Asteroid flies under satellites. Big asteroid 1/60 odds to hit 2029

[dr. klopek]

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The problem is, when you blow it up too close to the Earth, there's no reduction in total mass, but you increase the number of projectiles flying at us at unpredictable vectors.

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-Billy Bob Thornton, "Armageddon"

[A_C_Slater]

If it's only 2x as powerful impact as the bomb at Hiroshima then there's nothing to worry about. On a cosmic scale that is nothing. Only a very small fraction of the Earth's land mass has giant population areas. Back in about 1914 a asteroid that was about 20 atomic bombs landed in Siberia. Not one person was killed. I beleive that the ground shook throughout all of Asia.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

If it's only 2x as powerful impact as the bomb at Hiroshima then there's nothing to worry about. On a cosmic scale that is nothing.

On a cosmic scale, Earth is pretty irrelevant. However, if the thing shatters into, say 10 pieces, each will be 100x the size of either WWII bomb.

Only a very small fraction of the Earth's land mass has giant population areas.

A 150 megaton impact in 3 or 4 uninhabited places may well have some effect on the overall climate. Plus, the earth is about 2/3 water. A couple of big impacts there will certainly threaten a sizeable percentage of the populated areas. Maybe not as much as the potential collapse of that volcano in the Canaries (which is a much more real threat than this asteroid), but a real impact on life here never the less.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I was actually thinking of "Deep Impact." [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[wacki]

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If it's only 2x as powerful impact as the bomb at Hiroshima then there's nothing to worry about.

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The point I was making about that asteroid is that it had actually flown underneath satellites orbiting this earth before we even knew it existed. A large section of the sky isn't even being surveyed right now. Asteroid watching is a very neglected area right now, and the threats are very real.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ss_020319.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._020201-1.html

The 1,900 megaton asteroid is something to worry about.


Here is a neat little program to show effects of the asteroid on your location based on distance from ground zero.

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

[Scotch78]

That's just movie mumbo-jumbo to keep the plot intact. So long as the asteroid was fragmented before it entered our atmosphere, the risk of dangerous impacts would be severely reduced, and most likely completely eliminated. Wacki can probably explain it better than me, but the fragments would burn up at an exponentially higher rate than the original asteroid. The danger of exploding it too close to the Earth is releasing radioactive dust into the upper atmosphere where it will catch global wind currents and give us all leukemia.

Scott

[wacki]

It depends on the size and makeup of the asteroid. For the really big ones, this simply isn't the case. In fact, blowing up a big asteroid:

Many of the fragments would remain on a collision course and like the blast from a shotgun; the fragments can do up to ten times as much damage as the original, intact object.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...ng_000211.html

Here is some more info:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...on_000211.html


I think it is comical how we can be having these close calls and yet we don't even have a telescope in the southern hemisphere watching for asteroids. It's still nothing the average citizen should be worrying about, but it would be nice to see that somebody is properly keeping an eye on this stuff. This is currently not the case.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I was under the impression that the Soviet Union detonated multiple 50-100 megaton devices in the atmosphere. Given that, I don't see how 1900 megatons is so terrible. It's not like it would wipe out humanity.

[Scotch78]

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really big ones

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That means next to nothing to us common folk. Is 100m really big? 500m? 1km? About how big does an asteroid have to be to have enough mass left at impact to cause significant damage? And how much mass will an asteroid burn off passing throught he atmosphere?

Scott

[wacki]

Blowing something up almost always leaves behind significantly sized pieces. Explosives are a very poor mortar and pestle. The effects of the remaining chunks can be calculated with this program. It's a bit too complex for a simple answer.

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/


Here is some simulations from sandia national labs
http://www.sandia.gov/media/comethit.htm