Asteroid Collision in 2029 was ruled out

[backspace]

There's some confusion going on. From what I've gotten from MPC and MPML not all the data is in, JPL is using 2/3 of the data... more news tomorrow.

 

[alexblackwell]

Possibility of an Earth Impact in 2029 Ruled Out for Asteroid 2004 MN4

 

[tom_hobbes]

Phew, that wasn't a close shave. (Wipes brow.) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#339966"> I wish I could remember<br /> But my selective memory<br /> Won't let me</font><font size="2" color="#99cc00"> </font><font size="3" color="#339966"><font size="2">- </font></font><font size="1" color="#339966">Mark Oliver Everett</font></p><p> </p> </div>

 

[bobvanx]

Holy Crank, that thing is going to be very very close. Thanks for the link, Alex!<br /><br />We still ought to go prospecting on it.

 

[silylene old]

Phew ! that's close! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[dub_]

No it wasn't.

 

[astrophoto]

So how close IS it going to come? It looks well inside the orbit of the Moon.

 

[thalion]

This close an approach for an object so large is incredible; I'm sure it will be spectacular, especially if there are hordes of telescopes there to see. Imagine the possible science from such a close approach.

 

[Maddad]

A crude measurement of the larger picture shows the asteroid missing Earth at the closest by something like 40,000 kilometers, and at the most 100,000 kilometers. The Moon is about 380,000 kilometers away.

 

[mental_avenger]

<font color="yellow"> I could buy enough dried beans, rice, and vitamins to last 2 years with one paycheck, tomorrow, and just keep it till its needed.</font><br /><br />Apparently you haven't had a lot of experience with storing food for a long time. In addition, you are apparently unfamiliar with nutritional requirements. Saving enough food to survive on (and stay healthy) for two years is not that easy.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p style="margin-top:0in;margin-left:0in;margin-right:0in" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="2" color="#ff0000"><strong>Our Solar System must be passing through a Non Sequitur area of space.</strong></font></p> </div>

 

[mcbethcg]

I looked up dried beans, and how long you can store them. They can be stored up to a year, with no degradation. But how do they degrade after a year?Beyond a year, they lose moisture and need to be cooked longer to rehydrate. A tolerable problem. And if frozen, they can be stored indefinately.<br /><br />A lot of food labels indicate how long food is "good" for, but does not say how "bad" the food gets beyond that time.<br /><br />In addition- a person can survive a long long long time without meeting "proper"nutritional requirements. A person can certainly survive for 2 years on beans, rice and vitamins and minerals. Would they meet FDA guidelines? I dunno. Are FDA guidelines the minimal requirements to stay alive? Definitely not. <br /><br />There are times in our history when people have survived years and years without meeting FDA guidelines- it leads to vulnerability to disease, but can be survived. Certainly concentration camp survivors and survivors of famines in eithiopia never came close to "proper" diets.<br /><br />

 

[newtonian]

You all - well, that's good that the asteroid is not likely to hit. <br /><br />mooware - You posted<br /><br />It is interesting we have an object lesson on the dangers of a tsunami exactly when we see danger from an asteroid.<br /><br />Coincidence???? (I doubt it)<br /><br />How do you relate this as some kind of planned "lesson"?<br /><br />Certainly, this isn't the first Tsunami we've seen over the history of the planet.<br /><br />Seems rather brutish that some god feels that 21,000 people need to be murdered in order to teach us a lesson about asteroids.<br /><br />Just my opinion <br /><br />Mooware - It is not my opinion that God caused the tsunami. Sorry you got that impression.<br /><br />God does not cause the suffering we see on our planet. God is not fulfilling these prophecies, he merely foretold what would happen in general.<br />I like math, and it just seemed like too much of a coincidence mathematically that here I brought up the question of a tsunami that could be caused by this type of asteroid and then, boom, within one day we have a tsumami caused by an earthquake....!<br /><br />And also I cannot in good conscience keep silent about the warning I posted, anymore than a good seismologist would keep silent about the danger of an earthquake after noting certain identifying signs.<br /><br />You all - the other point being - why weren't people warned of that tsunami?<br /><br />And why did those who knew the signs fail to act accordingly?<br /><br />And will people now take more seriously the threat of a tsunami whether from meteor of earthquake?<br /><br />And, exactly how much worse would the tsunami caused by an asteroid of this size, if it hits an ocean, be than the one caused by the recent earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra? <br /><br />We should be prepared, shouldn't we, even though this one will likely miss?

 

[silylene old]

Real cool supercomputer simulation of a tsunami caused by an asteroid strike into an ocean.<br /><br />The water looks like it must be ejected 5+ miles high, especially the second "spire".<br /><br />http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/tsunami.mov <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[bobvanx]

At the Earth Impact Effects Program link, you can work it out that this asteroid would impact with about the force of a 6.0 on the Richter scale. So while they don't calculate tsunami effects, only ejecta, seismic equivalence, thermal radiation, blast wave, and noise, you can see that at a 6.0 it's unlikley to move enough water to generate much of a wave.<br /><br />If it fell within a few tens of miles of a shoreline, then the buildings along the coast will have been destroyed by the airblast already, so the wave that followed would just stir everything into a slurry.

 

[silylene old]

Here's a simulation of the impact of the asteroid Eltanin into Earth about 1.5M years ago (1 km diameter). The consequences are a lot worse than you may imagine:<br /><br />http://www.emerald.ucsc.edu/~ward/eltanin_small.mov<br /><br />and here is a good discussion of modelling an asteroid impact into the ocean:<br />http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/spacegd7.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[bobvanx]

Great links! From the Australian asteroid/tsunami page: "On this basis, for asteroids smaller than about 1km, the wave will dissipate considerably as it travels over thousands of kilometres of ocean"<br /><br />2004MN4 is guessed to be about 400m in diameter. The numerical modeling work indicates that at an average ocean depth of 4km, a rock must be more than 1km across in order to generate a tsunami. If 2004MN4 landed in the deep ocean, the splash will not be self-propagating. It has to land in less than 1500m of water (there's not much ocean that is this deep: continental shelves are a few hundred meters submerged) to generate a tsunami.<br /><br />So again, if it crashed near enough for you to see the fireball, then yes, there is a wave coming. But the blast from the overpressure and the searing temperatures have already destroyed your town, so the wave is going to be a mild after-effect.

 

[newtonian]

sillylene- 5 miles high?! Oh my, that would be much worse. Are you sure?<br /><br />I thought I was safe 343 feet up and some 100 miles north-northwest of Gulfport, Mississippi.<br /><br />5 miles high sounds like the type of wave that may have caused the buttes and movement of soil from the Black Hills to the Badlands in South Dakota - just a guess. [tangent: Flood]<br /><br />BTW - I couldn?t get the link to work - probably the problem is in my computer.<br /><br />Other posters consider the wave would be much less, to say the least.

 

[newtonian]

Bobvanx- OK, 6.0 is allot less than 9.0. I had heard only earthquakes over 7.0 will cause significant tsunamis.<br /><br />Must be in less that 1500 m of water. If I remember correctly, the water in the area of Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, etc., is not that deep. <br />

 

[avaunt]

Well, I can tell you this about storing food.<br /><br />If you get the right sort of lid, the thick plastic on the inner surface kind, Preserving Jars cooked in a pressure cooker, will preserve fish for 7 years. We cooked some Kahawai once, when we got a net full, and put 8 preserving jars in a cupboard. 7 christmases later, so more than 7 years, I ate two of the jars of fish. It was perfectly delicious, and I can't see how , inside a jar, its' nutritional value could have changed. <br /><br />The minerals are certainly in there, still. I understand that cooking destroys some of the vitamin content of foodstuffs, but read that it only decreases, doesn't go away completely. And rice, kept completely dry, will last perfectly well for decades.<br /><br />So you are right.

 

[qzzq]

Looks like we will not have to eat seven year old fish from jars any time soon...<img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />...CNN:<ul type="square">Asteroid Earth impact in 2029 ruled out<br /><br />PASADENA, California (AP) -- Additional observations have ruled out the chance that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029, NASA scientists said.<br /><br />Last week, asteroid 2004 MN4 had been given a small chance of impacting Earth, based on observations in June and again this month. Astronomers then began independent efforts to find earlier observations of the asteroid.<br /><br />The Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., found faint pictures of the asteroid in archival images dating to March 15, the Near Earth Object Program Office, located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement on its Web site this week.<br /><br />The pictures from March allowed scientists to refine the asteroid's projected trajectory, and "an Earth impact on 13 April 2029 can now be ruled out," the program office said.<br /><br />Scientists also ruled out an impact with the moon.<br /><br />Spacewatch is associated with the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Observatory.</ul> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p>***</p> </div>

 

[15203700700579]

A 1 in a 60 Chance!

 

[MeteorWayne]

Notice that information is over 3 years old. The Risk for Apophis is now a Torino scale 0, much lower at 2 in 100,000.<br /><br />There is an active Apophis thread here <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[tdamskov]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>sillylene- 5 miles high?! Oh my, that would be much worse. Are you sure? I thought I was safe 343 feet up and some 100 miles north-northwest of Gulfport, Mississippi. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />The 5 miles quoted would be the water thrown in the air immediately around the strike. In the simulation it appears coherent but in reality most of it would quickly vaporize and disperse into a very dense column of super heated steam and water droplets. Most of it would fall as rain. In the near vicinity of the strike the ocean itself rebounds from the sudden cavity and that's what causes the tsunami. Check out films of underwater nuclear detonations on Youtube to get an idea of the dynamics.<br /><br />In the papers cited earlier in the thread the Australians claim a 10 meter wave would penetrate inland about 1 km on coastal plains whereas a 100 meter wave would penetrate 22 km's. At your distance and altitude you would be safe from all except planet killer tsunamis (and then a 2 km wave would the least of your worries).

 

[silylene old]

The asteroid collision in 2029 was ruled out. But during the Christmas break 3 years ago, data showed that the risk of collision got as high as 1 in 40 !<br /><br />Yes, the waves would have been very destructive. The water column would be mostly vapor and splashback. Please look at the underwater tests of some of our biggest H-bombs in Bikini, and imagine something about 100 times worse. These tests did loft water miles high. The asteroid-tsunami would be tremendous. There are many interesting papers on this subject which google can access.<br /><br />I changed the thread title to prevent any more necro-posting.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

" changed the thread title to prevent any more necro-posting."<br /><br />Good job <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>