Earth's final minutes in the year 2029

[Johnnie]

Granted, I'll be 60 something when this comes to pass, but I will leave up to young "whipper snappers" to get us out of this one:

https://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html

 

[r1dermon]

no worries. i've actually been looking for it on my meade, but i can't find it. i heard about this a while ago and i was immediately super interested. i have yet to catch a glimpse through the viewfinder though. its not as easy as it would seem to get a shot of an asteroid with a conventional telescope. heh. i need to invest in one of those electronic ones that find the stuff for you.

 

[arthur dent]

Dont worry .... Bruce Willis will save us all

 

[r1dermon]

thats true too. lol.

 

[Johnnie]

Dont worry .... Bruce Willis will save us all

The Fifth Element!!!

 

[Thrasher]

Bruce didn't destroy the asteroid thingy on the Fifth Element, the Fifth Element (girl) did. Bruce did destroy the asteroid in Armageddon (with a little help from the nukes). Either way, he'll be too old to save us.

 

[GL-P]

Ah well, it's been nice knowing y'all

j/k

The last time there was a NEA, they saw it 2 days after it passed.

At least now they can track it early on.

Am I worried?

No! Plenty of time to get arrested before the end of the world

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by Johnnierkt
Granted, I'll be 60 something when this comes to pass, but I will leave up to young "whipper snappers" to get us out of this one:

https://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html

There's no feasible way to stop it at the last minute. 25 years isn't a lot of time to change a trajectory, and we don't have a program to do so if we wanted to. That's take part of it.

But hey, why point fingers and place blame? The first thing we'll probably know about the one that gets us will be the shock wave when it hits the upper atmosphere, 5 seconds before impact.

 

[Missileman]

I think if all rocketeers got together in one place and everyone launch a Super Big Bertha all at the same time we can push the Earth out of the way.

 

[r1dermon]

HAHAHAHA. that was good. ohhh man, can't complain with a little comic relief. its only a 1/4 mile in diameter. so thats not too bad...i'd be more worried if we actually DID shoot at it and broke it into a thousand pieces all the size of houses. heh. because that would be like an astroidal buckshot to the earth...

 

[Karl]

Or if we all launched are entire fleets on the biggest motor they can take, maybe we can change the Asteroids trajectory

Karl

 

[Johnnie]

Bruce didn't destroy the asteroid thingy on the Fifth Element, the Fifth Element (girl) did. Bruce did destroy the asteroid in Armageddon (with a little help from the nukes). Either way, he'll be too old to save us.

Now Thasher,

I know my movies...I know Bruce destroyed the Asteroid in Armageddon...But he helped save the 5th Element in "The 5TH Element"...a much better movie in my opinion...and the "girl" was way better actor than the Asteroid...nicer looking too

...and we are still gonna get it in the year 2029...

 

[DynaSoar]

Updates and very cool Java based sim available at:
https://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db?name=2004+MN4

Now 4 on the Torino scale (was the object first to reach 2).
Chance of impact on 13 April 2029 2.2% (was originally 0.3%).
It's smaller than they though. Power of impact now estmated as 1400 megatons.

For comparison, here's a few documented historical explosions so you can see what they did:
1 Mount St. Helens = 25 megatons
1 Tunguska = 40 megatons
1 Krakatoa = 150 megatons

At 50 miles radius, anyone indoors is probably safe.
At 100 miles, outdoors is probably safe if you don't mind getting pelted by 1/4" rocks.

Climate change though, that's different. 1816, "The year without a summer" is though to have happened due to 5 "major" volcanic eruption between 1811 and 1815, primarily Mt. Tambora in 1815. It threw 6 times as much ejecta as Krakatoa. With 2004MN4 it depends on what it hits, not so much what it's made of. Unless it happens to be, say, cyanide ice from the rings of Saturn.

A week ago we were missed by less than 25,000 miles.
2004YD5 was luckily only about 5 meters in diameter.

Chicken Little was right.

 

[scottrc]

Look on the bright side, it might solve our Global Warming problem.

 

[hokkyokusei]

Originally posted by DynaSoar

Chance of impact on 13 April 2029 2.2% (was originally 0.3%).

2.7% chance now.

 

[bjmcder]

Personally, I hope it hits us. I would go further to say that I would want it to hit somewhere close enough to civilization to be effective, but remote enough to be safe (like a desert, not the middle of the Pacific). It would certainly make for some awesome photos, videos and scientific data. More importantly though, it would wake people up to the fact that our Earth is not invulnerable and that space travel and colonization is essential to our long term survival.

 

[GL-P]

Better than nuclear armageddon IMHO. At least we can say that it wasn't us who did us in.

Problem with it hitting the Earth anywhere would be the tsunamis. Imagine something much more powerful than the recent earthquakes. It could wipe out the US eastern seaboard.

Wonder if this will bring aboard new interest in astronomy?

On a positive note, they've had trouble tracking this thing so with more data from more telescopes, they hopefully could rule it out.

 

[r1dermon]

to an extent....i think there'd be enough coverage of it anyway...but i dont wish it hits the earth...the aftermath would be worse than the impact itself...especially if it hits somewhere like say...new york city....LA, hong kong...etc...if it slams the ocean, then we've got gigantic waves in all directions which would whipe out entire coastal regions....it would be a devastating thing to occur.

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by bjmcder
Personally, I hope it hits us. I would go further to say that I would want it to hit somewhere close enough to civilization to be effective, but remote enough to be safe (like a desert, but not the middle of the Pacific). It would certainly make for some awesome photos, videos and scientific data. More importantly though, it would wake people up to the fact that our Earth is not invulnerable and that space travel and colonization is essential to our long term survival.

It's a harsh way to make the point, but I can't say I disagree with you.

However, I hope instead they decide to use this opportunity to put together a program to deflect it. Even if it turns out it was going to miss, it's close enough to be a reason and opportunity. It's far enough out now that a deflection of a fraction of an arcsecond could work. All the good ideas don't mean a thing if they're not prepared and tested. "If it's not tested, it doesn't work".

 

[r1dermon]

yeah, but a fraction of an arcsecond the other way and then it'll be 90% chance of hitting us in 15 years. lol.

get a gigantic ball of spider web(really strong, contrary to popular belief) and attach like 10 booster rockets at a million or so lbs of thrust a piece. then wrap it up like a web and shoot it off at jupiter. lol.

 

[bjmcder]

A 400m object would generate large tsunamis on a local scale. This means that an impact near a coastline would cause significant damage equatable to an earthquake-generated wave. Not nice, but managble in the long run. It has happened in the past. If it struck in the middle of the ocean, the wave would most likely dissapate considerably by the time it got to shore. World wide tsunamis would be generated by much larger impacts, with an object 1km or more in diameter.

An impact on the near side of the moon would be quite effective as well. I believe something like this actually happened many centuries ago.

I would worry more about the island of La Palma in the canaries. It sits upon an active volcano, and is on the verge of collapse. A long fissure divides the island in half, meaning that one whole side of the island will fall into the sea during a future eruption. When it does, the recoiling wave of water will have (by a conservative guess) an inital height of 600m (>1800 feet!). It will race across the atlantic, maintaining most of its energy and size, and will wreak havoc with every coastine in the ocean. Hope that you're more than 20 miles inland when it collapses. You'll have 8 hours warning time once it does.

And don't get me started on what sits underneath Yellowstone Park.

 

[DynaSoar]

Either NASA's database has been bombarded with hits and gone wonky, or they've just reduced the chance to 1.8e-5.

 

[bobkrech]

No hits, no runs, no errors. Safe at home.

https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6751433/

Bob Krech

 

[KermieD]

Originally posted by ScottRC
Look on the bright side, it might solve our Global Warming problem.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=151080#post151080

C'mere Scott......

 

[KermieD]

Originally posted by bjmcder
Personally, I hope it hits us. I would go further to say that I would want it to hit somewhere close enough to civilization to be effective, but remote enough to be safe (like a desert, not the middle of the Pacific). It would certainly make for some awesome photos, videos and scientific data. More importantly though, it would wake people up to the fact that our Earth is not invulnerable and that space travel and colonization is essential to our long term survival.

Not to start a flame war here, but where would you like it to hit close to civilization? I'm in the midwest, so if I vote Boston, does that offend you? If you vote Milwaukee, although I think that's an admirable target, I'm a little too close to it to hope it hits there. Disaster and loss of life are seldom worth the educational purposes they may serve. Hollywood has raised the public consciousness of a reasonable likelyhood of this sort of thing happening already.

 

[hokkyokusei]

Originally posted by DynaSoar
Either NASA's database has been bombarded with hits and gone wonky, or they've just reduced the chance to 1.8e-5.

Down to zero now.

 

[arthur dent]

Originally posted by KermieD
Hollywood has raised the public consciousness of a reasonable likelyhood of this sort of thing happening already.

Tell that to the dinosaurs

 

[KermieD]

They know too. Didn't you see The Land Before Time XXXIII where they took the pterodactyls up to stop the asteroid?

 

[bjmcder]

Not to start a flame war here, but where would you like it to hit close to civilization? I'm in the midwest, so if I vote Boston, does that offend you? If you vote Milwaukee, although I think that's an admirable target, I'm a little too close to it to hope it hits there. Disaster and loss of life are seldom worth the educational purposes they may serve. Hollywood has raised the public consciousness of a reasonable likelyhood of this sort of thing happening already.

I was thinking more like the middle of the Sahara desert, Siberia, or some other place on land where nobody lives, but still in an area where it would not go completely unnoticed. But its a rather moot point now, since the probability is now essentially zero.

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by hokkyokusei
Down to zero now.

I can't believe that. I think they're hiding something from us.

Someone sneak into the basement of the White House and see if President Morgan Freeman is hoarding Ensure.