I’d be interested to see if they can capture it, rather than deflect the asteroid. We need to work on space-based manufacturing anyway, and it’d be convenient if we could get this thing parked at a Lagrange point for research and practice.
Xcom programmers say the asteroid has a roughly 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in 2032.
So it’s a sure thing!
Finally, some good news in the current media cycle
Can it direct the asteroid to mar a Lago?
DC, please. Move all the good museums and historical stuff first, but don’t tell the administration.
I don’t believe it is a possible target given how the orbital disk of the asteroid intersects with the surface of the earth. That’s of we don’t change the orbit, if we decide that is necessary, we’ll probably try to get a complete miss instead of just changing the impact site.
DON’T LOOK UP
Or at the people forcing politics into every-single-discussion.
Unfortunately in a worst case scenario this gets very political, if we do something about it in advance an impactor probe should do the job, if we decide to play the 1/50 odds and lose then the most effective short notice method is a nuke. Not a direct strike but a near detonation which vaporizes a section of the surface of the object with the outgoing plasma effectively functioning as a massive thruster. Actually doing this is not trivial but not hard either (from an engineering standpoint), the tricky part would be actually managing to launch it without every nation on earth that happens to have a beligerant leader saber rattling and stone walling the prospect of a launch until its too late even for a nuke to do any good.
Ikr, I have a bunch of terms on my filter list but then its in the comments anyway
I have separate filter lists for both, posts and comments but I need to keep adding new ones every day. I guess “Mar a lago” is the one I’m adding today.
the correct name is Mar-a-Lago, make sure to include that one, too!
I’m talking about it right now in this reply but not giving you any keywords. Muhaha.
Ok, whatever dude.
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The way things are going down here I’m cheering for the asteroid tbh.
Even if it’s at the top end of the predicted range, an impact would be ~40MT equivalent. Enough to level a city, but not an extinction event by any means; plus the likely impact path is across central America, the Atlantic, central Africa and north India - not really regions that have the resources to respond to a threat like this. Personally I’m hoping it misses, because I don’t see the counties that could do something about it stepping up right now, so you’d be looking at maybe 100 million people displaced from their homes and an insurmountable humanitarian crisis
Personally I’m hoping it misses
In midst of all this funnymaking, I’d like to point out for the record that anybody who genuinely wants it to hit Earth is fucking insane. Some combination of sociopath and psychopath.
The only scenario in which I would really want it to hit would be if it would lead to moderate global cooling without hitting populated areas. If it can dislodge enough particulates over one of the poles to block out some sun and give us a couple of years of reprieve from global warming, without actually killing anyone or destroying much wildlife, that would be nice.
It would be an ice agea where crops fail, people starve and we go back to business as usual.
Most countries on Earth would treat this as a global catastrophe and put up funds regardless of where it’s projected to impact.
Maybe not the current US, though.
Even if it misses, it has a chance to come back every 4 years
Probably not every 4 years. After 2032, Earth will not be near the intersection point of the two orbits for a while. It might be decades before it’s even close.
So like American elections
Its not that catastrophic.
I’m Indian and I’m OK with this hitting North India lol
Or Pakistan
Either is fine.
What happens if it crashes into Sahara? Do we get glass desert?
Eh calculated impact path ranges from south america through africa and india. None of these are where i want it to land.
Same here but I figure the rates are going to be really cheap so I can just use up my vacation days and travel to wherever it hits.
Came here to remark, “In hopes they can steer it at us?”
🤞
For those interested in how they come up with the impact probabilities and why it’s really important that JWST is looking at this, Scott Manley did a great video on this recently: https://youtu.be/Esk1hg2knno
Yeah, great video. Deflecting it seems surprisingly doable if the will is there.
I like how he brought up the fact that if we try and fail, then what? What happens if NASA bumps it just enough to push it from Africa to India?
Don’t look up
Cricket.
But we might be able to mine it for trillions. Think of all the cell phones we could make!
An impact from such a rock wouldn’t trigger a mass extinction like the much larger, dino-snuffing Chicxulub impactor did 66 million years ago. But an asteroid that size could wreak regional havoc similar to the Tunguska impactor that flattened some 80 million trees in the Siberian wilderness in 1908
Spoilers: it looks like a big rock
I got the image from James Webb early.
Spoiler
On screen. Magnify.
Enhance.
in 2032
Can someone tell it to hurry up already?
It makes a close pass in 2028, around the new year. Give it a wave and say hello.
Here’s my nominee to head up the “study”
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First reference to Bruce Willis.
https://www.nasa.gov/people/nasa-astronaut-deniz-burnham/
We don’t need Bruce Willis, we have Deniz Burnham.
Hey can this thing swing by and grab Apophis and hurry the fuck up?
Apophis missed the keyhole, so no chance of impact this century, sorry. It would be a much bigger event, too, about 10-30 times the energy.
But, this noise does remind me of 2004.
Huh didn’t think the keyhole event was til 2028 swingby. Neat. Wonder if Esa or Jacsa can get probes up in time for its next approach.
Yeah, I misspoke. I meant “will miss”, we’ve got enough observations that we know the “keyhole event” that was a possibility is no longer a possibility.
Fair. All jokes and nihilism aside. Someone should take advantage of the flyby to send something up to study it.
https://imgur.com/QvgHU1m
