The latest asteroid to maybe hit Earth is going to be Asteroid 2003 QQ47. Right now they're putting the odds at 1 in 909,000 it'll hit the Earth. Every time this happens, there's a brief flurry of interest and then people forget about it again.

I wonder what kind of odds it'll take for people to get really interested in the threat of asteroids?

__________________
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

If only that were true though... alas, like comets, because the press don't accurately report these things and don't often bother with following anything up with less-than exciting stories, the belief that an asteroid will hit the Earth in X years time then continues to fester in the minds of certain individuals who then claim the government is censoring stories on the matter. Hence the lack of stories about said asteroid in the press.

As for me, I won't be cashing in my life insurance this time...

__________________
"The stars are my home"
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tanhauser Gate... all those moments will be lost, in time... like tears in the rain..."

2003 QQ47

Well It would be a great place to put 6 Concams at the + and - X,Y and Z co-ordinates

__________________
My Webpage

1 in 909,000. Only $1 would return $909000, if 2003 QQ47 did hit, wouldn't really want to spend the money though, money I would have made from so much loss, thats if I were alive to spend it...

__________________
MacTalk - The Australian Apple Community - iPod, iPhone and Mac.

we will never find out before it hits, even if we could see it comming, there is not much we could practically do, it will be very quick to evacuate areas, announcement could just create local, global, social and economical chaos.

imagine if an approaching asteroid was announced with rate chances 39/70 was announced and then skipped orbit by a tiny millimeter, avoiding earth by chance.
big mess

__________________
<span style='color:purple'><span style='font-family:Impact'>i dont know much </span></span>

Economically, emotionally, physically, religiously.

Total choas. Riots, people doing things they usually wouldn't, people preparing for armageddon. Would the world be the same afterwards?

__________________
MacTalk - The Australian Apple Community - iPod, iPhone and Mac.

On Aug. 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima with an estimated equivalent explosive force of 12,500 tons of TNT. This bomb killed in the region of 200,000 people and decimated the surrounding area.

In June 2002, scientists were caught unaware when an asteroid measuring about 300 ft across hurtled past Earth at a distance of only 75,000 mi—less than a third of the distance to the Moon. The asteroid, which was provisionally named 2002 MN, was only discovered three days after its closest approach. It is the sixth known asteroid to pass within the Moon's orbit.

Think about the above two paragraphs.

At about 7:17am on June 30th 1908 a meteor about 200 feet across travelling at a speed of about 10-20 miles per second entered the atmosphere above the Tunguska River region in Siberia. It produced a brilliant fireball in the sky that set the forest on fire and even burned the shirts off peoples backs. When it reached an altitude of about 5 miles it exploded into billions of smaller fragments that burned up in the atmosphere. This meteor exploded with the force of between 10 and 20 megatons of TNT. This is a blast about 1,000 times greater than that expereinced at Hiroshima. Trees burst into flame over an area of about 1,000 sqaure miles around the epicentre, people and houses many miles away were carried away in the blast wave, the jolt was measured on seisometers in Britain and the atmospheric shock wave circled the Earth twice before it was spent.

Can you imagine the devastation if the above meteor had exploded over a densley populated region of the planet ? Utter chaos would reign. Countries and governments would fall.

Now bear in mind that we have no way of tracking all the lumps of rock that hurtle about the Solar System, and certainly could not be expected to spot a lump about the size of that which exploded over Tunguska.

Now imagine that by some chance a lump of rock about 400ft across was spotted on a collision course with Earth. Chances are that we would not spot this rock more than a few days before impact. What would the government do ? Most governments would resist any idea that the rock would hit, they would expect the scientific community to produce absolute proof that it would impact before they would take any action. Unfortunately, the scietific community is such that for every scientist who agrees with a theory, you can usually find one who disagrees. Therfore you could never expect to convince a government in time to avoid disaster, especially as the government would probably not want to beleive it anyway, and would therfore be more likely to follow the advice of those who say it will miss. Even if the impact was plotted to be in an industrialised modern country, no government is about to evacuate an area the size of which would be required (several thousand square miles) in only a few days, even if they had the will to do so. One thing is certain. No government, on learning of the coming impact, would alert its population. Why ? Well think about it. No astronomer could give absolute proof that the meteor would strike, and certainly not calculate it's impact site to the level of acuracy required. No government is about to set terror among its populace without that proof. Even if the evacuation could take place, where would the probable hundreds of thoudands of people go ? Rioting and looting would sky rocket, the emergency services would be overwhelmed, the armed forces would be called in to keep the peace. Also, bear in mind that to most people the idea of being hit by a metoer is so fantastical that they would have great difficulty beleiving it, even if their government did tell them. Sadly, it is likely that even if a government did release the information, did mobilise all it's resources to evacuate the vast area required, that human nature is such that most people would not beleive it until it was too late to reach safe distance.
The other side of the coin is what would happen if a government did take action and the meteor then missed. During the process of evacuation it is inevitable that many millions, possibly billions, of pounds would need to be spent. There would be massive damage caused by the fires, vandalism, rioting, looting etc that would undoubtedly accompany a evacuation on the scale required. The final bill would likely run into trillions. That's without even considering the hundreds or thousands of deaths that would be caused by panic. No government is about to risk itself and it's population to this scale for what to many politicians would likely be thought of as a mere chance. The repercussions of such actions would bankrupt a country.

It's these smaller asteroids that hold a greater risk for mankind than the much talked about mega-impacts. The really big rocks we can probably see coming, it is very likely that a rock 1-2 miles wide would be spotted fairly early on by astronomers, especially the amateur ranks. Once it has been discovered anything that big would eventually reflect enough light to be impossible to keep secret. It's the small ones, for which at most we could expect only a few days notice, we could nothing about. It's likely that when the next Tunguska sized meteor hits, we wont know about it until it's too late.

__________________
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
Aristotle, Physics

Morpheus, my kind of extremist B)

Asteroid (2002 MN)

Nice rock, two possible points of collision, or a great place to lob a probe to extend Space Radar to direct a space tugboat.

We know we can land a probe,

and a radar.
And Spacedev is in the perfect position to do somthing like that with the NEAP mission, and carries an interesting story about a Lunar dish.

And Morpheus, your encourging words add impetus to doing something about it
The sooner the better!

__________________
My Webpage

How about we have a competition for this like we did for the chinese launch?? Will the asteroid hit, if so when and where is the point of impact? Winner doesn't die in the earthwide devestation.

__________________
1·618033988749894848204586834365638117720309179805 76286213544862270526046281890244970720720418939113 74

Yes...Josh's house...tomorrow evening

__________________
Climate Change Australia

Survival... that's a generous prize.

__________________
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

Extremely generous.

Morpheus, govenrments might not want to cause a panic, but they would want to go into a bunker to survive the blast. Maybe family, a few friends. They might not have anything to govern when they comeout, except their own survival in a bleak barren desert under the clouds of a nuclear winter.

If you evacuated all of Earth, where would you put all the people? 6 billion people to put into bunkers. You would have to do something like deep impact. You survive, you don't. But if it didn't hit then those who were picked to die, would not be pleased with their government. And extremely jealous with those who were picked to live. Not long before you get anarchy.

__________________
MacTalk - The Australian Apple Community - iPod, iPhone and Mac.

Whats wrong with anarchy ?

__________________
My Webpage

Ahhhhhhh bugger. And I just painted the lounge!

I'm betting on Kashi's piano .. wherever it is and it'll hit so hard that the keyboard cover will close on his fingers and that'll hurt LOTS! And when? Preferably in teh middle of a concert.

... most likely a concert at my house knowing my luck.


... and I'm all for anarchy .. so long as it's a controlled one. You need some good people in charge of a good anarchy.

__________________
1·618033988749894848204586834365638117720309179805 76286213544862270526046281890244970720720418939113 74

Morpheus, I agree that it is the small ones, but we haven't even spotted all the big near earth objects yet. We could probably stop it if we had enough time, and I am pretty sure we would try if we were certain it would hit. I think that we need to map out our close surroundings as much as we can, as quickly as possible.

Here is an article on an interesting project regarding defense against asteroids:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/te...tug_031015.html

Great article isn't it parker!

This sounds like a chat at cygo.com!

Are we going with an anarcho-syndictlist non heirarchical structure or more of a council communist approach? Or perhaps, with the flavour being liberal/republican at the moment, a libertarian lassia-faire freemarket capitalism model would slip past the Authorities at the moment?

When we get our Sh-t together, can we build somthing for Illapa or a co-orbital moon, sounds like a job for a faction of the TSA, and a global community of space enthusiusts to monitor data, perhaps in a SETI@HOME like work environment, do you reckon we could get $80 million dollars from concerned earthlings who want to know if the planet is about to be resurfaced?

__________________
My Webpage

Well anarchy will resemble Alice Springs, the Todd River to be precise on a warm evening - from Sept to May inclusive....bring on the asteroid (no one would notie it here)..... :P

__________________
Damien,
International Baccalaureate Physics teacher
Optics, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Instrumentation Major
Admin: Pacific Science and Art

n Dec 6th asteroid 2003 XJ7 passed within 0.4LD of the Earth....thats what www.spacweather.com says anyway

I want to know if QQ47 if close enough to earths atmopshere could remove earths atmosphere and effect gravity to where everyone on earth dies? singleman190@yahoo.com if you have a answer