hello everyone, I have a friend who was talking about the deep-impact mission being preparation for taking out a near earth asteroid (NEA). that got me thinking, and I recalled there was an asteroid passing earth around 2012 (if I remember correctly). last I heard I think they gave it like 1 in 40 odds of hitting (could be wrong about that, I am getting all of this from memory).

anyway, I was wondering whatever happened to that asteroid? have they figured out that it will miss? or is the jury still out?

any news would be a help.

No, it's going to hit us and we're all going to die.

*shouts* URI, get over here. /shout

when you post crap like that, it does not help anyone.

I repeat, does anyone have anymore information about that asteroid?

I don't remember the exact place, but somewhere at the NASA website there is a chart with all known most dangerous asteroids and the odds of them hitting the Earth.

http://space.about.com/cs/asteroids/a/2003qq47impacta.htm

I don't know of any asteroid menacing Earth in year 2012. 2003 QQ47 was a possible threat for year 2014, and was classified as 1 in the Torino scale, but as the link indicates, has been downgraded to 0

A more certain enemy could be 1950 DA, that could strike Earth in 2880 (I will be 904 years old then)
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/1950da/

Hum,
i prefer the close flyby on Friday 13th, April 2029 of <a href="http://www.geocities.com/douglasrana/2004mn4.htm">2004MN4</a>.

If the asteroid were to pass through a "keyhole" in an error ellipse just 640 meters across – about twice the diameter of the asteroid itself - the object would enter a trajectory that would result in a collision with the Earth on April 13, 2036...

If the orbit did coincide with the orbit of the Earth, then the speed and size would translate to an impact event of only about 1,400 megatons of energy.

Incidentally the asteroid has just been named <b>Apophis</b>, it had previously just been numbered 99942 (2004 mn4)
Apophis is the Greek name for the Egyptian god Apep.

It's traditional to name Aten-class asteroids after Egyptian gods.
One problem is that 2004MN4 will become an Apollo-class asteroid after the 2029 close approach, and Apollo-class asteroids have traditionally been named after Greek gods. So a Greek name for an Egyptian god was chosen.
Apophis is the god of evil and destruction, who was usually thwarted in his destructive efforts. ;)

Of course, for Apophis to be defeated, he usually required Set to be the one giving the beatdown. And Set is now working for the other team, so to speak. The good thing is that Apophis only cares about the sun, not the earth.

And this was a completely useless piece of mythological trivia.

I can now sleep though Clockwood ;)

December 21, 2012 is the end of the mayan calender...uh oh

On the US sit-com Third Rock From the Sun, about a bunch of aliens that move to Ohio, in one episode the high commander (human name-Dick Solomon) let's it slip that the Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid in 2015!

Hi all! It's my first post. Thought I'd try to keep it light to begin.

hello topcat, welcome to sciforums, whatever your view is, we will find someone to oppose it.

Yes, yes. We all worship Third Rock from the Sun and base our lives around it. It is the source of all knowledge, divine and otherwise.

December 21, 2012 is the end of the mayan calender...uh oh

Yes, it is a bit of a :eek: moment, isn't it--it's interesting how the Mayan calendar date seems to match in with the idea that an asteroid is going to smack into us--but if you look at any map of Earth-crossing asteroid paths, (which is very definitely :eek: material) you'll see that there are literally thousands of possibilities for a cataclysmic impact. I'm just amazed we've been lucky so far--that big impact in Siberia in 1908, for instance--if that had hit five hours later, the Earth would have turned enough for the rock to hit St. Petersburg. Now that would have had some very interesting effects on the subsequent history of Russia/Soviet Union.

The Mayan Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar are not the same. Is that date (21/12/2012) already converted to the calendar that we use?

To my understanding it has been converted.

Ok. Then we are doomed.

Yes, so eat all the carbs you want ;)

No, it's going to hit us and we're all going to die.

*shouts* URI, get over here. /shout

Will that be on a Friday or Sat.? I don't want it to mess-up a long weekend.

Okeydoke

Yes, so eat all the carbs you want ;)
I already do and I'm still skinny.
I'm blessed.
;) *throws hair behind*

I'm a guy, btw, and the above is just another one of my senseless jokes.

If this doom shit was to happen I would rather screw around... ;)

I'd suggest reading up on the 2012, because it doesn't exactly say it's the end of the world..... (serious face off).

hehe... I know. But everyone else think so, so I just make fun of it, ya know? ;)

dude i checked the statisicts on that astroid A. its the size of new york and B. its 100% impact risk were guna diejust face up 2 it sory

My idea is to send a few large thermonuclear weapons to the asteroid. In theory they will detonate a few thousand feet before reaching the asteroid.

The chances of an asteroid hitting earth is like trying to split an arrow with another arrow, from 300 meters (assuming your strong enough).

But the asteroid has a very small window to hit the earth, too fast and itll pass by, too slow, itll still pass by. So if you detonate some nukes the idea is that the shock waves would significantly slow down the asteroid to the point where it misses that window.

My idea is to send a few large thermonuclear weapons to the asteroid. In theory they will detonate a few thousand feet before reaching the asteroid.

The chances of an asteroid hitting earth is like trying to split an arrow with another arrow, from 300 meters (assuming your strong enough).

But the asteroid has a very small window to hit the earth, too fast and itll pass by, too slow, itll still pass by. So if you detonate some nukes the idea is that the shock waves would significantly slow down the asteroid to the point where it misses that window.

The main problem is any explosions in space require actually placing your own atmosphere there, That is the main reason why in one of the Hollywood films (Deep Impact?) the plotline puts men on the Meteor to drill holes to place charges into.

so we get a radiated asteroid hitting the Earth instead of a "clean" one...:eek:

iisnt this Y2K?

There is no asteroid expected to hit Earth in 2012. It is just a silly rumour.

First off that was from armageddon johny. Second of all, the asteroid would detonate about 1000 feet from the asteroid slowing it down, the shockwave does not need an atmosphere to detonate. The shockwave would slow down the asteroid enough that the asteroid would be moving slowly enough that it would miss its window of opportunity and fly past earth.

And Johny, irradiated or not the asteroid would still kill on an immense scale.

I've seen an animated chart that planed an orbital tracked to come within
.017 au (1,632,000) we have had many closer neos in just the past ten years.
Fortunately or not so fortunate there are a multitude of reasons for these to change there orbital track, some of these include solar winds, collisions (common), changes in gravitation forces all can have have an effect on these neos.
If you insist on nightmares then you may want to consider the fact that global warming is real, we do affect it as much as a flyspeck in the pepper,
or you may want to consider solar flares, we won't even see them coming, and if you really want to think about something that has a chance of happening you may want to consider global thermal nuclear war, chemical or biological act of terrorism or war, biologics such as a mutating virus, just think if aids ever became airborne which is not likely in the next hundred years or so but who knows.
Sleep well tonight in the knowledge that there are many more real threats to civilization than neos, solar flares, and other extraterrestial force, we are granted our lives here on a razors edge so enjoy every day of it.

My idea is to send a few large thermonuclear weapons to the asteroid. In theory they will detonate a few thousand feet before reaching the asteroid.

The chances of an asteroid hitting earth is like trying to split an arrow with another arrow, from 300 meters (assuming your strong enough).

But the asteroid has a very small window to hit the earth, too fast and itll pass by, too slow, itll still pass by. So if you detonate some nukes the idea is that the shock waves would significantly slow down the asteroid to the point where it misses that window.

Here's the problem with slowing down the asteroid vs. deflecting its path to one side. Its called the "impact parameter". Essentially, the impact parameter causes the Earth to present a slightly larger target than its mere size. This is because Earth's gravity can deflect the path of the asteroid from a near miss to a hit.

One of the factors that determines the size of the impact parameter is the relative velocity of the Earth and asteroid. The higher the relative velocity, the smaller the target the Earth makes. (higher velocity means less time for the Earth's gravity to do its Juju.)

So slowing the asteroid will increase the size of the impact parameter, making the Earth a larger target. This will nullify, in part, what you are trying to achieve (I'll have to do the math to determine just how much a nullifying effect there is).

I believe the object you are talking about is Eros.

The forums won't allow me to post links, but if you goto wikipedia and search for
433 Eros it will be the first link.

There is no asteroid expected to hit Earth in 2012. It is just a silly rumour.

Uh-uh! I know its true because I read all about it in the internet. :p

Eros will hit earth, 'cause some greedy asshole will drag it here.

“We say that the odds of the asteroid hitting our world are one million to one.” [Perry A. Gerakines /Scientific American, 2004].

Ok, but what do we know?

“No human in the past 1,000 years is known to have been killed by a meteorite or by the effects of one impacting. (There are ancient Chinese records of such deaths.) An individual's chance of being killed by a meteorite is ridiculously small as compared to death by lightning, volcanism, earthquake, or hurricane, to say nothing of the multitude of human-aided events. That small probability was unlikely to have been any consolation to the dinosaurs, however. For this reason astronomers today are conducting ever-increasing searches for all of the larger asteroids that could become dangerous. Once discovered, with a few years of warning, there is every reason to believe that a space mission could be mounted "to shove them aside." [Text by Ray L. Newburn, Jr.]

We also know that planet Jupiter had a big hit in July 1994, and the impact was being watched by astronomers on earth. Footages can be found on internet: It was as big as the size of our own planet. Although famous“Jupiter catches them all” acceptance is still in the air, in reality, we do not know every single one of them orbiting and changing each others' velocity or direction.

For this ignorance, when any possible impact date/or year is declared, the prediction is bound to remain as a mere fortune telling: Because we do not have this technology yet. You must have been cracked the whole chaos of the cosmos -or at least solar system’s dynamics and elements-; while your actual super/hyper computer power can not even make a sensible weather predictions. "Being able to guess weather conditions accurately more than three days" is currently considered the Holy grail of human disciplines of mathematics, space/satellite engineering, and computing areas, when they are all put together. Imagine if they were able to say: “Hey, people of New Orleans, our engineering can not save you, but we know that a hurricane will hit in one week”. But they can not. How on earth can you give us an exact date in astronomic scale for unpredictable but guessable objects? Depending on what it is predicted that the year is 2012?

I believe most of us here were not born yet, but I vaguely remember that it was around year 2000 A.D., they tried to make us to believe "the Jesus Christ resurrection" story; even science people scared us with Y2k computer doom scenarios; they didn’t work. (Actually, they worked until year 2000). Then we survived. Now they are trying to entertain us with ancient Mayan or Aztec stories. This time "I want evidence !" (If I see the panic in the streets that would be enough). What is going to be next, let us say, if we watch the 2012 Olympics and nothing happens later? Do you want to really know: Check out the internet, there are shit loads of them: “Zero Chance Of Asteroid Hitting Earth In 2029 Says Russian Astronomer” [Space Daily]. Oh, Piss off! How do you know? Probably some "special friends" told them: "Russian Scientist: UFO Crashed Into Meteorite to Save Earth" [Foxnews.com].

When we put a bridle on gravity and other forces of the universe, or using subatomic environment to make our calculations as well as exist independent from organisms and restricted materials, maybe being able to either chase any asteroids or put and antimatter or any kind of impenetrable shield around the earth, manipulating not only matter but even dark matter so precisely like today we can do with waves and electricity, probably being able to manipulate some or all of these environment with more other possibilities that we can not even guess now... That day we will need neither the pity of Gods nor the chances of the nature. We will not listen to the mystic; we will write the future down and bring the order over chaos of unknown, then Level 2. Like Civilization game, but bit more advanced…

The question is, are we lucky enough to be there? It was nice to speculate…