Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: blackhole on April 15, 2008, 10:26:57 pm
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A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.
Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.
NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.
The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.
Those satellites travel at 3.07 kilometres a second (1.9 miles), at up to 35,880 kilometres above earth -- and the Apophis asteroid will pass by earth at a distance of 32,500 kilometres.
If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.
Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.
The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.
The 13-year old made his discovery as part of a regional science competition for which he submitted a project entitled: "Apophis -- The Killer Astroid."
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Wonder what the odds are if you add in an estimate of all the additional junk that will be up there by 2029.
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There's such a thing as calculating probability to the point that it doesn't mean anything anymore
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Thank you Duetsches Wunderkind for making us realize we are now actually 100x more likely to be hit by a killer asteroid. :blah:
Not that it's that likely even at 1 in 450, but still...
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i still think we should try to capture it :D
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Thank you Duetsches Wunderkind for making us realize we are now actually 100x more likely to be hit by a killer asteroid. :blah:
Not that it's that likely even at 1 in 450, but still...
well getting pocket aces in texas holdem is 1 out of 220 and iv gotten em a LOT of times, so were ****ed.
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Epic fail sir.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_denial/
Widespread media reports claim that a German schoolboy has recalculated the likelihood of a deadly planet-smasher asteroid hitting the Earth, and found the catastrophe is enormously more likely than NASA thought. The boy's sums were said to have been checked by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and found to be correct.
There's only one problem with the story: the kid's sums are in fact wrong, NASA's are right, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different. An ESA spokesman in Germany told the Reg this morning: "A small boy did do these calculations, but he made a mistake... NASA's figures are correct."
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But!- but!- but!... the Internets said!.... :shaking: [/jibbering]
:rolleyes:
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Ah well nothing new, we are doing a fine job destroying this world our selfs, if the astreoid hits the us it will only finish the job that we have started.
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Ok, so now that the chances of Apophis hitting us are suddenly so much greater, why aren't we building some kind of super missile or something to take it out just in case it gets too close?
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Don't kid yourself, that ****s already up there ;)
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Because blowing it to bits this close to the planet may not help...and all those missiles would be very convinient to erase someone's country from the map - or to shoot their their nukes if they complain about it.
....beside sticking a solarsail on a comet and capturing it over a couple of decades would be a lot more economic and would grant us some much needed orbital mass to play around.
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We already have thousands of missiles that can "erase other countries from the map", but we have none IIRC that can intercept an asteroid.
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....beside sticking a solarsail on a comet and capturing it over a couple of decades would be a lot more economic and would grant us some much needed orbital mass to play around.
I've seen MAximum Overdrive.................
No way i want earth caught in a persistent comet tail.
On the plus side, MT could still be released before it hits, ;7
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So does this mean that the Elite 4 release date changes from "Before doomsday" to "Before Apobhis hits"?
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If command gives the go-ahead, I'll move the Galatea into Sol
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Good luck................
*CD is confused, either
A- he believes it's really out there,
or
B- he wishes it really was.......*
I need to get out more.....
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Obviously, they're covering up their admission of error. :p
Time to short iridium futures!
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(http://i25.tinypic.com/2hem5mu.jpg)
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Fatality.
Turambar WINS.
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"Apophis -- The Killer Astroid."
[/quote]
Eh?
There's time to destroy it or change its course. Where' the problem?
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Time and practicality are two separate things. We have time to do something about it, but it's not actually all that certain that anything we can do will have any real effect, even hitting it with nukes isn't a certain bet, we don't have the technology to do that using an Earth-Launch until it is dangerously close, and orbital launchers are still more part of the whole 'Star-Wars' thing than a viable concept.
I suspect we could take action against it, but that action will still be hit or miss, we'd do better, to be honest, looking at something like a coilgun or particle accelerator of some description, you can launch from much further away, giving you a few goes at hitting it.
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Apparently even the slightest nudge (in relative terms) would be enough to move this asteroid off course and away from us. If it proves to be a problem I'm sure we'll be able to deal with it.
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Apparently even the slightest nudge (in relative terms) would be enough to move this asteroid off course and away from us. If it proves to be a problem I'm sure we'll be able to deal with it.
Exactly, so why aren't we doing that?
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the thing is going to pass really close to geosync orbit. if we capture it, it would give us something to build that space elevator thing off of.
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If it goes geo-sync, chances are it will be mined for iridium, I would have thought.
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the thing is going to pass really close to geosync orbit. if we capture it, it would give us something to build that space elevator thing off of.
And just how do you expect to not only stop something with a mass roughly that of the Hoover Dam and moving at over 30 kilometres a second, but guide it into a stable orbit without losing it or raising the chance of an impact event?
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I think the governmental reasoning behind the lack of action is as follows:
a) If we have weapons in orbit, we don't want the other guys finding out.
b) If we don't have weapons in orbit, we don't want the others guys putting some up there
c) It's very expensive to put a weapon in orbit, we can wait for the other guy to do it and then raise hell about it afterwards.
d) The longer we leave it, the more grateful everyone will be when we save them.
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UPDATE: turns out the boy's correction was wrong, NASA was right.
So much for that.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_denial/
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So at this point it will make a very near pass and likely not cause any immediate issues. I imagine that Apophis will be watched closely and if any refined calculations put the likelyhood in a more dangerous spot then something will be done.
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the thing is going to pass really close to geosync orbit. if we capture it, it would give us something to build that space elevator thing off of.
And just how do you expect to not only stop something with a mass roughly that of the Hoover Dam and moving at over 30 kilometres a second, but guide it into a stable orbit without losing it or raising the chance of an impact event?
its not like you have to launch the thing, just slow it down to geosync velocity. its not like we need to catch it the first time, its supposed to come back. as for how, a little thing called aerobraking. :nervous:
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the thing is going to pass really close to geosync orbit. if we capture it, it would give us something to build that space elevator thing off of.
And just how do you expect to not only stop something with a mass roughly that of the Hoover Dam and moving at over 30 kilometres a second, but guide it into a stable orbit without losing it or raising the chance of an impact event?
its not like you have to launch the thing, just slow it down to geosync velocity. its not like we need to catch it the first time, its supposed to come back. as for how, a little thing called aerobraking. :nervous:
I'm pretty sure the risk/benefit analysis doesn't support that option.
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UPDATE: turns out the boy's correction was wrong, NASA was right.
So much for that.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_denial/
Lies. Why would NASA say he was right and then wrong again? somthing smells fishy >_>. I mean, they even claimed they never said differantly, which, of course, they did...
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UPDATE: turns out the boy's correction was wrong, NASA was right.
So much for that.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_denial/
Lies. Why would NASA say he was right and then wrong again? somthing smells fishy >_>. I mean, they even claimed they never said differantly, which, of course, they did...
There's only one problem with the story: the kid's sums are in fact wrong, NASA's are right, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different
]
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UPDATE: turns out the boy's correction was wrong, NASA was right.
So much for that.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_denial/
Lies. Why would NASA say he was right and then wrong again? somthing smells fishy >_>. I mean, they even claimed they never said differantly, which, of course, they did...
There's only one problem with the story: the kid's sums are in fact wrong, NASA's are right, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different
]
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i still think we should try to capture it :D
haha nice Nuke :p
reading through this thread, there are so many 'gold' comments. i love it. bookmarked! :D
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I say what NEEDS to be done is for the government to put more funding into projects to help find the rest of the 'roids out there that can potentially hit us. As of last year we've found about 60% of NEO's larger than 1km, and a whopping 4 or 5% of NEO's larger than 140 meters.
A chunk of rock 140 meters wide hitting at ~20km/s can wipe out an entire city, so that's a bit worrisome. Unless we find and track more of them then odds are we won't even catch the one that hits us. :blah:
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jesus.....NEVER BELIEVE THE GERMAN "BILD"-"news"paper......
it´s like any other crappy tabloid press....
problem is, that it is common practice to copy articles from an agency and use them in their own newspaper. so it can happen, that a lie from BILD makes it into quick messages in normaly good newspapers....
but here a very good german article about this whole accident:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/weltall/0,1518,547965,00.html
here is the balbefish translation (very bad):
http://world.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fwissenschaft%2Fweltall%2F0%2C1518%2C547965%2C00.html
main problem of the BILD is, that thy interview professionals but the quotes are then cutted and/or put in wrong connection the to text in order to guide the reader to false conclusions....
main thing for them is to have a big headline! nothing more! i even don´t belive the date, printed in the bild.....
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A chunk of rock 140 meters wide hitting at ~20km/s can wipe out an entire city, so that's a bit worrisome. Unless we find and track more of them then odds are we won't even catch the one that hits us. :blah:
A chunk of iron 10m wide can wipe out a city. And given how we could stop those now it makes not putting something in place to deal with it stupid.
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A very small object hitting a space station at high speed can cause immense damage, too.
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A chunk of rock 140 meters wide hitting at ~20km/s can wipe out an entire city, so that's a bit worrisome. Unless we find and track more of them then odds are we won't even catch the one that hits us. :blah:
A chunk of iron 10m wide can wipe out a city. And given how we could stop those now it makes not putting something in place to deal with it stupid.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying we shouldn't pay attention to the smaller sized objects, or how to protect ourselves from them. I'm saying that we should broaden our scopes so we'd be less likely to be caught unawares by something really devestating. :)
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We should stock up on nukes, just to be safe.
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what? oh ok il put some ragnaroks in orbit, just don't piss me off too much :D
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what? oh ok il put some ragnaroks in orbit, just don't piss me off too much :D
Me wants a Charlie. :(