February 2013...

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]E2012 DA14 Earth Impact Risk Summary. Check back daily for updates. This was discovered only ten days ago, so the chart will still change very rapidly.[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=+1]

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The 2013 impact has now been ruled out. As of today, this rates a -4.01 on the Palermo scale, 0 on the Torino scale, with an 2020 impact probability of 0.000012. More than 1200 known asteroids pose an Earth impact risk, and this is far from the most serious. A longer list is at Sentry Impact Risk.[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=+1]
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I'm relieved that we're still tracking them, and the budget hasn't been totally slashed. What to do about them is another matter, but at least we're a step ahead of the dinosaurs.

 

The observation span on this rock has now tripled to 30 days. Its position uncertainty, expressed as an ellipse on an earth target plane for February 16, 2020, has shrunk a bit, and the ellipse center has moved closer to earth. This doubles our risk of impact to a whooping 0.000024.

Due to the limited available observations, all optical (fairly accurate in two dimensions, but useless in the third dimension), the uncertainty ellipses are very elongated. For this event, the ellipse axes are about 0.6 mile in one direction, and 98,000,000 miles in the other. Some radar measurements to pin down that third dimension could drastically shorten that long axis.

Estimated impact energy is 2.4 megatons nuclear equivalent, which would take out a city, but have little overall impact on civilization. A quick skim finds a number of higher risk rocks in the 100 MT range, and a few in the 10,000+ MT range. But the list also goes down to rocks with a blast of less than a kiloton.

 

I snapped another shoelace this morning and just tossed it into the wastebin but with the right kind of effort we could construct a central snapped shoelace agglomeration facility and use the trillions of otherwise useless strands to build a net big enough to catch these extraterrestrial projectiles before they cause any damage, and at the same time avert the looming and still unrecognized crisis of snapped shoelaces clogging up landfills around the globe.

I just can't understand why a species with brains enough to think the "Twilight" series is entertaining hasn't thought of this already.

 

Oh those scientists... always trying to predict the end of the world.

 

My understanding is that the chances for 2020 depend greatly on the gravitational effect of the Earth as it passes by in 2013. Either way, the chances of a collision are small. We're far more likely to wipe ourselves out. And for any given individual, the chances of death by unrelated accident are millions of times greater than the chances that the asteroid will hit the Earth.

I am unafraid. I stand boldly in its path, take up my Kung Fu cat stance, point my finger at it, and tell it, "Bring it on! I'm not afraid of you, punk!"

Sooner or later, something's gonna hit. As Bob said, we're all gonna die, no matter what we do. It's just a question of when and how.

 

Nearly all of the cataloged asteroids posing a risk are in the same situation, with multiple close encounters and possible impact dates.

For this specific asteroid, I'd agree. But for all of them combined, including the bigger ones that would take out somewhere between a billion people and all the planet's people, the cumulative risk is considerably worse. All the estimates I see put the individual lifetime risk as greater than one part in a million, some placing as greater than 10 parts in a million. Some place it higher than the risk from lightning strikes, tornadoes, and earthquakes.

In theory, we can avert asteroid strikes. But the longer the lead time, the cheaper the solution, so cataloging them soon is important.

 

Impact scars are visible on most of our neighbours, and in fact an impact created our closest neighbour. We know the damage can be life-altering on a planetary scale, and we know more Earth impacts are inevitable. As you suggest, we may not know quite what to do about them yet, but ignoring the issue won't make it go away.

 

I agree that cataloguing the asteroids is a good idea. What I disagree with is the notion that the risk from asteroids is significant for any given individual, compared with all the other, more mundane risks involved with life: traffic accidents, disease, household accidents, being shot by a family member with the gun that was bought to "defend" the home from intruders, lightning strikes, dog bites, food contaminants, etc., etc., etc.

A lifetime risk of one in a million places it far below other risks for any given individual. What makes asteroid strikes worth dealing with is the number of people affected, not the risk for any given individual.

 

Gravitational forces on each other can be an issue of some sort.

Most people won't believe in it, however. Right?

 

The individual risk estimates I am seeing are placing death by asteroid on par with death by dog bite. The asteroid in the OP is a very tiny contributor, the larger but rarer continent destroyers are the bulk of the risk.

Prior to the current NEO search efforts, several estimates were placing the risk on par with lightning strikes.

 

The observation span is now 60 days. The target uncertainty ellipse axes for 2020 have shrunk to <0.4 miles by 36,000,000 miles. As it shrinks, we are now farther from the center point, reducing our risk be a factor of 10 from my previous post. The risks for some later dates 2026-2040 remain a bit higher.

Two new rocks have displaced this one at the top of the 'recently discovered' risk list.

A fireball exploded high over the Sierra Nevada range Sunday morning, roughly midway between Sacramento and Fresno. (Just east of Turlock Lake?) Estimates place its mass at 70 tons, with a blast equivalent to 3.8 kT, or one-third to one-fifth the size of the Hiroshima bomb. No damage reported on the ground so far.

 

Doesn't Bruce Willis have experience fixing these problems? Maybe we can ask him...

 

Didn't he need some Space Shuttles? With that program shut down, and no replacement, we are doomed.

 

Haha yeah we are all screwed.

Maybe we can have North Korea blow it up with one of their missiles, oh wait...

 

so wait...should I buy my PiP now or after Feb 2013? I want my federal tax credit before I die.