Hyperlink is self explanatory. It might all be over in 2029
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080415/sc_afp/spaceastronomygermany_080415214429
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080415/sc_afp/spaceastronomygermany_080415214429
IF the kids right, do you bother
- Thread starter Spectre
- Start date
If the kid is right, and if we are going to be hit by an asteroid, surely by then we would have the technology to do something about it. A small collision into it some years before would completely change the impact course.
Although it may not be the US or Russians that save the world, perhaps the Chinese. I would like to think a global effort.
See ya's.
Although it may not be the US or Russians that save the world, perhaps the Chinese. I would like to think a global effort.
See ya's.
Try this - they moved it - a cut and paste will teach them
http://au.news.yahoo.com/080416/21/16hjf.html
Wednesday April 16, 04:54 PM
Schoolboy debunks NASA estimate of asteroid threat
By Karen Barlow
The space boffins do not always get it right - a 13-year-old schoolboy has successfully challenged NASA, correcting the US space agency's calculations of a possible killer asteroid strike on the Earth in 30 years.
NASA had estimated there was a one in 45,000 chance that the asteroid Apophis will collide with the Earth.
But a young German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, corrected it to a one in 450 chance and therefore changed the date the asteroid might hit.
The work has impressed the head astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, Professor Fred Watson.
"That 13-year-old German schoolboy has done a marvellous job because it's one of those things that perhaps if you look back 100 years, people used logarithms for this process to work out asteroid orbits and hand-calculators and slide rules and things like that," he said.
"The process took days and days, but it says a lot for the world that we live in that now a 13-year-old schoolboy can download the right software to do the job and actually find out errors in NASA's work. It's quite extraordinary."
'Great brains'
Professor Watson says it proves even the great brains of NASA can get it wrong.
"Honestly, it's very hard to overstate just how good NASA is at this kind of thing, even though they sometimes get their imperial units and their metric units mixed up," he said.
"But it's very hard to think of everything and that's what has happened in this case.
"The schoolboy has thought of something that would actually elude most people, and that's the possibility of the asteroid Apophis when it makes its close path to the Earth, interacting with one of the Earth's geostationary satellites.
"These are our communication satellites which exist in many thousands in a band about 36,000 kilometres above the Earth's surface.
"That is something - once you see that it sticks out as plain as the nose on your face - but it's one of those things that you really have to think about."
Professor Watson says he suspects the only thing that would really make any difference would be a collision, because Apophis weighs infinitely more than a satellite.
"It's on a trajectory which has a speed rather greater than these satellites, so a collision could make a microscopic but nevertheless tangible change to its orbit," he said.
He says with this new calculation of a one in 450 chance of the asteroid hitting the Earth, the critical time is actually 2036, not 2029.
"2029 is when it makes a close approach and 2036 is when the big uncertainty is," he said.
"We don't know what the Earth's gravity will do until we pass the asteroid in 2029, in terms of where it will be a few years later."
http://au.news.yahoo.com/080416/21/16hjf.html
Wednesday April 16, 04:54 PM
Schoolboy debunks NASA estimate of asteroid threat
By Karen Barlow
The space boffins do not always get it right - a 13-year-old schoolboy has successfully challenged NASA, correcting the US space agency's calculations of a possible killer asteroid strike on the Earth in 30 years.
NASA had estimated there was a one in 45,000 chance that the asteroid Apophis will collide with the Earth.
But a young German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, corrected it to a one in 450 chance and therefore changed the date the asteroid might hit.
The work has impressed the head astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, Professor Fred Watson.
"That 13-year-old German schoolboy has done a marvellous job because it's one of those things that perhaps if you look back 100 years, people used logarithms for this process to work out asteroid orbits and hand-calculators and slide rules and things like that," he said.
"The process took days and days, but it says a lot for the world that we live in that now a 13-year-old schoolboy can download the right software to do the job and actually find out errors in NASA's work. It's quite extraordinary."
'Great brains'
Professor Watson says it proves even the great brains of NASA can get it wrong.
"Honestly, it's very hard to overstate just how good NASA is at this kind of thing, even though they sometimes get their imperial units and their metric units mixed up," he said.
"But it's very hard to think of everything and that's what has happened in this case.
"The schoolboy has thought of something that would actually elude most people, and that's the possibility of the asteroid Apophis when it makes its close path to the Earth, interacting with one of the Earth's geostationary satellites.
"These are our communication satellites which exist in many thousands in a band about 36,000 kilometres above the Earth's surface.
"That is something - once you see that it sticks out as plain as the nose on your face - but it's one of those things that you really have to think about."
Professor Watson says he suspects the only thing that would really make any difference would be a collision, because Apophis weighs infinitely more than a satellite.
"It's on a trajectory which has a speed rather greater than these satellites, so a collision could make a microscopic but nevertheless tangible change to its orbit," he said.
He says with this new calculation of a one in 450 chance of the asteroid hitting the Earth, the critical time is actually 2036, not 2029.
"2029 is when it makes a close approach and 2036 is when the big uncertainty is," he said.
"We don't know what the Earth's gravity will do until we pass the asteroid in 2029, in terms of where it will be a few years later."
good read! thanks.
Your a luna-tic
plus i'm pretty sure it's a tax haven.
