"According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, roughly 100 meters wide, and moving quickly along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers of Earth. That’s one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what [one scientist said was] 'uncomfortably close.' 'It snuck up on us pretty quickly,' said [another scientist] 'People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.'... Information about its size and path was announced just hours before it rocketed past Earth.... Asteroid 2019 OK is a sizable chunk of rock, but it’s nowhere near as big as the ones capable of causing an event like the dinosaurs’ extinction. More than 90 percent of those asteroids, which are 1 kilometer or larger, have already been identified by NASA and its partners. 'Nothing this size is easy to detect'... 'It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon' with enough force to destroy a city, he said. 'Many megatons, perhaps in the ballpark of 10 megatons of TNT, so something not to be messed with.'... The last space rock to strike Earth similar in size to Asteroid 2019 OK was more than a century ago.... That asteroid, known as the Tunguska event, caused an explosion that leveled 2,000 square kilometers of forest land in Siberia."
WaPo reports.
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Space rocks care not for our feelings. They are like insects that way.
"It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon with enough force to destroy a city"
Hmmm, now if, on the other hand, we could choose the city, well, then, maybe . . .
The probability goes down like the square of the miss distance. So you get lots of clickbait-sounding misses that are vastly more probable than a damaging hit.
Set up a decoy city on the moon.
We're ten million years overdue for a cataclysmic asteroid hit.
John and Ken on KFI (Los Angeles) "There's no way to speed that up, I suppose."
Lots of things with very low likelihood could do a lot of harm.
The question, as always, is whether there is any economical way to reduce the chances of the harm obtaining.
As of now the answer appears to be no.
So the lower cost option may be to diversify humanity's holdings and venture to new habitats.
Our risk is currently sub-optimal.
This astronomy.com article explains that asteroids are compared to explosions in Japan even though they usually land in Russia.
Godzilla movies are supposed to be about Hiroshima. If they take an asteroid hit too, a whole new genre of camp science fiction flicks may emerge.
No big deal. According to AOC, we have less than twelve years before our planet boils over...
More than 90 percent of those asteroids, which are 1 kilometer or larger, have already been identified by NASA and its partners.
Except for the ones that they don't know exist, like this one which came very close to us. They don't know what they don't know, yet they figure they've got 90% of them tracked.
Only takes 1.
"The Deadly Asteroid" is an episode of "The Godzilla Power Hour". It's about illegal aliens from Norway.
Finding all these potential mass killers and coming up with ways to push them away is what the government should be doing in space, not pointless TV spectacles like going to the moon again.
We did it once and, surprise!, there's nothing there. No air. No water. Okay, a lot of dangerous high frequency radiation (UV and beyond).
Now there is a reason to put a RADAR BASE on the moon!! Several bases to look for asteroids.
Time to go back to the Moon... Moon Zero Two here we come!
Its interesting that there is no recorded Tunguska-like event that affected any human civilization. This could mean that such events are quite rare on civilizational time scales or that human civilizations have been very small targets, so far.
Who would have known of a Tunguska scale explosion over the Southern Indian Ocean 2000 years ago? No-one likely to record it. A few thousand miles north and it could have flattened densely populated Ceylon (densely populated even 2000 years ago).
Temujin, 7:58:
You beat me to it. I read that and wondered how they - how anyone - can know that. And how the writer can repeat that claim in an article like this and not stop to say, Hey, wait a minute....
Beasts of England,
BBC now says the next 18 months will be crucial. Not that Armageddon is immediate after that, but that there's a growing [wait for it] consensus that if we don't follow their prescriptions within the next 18 months, we're pretty well fooked.
BBC now says the next 18 months will be crucial.
Trump is elected in 15 months, then has 3 months to get things done I guess.
It does seem like the Media is ginning up Climate Emergency as a means to take on Trump. CNN has a Climate Crisis Town Hall Democratic Candidate Thing coming up.
The Tunguska event itself might well have gone unremarked and unknown, had it not been for the fact that it happened when a civilized nation had established settlements and official outposts relatively close to an otherwise wilderness region.
A hundred years before, perhaps, there would have been nothing but a native tale.
Graham Hancock has been saying for over 20 years that something hit us and changed the course of history about 12,000 years ago -and now evidence is coming in that comet fragments hit the North American ice sheet around then - taking out all the megafauna in North America - leaving a layer of ash from worldwide fires - triggering a massive flood with the melting of the ice sheet - and obliterating info that might explain the megalithic sites around the planet that archeologists want us to believe were built by people just a couple of generations away from hunter gatherers. Wikipedia loves calling him a pseudo-scientist - but more and more its looking like he's right and the establishment types are the fools. As you might imagine, he talks a lot about how we need to be paying attention to this problem, especially the Taurid meteor stream.
Finding all these potential mass killers and coming up with ways to push them away is what the government should be doing in space
Since government's dragging their feet we should turn to the private sector for help. There were many highly skilled civilians working in this space in the late 1970s and 1980s. It would make sense to turn to them for assistance while those people are still with us. Absent that...
we can only hope to rely on the old tools to train some new specialists
Seems like we are hearing more and more stories about near-misses. The incident is clearly increasing. And it's clear that this increase is caused by human activity; for what else could it be?
If you had a base at a libration point like l5 you would get a better perspective. Otherwise you need to get harry stamper on the line (armageddon)
Well now, that explains why my pet dinosaurs were acting anxious.
"If you had a base at a libration point like l5 you would get a better perspective. Otherwise you need to get harry stamper on the line (armageddon)"
He's dead. A.J. Frost is the go-to guy now.
And it's clear that this increase is caused by human activity; for what else could it be?
CO2 is a relatively heavy gas, so more CO2 = more gravity, and gravity is an attractive nuisance.
'BBC now says the next 18 months will be crucial.'
Well dang it - and here I had just completed my twelve year plan for fun and frolic!
Saying “uncomfortably close” is click bait. Asteroids are like horseshoes and hand grenades, close doesn’t count.
I suppose it’s fine to track these things but what will be done if it is determined that me will strike the earth?
Well then you need nuclear missiles like in meteor (1979) to target the objects
One not me
Try to get Trump impeached before it strikes!
Except for the ones that they don't know exist, like this one which came very close to us. They don't know what they don't know, yet they figure they've got 90% of them tracked.
In fairness, they make that 90% claim based on an understanding of the amount of material we expect to be able to find. For obvious reasons, larger objects are easier to find than smaller objects. Since they've been scanning for several decades now, they assume that they've most likely found the lion share of the bigger NEOs. The one's we haven't yet seen probably have a very low albedo, or brightness (meaning the have surfaces that are probably very dark and not reflective). They feel they've got a pretty good idea of the ratio of dark objects to brighter objects and based on that they can make a rough guess of how many big monsters are lurking undiscovered in the dark.
Of course, they could very well be wrong in their assumptions. There could be some massive population of unreflective extinction-event-level rocks out there that we are currently unable to detect.
JPS said...
You beat me to it. I read that and wondered how they - how anyone - can know that. And how the writer can repeat that claim in an article like this and not stop to say, Hey, wait a minute....
They can't know precisely, but they can give a very good estimate. You know how good your telescopes are, so if you look in a certain area of the sky, and you don't see anything, then you know there is nothing there (above a certain size, within a certain distance). Do that year after year, and you can rule out more and more of the potential orbits that could intersect Earth's orbit.
Of course it is possible that there are a disproportionate number of such asteroids in the orbits we have not yet been able to check, but statistically that is very unlikely.
Isn't there an asteriod-searching space probe that they're putting up sun-side of the Earth? Reason being that from our vantage point on Earth it's hard for us to see things coming from the direction of the sun.
stevew said...
I suppose it’s fine to track these things but what will be done if it is determined that me will strike the earth?
The nice thing about detecting and tracking is that you find not only the ones that could hit you next week, it also the ones that might hit you 50 years from now.
If it is going to hit next week, enjoy the time you have left.
If it is going to hit in a few months, governments can stockpile supplies for a very small population to try to ride out the nuclear winter and reboot society.
If it is going to hit in fifty years, it would only take a small nudge to change it's orbit enough to turn that hit into a miss. Knowing about it early gives us the time to refine the technology needed and perform that nudge.
Oh, it got cancelled. Great.
Tell me Obama wasnr on the aliens side.
Ignorance is Bliss, 9:00 AM:
Thank you for that. At the risk of coming off as dense (it's not willful), I want to think some more about this:
"if you look in a certain area of the sky, and you don't see anything, then you know there is nothing there"
Asteroid 2019 OK is -
OK? Oh oh wait... damn I left my White Supremacy Codebook in the car again.
Lil help? The 2019 rally is in Asteroid, South Carolina this year? What?
consensus that if we don't follow their prescriptions within the next 18 months, we're pretty well fooked.
If only.
My computer model is better, it can even hindcast accurately. And it says:
1) their warnings will be ignored for 18 months
2) in 18 months they will tell us we only have 18 months.
leaving a layer of ash from worldwide fires - triggering a massive flood with the melting of the ice sheet -
My $0.02 about "climate Change"
Most of the world's industry is in the north.
Coal (and to a lesser extent, oil) puts soot into the air
The soot (ash) lands on the ice, which GREATLY INCREASES the solar absorption.
Most of the polar ice cap loss has been in the north not the south
How much of the 'warming' and how much of the ice loss is due to soot, not CO2?
I'd say; MOST if not ALL
""if you look in a certain area of the sky, and you don't see anything, then you know there is probably nothing there"
Happier, JPS?
"leaving a layer of ash from worldwide fires"
Huh? I know of no ash layer in the Wisconsin driftless area. 12,000 years ago is mighty recent. Where's the ash layer?
I picture Maxwell Smart staring at the NASA radar, then saying, "Missed us by THIS much!"
pious agnostic said, "Seems like we are hearing more and more stories about near-misses. The incident is clearly increasing. And it's clear that this increase is caused by human activity; for what else could it be?"
Yes, global warming! The asteroids are coming home to roost.
One of the advantages of old age is that global warming or asteroid crashes will not have a significant impact on my lifespan. I feel sorry for all those millions who will perish in an instant or die a little later in the food riots, but it's not my problem.....In my youth I spent a certain amount of time worrying about nuclear annihilation, so I'm going to take a pass on this apocalypse. But good luck everyone. It would be just so unfair if we got those CO2 emissions under control and then a meteor came along and wiped out life on earth, but what are you going to do.
Original Mike said...Huh? I know of no ash layer in the Wisconsin driftless area. 12,000 years ago is mighty recent. Where's the ash layer?
The impact hypothesis is contraversial. The Youner-Dryas definitely happened though, it's just scientists can't agree on what perpetuated it. Was it an impact event? Was it a volcano? Or was it a result of a massive influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic due to the melting of a gargantuan ice damn that held back the contents of the mega lake in Canada?
JPS said...
I want to think some more about this:
Nonapod's mention of albedo is an important addition to my size/distance caveat.
Fortunately we get to repeatedly test our assumptions. Anytime we detect something, we can ask ourselves, based on it's size, distance, and albedo, should we have detected it sooner? If so, we update our estimates as to how good we are at detecting things.
Note that my discussion is purely about how we could get a good estimate of how many we have not detected. I have no knowledge of how they actually came up with the 90% number. They may have pulled it out of their ass. Or they may have done a detailed calculation based on incorrect information. But I have no particular reason to doubt it. And, if anything, they have a financial incentive to underestimate the % detected. (More undetected means a need for a bigger budget...)
It was the RKO of asteroids!!
(Some May get this joke but not many)
For information as to the effects of a large, sub-extinction, impact please see the "The Fall" (Appendix One) of the novel THE PESHAWAR LANCERS (Stirling, S. M.).
Ignorance is Bliss, thanks again. Your points (and Nonapod's) are helpful, and I appreciate your patience.
Original Mike, 9:44: Oh, I'm happy anyway, thanks. My comments weren't meant as complaint or criticism; I was admitting ignorance more than anything. I took the "probably" as implied, but wanted to understand better what goes into that.
No worries, JPS. It's a good question.
Seems like we are hearing more and more stories about near-misses. The incident is clearly increasing.
Like everything else we have gotten better at detecting. The occurrence rate appears to go up but it could just be that our detection improved.
Its interesting that there is no recorded Tunguska-like event that affected any human civilization.
There's actually reasonable physical archeological evidence that a Tunguska-like air burst over the northeast corner of the Dead Sea wiped out a group of Bronze Age Middle Eastern cities roughly 3700 years ago.
As far as a lack of records, the archaeologists involved suggest the disaster was recorded, as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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