increased chance of hitting Earth, and is now roughly 1-in-45.

Update, Dec. 25, 9:47 p.m. ET: The risk of an impact by asteroid 2004 MN4 went up slightly on Saturday, Dec. 25. It is now pegged at having a 1-in -45 chance of striking the planet on April 13, 2029. That’s up from 1-in-63 late on Dec. 24, and 1-in-300 early on Dec. 24.

Astronomers still stress that it is very likely the risk will be reduced to zero with further observations. And even as it stands with present knowledge, the chances are 97.8 percent the rock will miss Earth.

A 97.8 percent chance of missing the Earth is good news. The odds of it hitting are the bad news. Basically, you have a 1-in-300,000 chance of being hit by lightning, and yet roughly 67 people are killed each year by lightning, and another 300 are seriously injured.

Lightning strikes and kills many more people in any given year than, for example tornadoes do, however, in the last couple of years many people have been killed by tornadoes. In 2008, so far, at least 54 people have been killed by tornadoes to day (this number might be higher, I couldn’t find good statistics on this yet).

The article goes on to say the following:

The asteroid’s risk rating a possible impact scenario on April 13, 2029 has now been categorized as a 4 on the Torino Scale. The level 4 rating — never before issued — is reserved for “events meriting concern.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, it is a 0-10 rating scale, with 4 being the top of the “yellow scale”. Basically it means “be on alert”. The next number up, 5 is in the orange scale.

Scientists have yet to make a determination that this is a ‘dangerous’ interaction, and yet, they will say in “scientific terms” that if this particular asteroid hits a certain “space keyhole” the asteroid has a 100% chance of hitting us on the next go-around, about 2036.

Essentially, this asteroid is a smaller rock, and probably won’t cause a global disaster, but will certainly “rock the planet” - to coin a phrase. Localized damage could be significant in the region struck. At this point, I don’t know of anyone that has publicly accomplished the calculations on exact time it “could strike” or where, simply because most are writing this off as a “near miss”.

At this point, I won’t predict anything, since I have not personally run the numbers yet, but I will be doing that within a couple of years as data comes in.

But, I will say this, IF the asteroid hits the “keyhole” it will most definitely be upgraded to an 8 on the Torino scale. My gut feeling is that this will probably happen, but we can’t base predictions of objects affected by gravity on “gut feelings”, and need to stick to science. I’ll leave it at that, for now.

But, I strongly suggest everyone begin learning about the Torino Scale, this asteroid and the possible impact implications for Planet Earth, since you have just about 21 years left to be in a safe location!

Here’s a good movie, mentioned 1950DA, which will come to visit us in about 2880. Long time from now, and we’ll all be long, long gone, but, it might give us time to think about moving off-world by then.

Astronomy Cast

Recommend you listen to this podcast if you’re interested in Asteroids. I’m concerned about “Apophis”, also known as 2004MN4 coming close enough to hit a “gravity keyhole” on 13 April 2029.

Should this asteroid hit the “sweetspot” the chances of it actually coming back around and hitting the Earth a few years later increases drastically.

Listen to the podcast which they talk about how these things are discovered, the chances we’ll get hit and so forth. About 1/2 hour show.

Update: I have one small issue with this podcast and Dr. Pamela. She sounds smart, but she also states the following:

We recently had a scare with the asteroid Apophus. It’s not going to hit the Earth. It’s not going to hit us any time. So, we know that it’s not a worry, but we thought it was for a while. The Planetary Society put out this call for proposals on how could you go out and put a radio transponder on an asteroid so that we can track it and get accurate positions over time. One of the first steps to diverting an asteroid is actually just radio tagging it, like you might radio tag an endangered species, so we can keep track of it as it migrates through the solar system.

In particular, “It’s not going to hit us any time.”

That’s a definite statement of fact, coming from her. Unless she has extremely accurate course information on that particular asteroid, then she can not say this definitively. As a matter of fact, at this point no one can say for sure it will hit, or it won’t hit ever, just that it is highly unlikely to hit us on the dates we’re expecting it to come close. There is a possibility it will hit this gravity keyhole and then all bets are off, but. There is a HIGH probability it can hit us. 1-in-10,000 in 2039 if I understood what I was reading correctly. This is not something you can take and say, “No it won’t hit”. So, basically, I disagree with the Doctor on this one point.

My take on this whole thing is that this is a pretty big chunk of rock. It’s about 1050 feet across. That’s a pretty good sized rock.

According to the research I’ve done over the past few days, this asteroid was removed from being very high on the Torino scale around August 5th, 2006 (That’s my birthday, must have been a present, huh?) and is now considered a zero on the scale. As such, it is no threat. Fine and dandy, since I personally do not have enough data to calculate the orbit out several more years, I can only go by what NASA says. Here is their link if you need to see it yourselves.

Centauri Dreams » Blog Archive » Asteroid Deflection: The Nuclear Option

Well, I think we DO know the threat. And further we need to start looking at methods to divert asteroids, and not jump on the “anti-nuclear” bandwagon.

We’ve got to get this issue straightened out, because we still don’t know how much of a threat really exists from these objects. That makes the NEO hunt a key part of future space strategy. Schweickart discusses an infrared telescope in an inner-Solar System orbit as one way to get the job done, but read the rest of Boyle’s post for the details, and note the continuing analysis of 99942 Apophis, whose orbital wanderings may ratchet up public awareness of potential impactors once again.

Folks, nuclear is just ONE option. Not the ONLY option, but certain AN option we need to examine carefully.

Homepage blog: March 23: the apocalypse that never was
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There’s precious little time for infinite thoughts with no boundaries like these in chaotic modern life, so should we really be wasting time marking a day which was generally as unremarkable as any other – only distinguished from the blur of weeks, months and years by something that didn’t happen?

Well, this is, I suppose an OK attitude if life is really busy, keeping you stressed and you really don’t care much about asteroids.

Fact is, most people don’t care one way or the other, or they have the attitude of “well, it didn’t happen to me, it can’t happen to me, or I’ll wait until it happens to me to worry about it”.

I guess it really is too much to think about. Until you consider the fact that a very large asteroid hitting this planet will be nothing to sneeze about. We’re probably about due for a “big one” anyway, so why bother worrying?

I’ll tell you why. Somewhere out there is a great big piece of space debris, and it has our name on it, random or not it’s going to come careening into our vicinity soon enough and POW, right out of science fiction, this world will be plunged into a dangerous death spiral because the various species on this planet will begin to die off.

No, honestly, we DO need to worry about to the extent that we all are writing Congress and the President and whomever else will listen to get OUR government awake and paying attention.

No, really, we DO need to worry about it to get a greater understand among the population of what the exact probabilities of death and destruction can come from such a rock.

Yes, REALLY we do. But, we don’t have to devote each and every minute of every day “worrying” about 2029 right now. But really, we should be concerned, but perhaps not enough to remember “the last time it missed us”.

cbs13.com - Scientists: Massive Meteorite Found Near Stockton

Yet another meteor impact crater discovered. Excerpt from the article follows:

“Scientist believe the meteorite is buried nearly a mile beneath farmland. Three dimensional images show the circular crater created by the rock are estimated to be three miles wide. They say that this event occurred over 50 million years ago. “

Also, they state:

“The impact would have been as powerful as 100,000 atomic bomb blasts and would have been seen and heard for hundreds of miles.”

Essentially, they are talking about 100,000 Hiroshima sized bombs, added together. I say this because most such impacts and statements are measured against the Hiroshima bomb, which was roughly 10 kilotons in size.

The world has been struck many, many times before and we’re just really starting to dig deep enough to discover these sites. Check one of my articles, called Circumstances Beyond Our Control for some information on this.

Independent Analysis of Alternatives To Divert a NEO on a Likely Collision Course With Earth | SpaceRef - Space News as it Happens

The above asteroid related article takes into account nuclear weapons, along with gravity tractor and impactor options. THIS is the material that I mentioned a couple of days ago in relation to the kooky conspiracy fellow that wants nukes simply banned I suppose.

Instead of examining the facts, that guy (see this for a re-read) who was commenting about a NYT article was saying that this was a government plot to advance the use of nukes in space, continue research on nukes, and even made mention that colorization of space was some kind of capitalist plot or something.

Some people just can’t actually READ the material before them without completely misinterpreting what they read, or making crap up. Read the above article to see what was actually considered and why it should be considered.

Rick