In light of what happened yesterday, this story is even more relevant now. It was written before the meteor event in Russia.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 makes its closest approach at 2:24 p.m. EST/1924 GMT today. One wonders if yesterday’s meteor in Russia wasn’t some parts of the asteroid fragmented in a deep space collision eons ago and in a similar trajectory hours ahead. It may also be simply coincidence. [UPDATE: NASA has issued a statement on this, see below.]
While politicians, their activist friends, and pundits caterwaul over a few tenths of a degree change in the global temperature over the last 100 years, with some Ehrlich-like nutballs even claiming it will cause extinction of humanity, today might be a good day to recognize a real extinction level challenge humanity faces.
A Warning From the Asteroid Hunters
The likelihood in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima A-bomb: 30%.
In the game of cosmic roulette that is our solar system, we just got lucky. Earth will get a very close shave on Friday, Feb. 15, when Asteroid DA14 passes just 17,000 miles from our planet. That is less than the distance from New York to Sydney and back, or the distance the Earth travels around the sun in 14 minutes. We are dodging a very large bullet.
The people of Earth also are getting a reminder that even in our modern society, our future is affected by the motion of astronomical bodies. The ancients were correct in their belief that the heavens affect life on Earth—just not in the way they imagined. Sometimes those heavenly bodies actually run into Earth. That is why we must make it our mission to find asteroids before they find us.
The last major asteroid impact on Earth was on June 30, 1908, when one about the size of an office building (140 feet across) slammed into Siberia with a destructive energy 700 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That asteroid devastated a region roughly the size of the San Francisco Bay area. Asteroid 2012 DA14, which will be passing over our heads on Friday, is about the same size as the asteroid that devastated Siberia’s Tunguska region. . . .
The chance of another Tunguska-size impact somewhere on Earth this century is about 30%. That isn’t the likelihood that you will be killed by an asteroid, but rather the odds that you will read a news headline about an asteroid impact of this size somewhere on Earth. Unfortunately, that headline could be about the destruction of a city, as opposed to an unpopulated region of Siberia. . . .
The chance in your lifetime of an even bigger asteroid impact on Earth—with explosive energy of 100 megatons of TNT—is about 1%. Such an impact would deliver many times the explosive energy of all the munitions used in World War II, including the atomic bombs.
Full story here at the WSJ.
Meanwhile, Barbara Boxer and friends want to create a tax to put billions into climate research while the asteroid program gets by on a shoestring. It only takes one asteroid to ruin your whole day, global warming, not so much.
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NASA’s Spaceweather.com website writes:
At 9:30 am on Friday, Feb. 15th, asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet’s surface. This will put it well inside the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, closer than any asteroid of the same size has come since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s. Researchers speculate that Earth’s gravity might even cause seismic activity on the 50m-wide space rock. Click to view a computer simulation of the flyby, courtesy of NASA:
During the hours around closest approach, the asteroid will brighten until it resembles a star of 8th magnitude. Theoretically, that’s an easy target for backyard telescopes. The problem is speed. The asteroid will be racing across the sky, moving almost a full degree (or twice the width of a full Moon) every minute. That’s going to be hard to track. Only the most experienced amateur astronomers are likely to succeed. For the rest of us, NASA will broadcast the asteroid’s flyby on NASA TV.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about the same size as previous asteroids responsible for the Meteor Crater in Arizona and the Tunguska Event in Siberia. Unlike those objects, however, 2012 DA14 will not hit Earth. Even if seismic activity breaks the asteroid apart, there is no danger; the fragments would continue along the same non-intersecting path as the original asteroid.
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UPDATE: (via NASA’s spaceweather.com)
It is natural to wonder if this event has any connection to today’s record-setting flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14. NASA has issued the following statement:
“The trajectory of the Russian meteorite was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object. Information is still being collected about the Russian meteorite and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14’s trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north.”
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There are now reports (nothing from a site I would deem reliable) that a meteor has also exploded above central Cuba.
In re comet versus asteroid. The difference between comet and asteroid is tail and composition. An asteroid can be a comet with its volatiles making the tail cooked off.
Risk analysis is impossibly difficult without experience, particularly experience of unique events. Sounds like an oxymoron to me, “experience of unique events.”
Hangtown Bob says: February 15, 2013 at 8:35 am “If DA14 will be passing earth from south to north, at what longitude will it be more or less overhead at its closest approach?”
Indonesia.
There more out there that we should be aware of like:
1999 RQ36 has the highest probability of impacting the Earth of any known Potentially Hazardous Asteroid,” according to a mission proposal submitted to NASA by the OSIRIS-Rex in 2009. [Infographic: How NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Works]
A recent calculation found that the asteroid has a 1-in-1,800 chance of hitting Earth in the year 2170, and a 1-in-1,000 chanceof slamming into us in 2182.
While those are slim odds, they put 1999 RQ36 at the top of the danger list.
Had the Tunguska event occurred a mere six hours earlier in 1908, this mysterious object would have hit between Paris and Berlin, obliterating Western European civilization. Let Gandhi et al. cower at their spinning wheels… “fifty years of Europe are worth a cycle of Cathay.”
Jeff Alberts says:
February 15, 2013 at 7:55 am
That’s the point Jeff there are no affects of man that can have an effect on those things. Effect: the power to produce results. We have none.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone yet that any device or system which can alter the trajectory of an asteroid fragment could just as easily *cause* an impact as prevent one. It all depends on who’s in control of it; what would happen if one of the various Kims in NK got his hands on the controls? Stand back and think; would any sane society build a weapon which had the capability of destroying civilization in one shot? Any asteroid deflector would have that capability; we would be looking at a true Doomsday Device.
I feel much safer taking my chances with nature than with man.
“Many people find it hard to grasp of a time scale greater than their own lifetime, or events outside their sphere of experience. Therefore, weather patterns / temperature swings not commonly seen in decade become alarming and unprecedented, and asteroid strikes occurring over a hundred years ago become abstract events.”
What I consider an “abstract event” is something which has never caused a significant loss of human life in all of recorded history. This entire topic is literally Chicken Littleism. I can accept the estimate of a large strike once every 5000 years; but something that only happens on that frequency is not something that makes me want to jump up and create some version of the Death Star tomorrow.
I would be very surprised if this event doesn’t affect building standards to some degree.
Lloyd Martin Hendaye says: February 15, 2013 at 8:52 am “Had the Tunguska event occurred a mere six hours earlier in 1908, this mysterious object would have hit between Paris and Berlin, obliterating Western European civilization.”
Uh no. Tunguska “devastated” 900 square miles, about the size of modern urban Paris (1100 sq. miles 2010).
wws says:
February 15, 2013 at 8:57 am
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone yet that any device or system which can alter the trajectory of an asteroid fragment could just as easily *cause* an impact as prevent one. It all depends on who’s in control of it; what would happen if one of the various Kims in NK got his hands on the controls? Stand back and think; would any sane society build a weapon which had the capability of destroying civilization in one shot? Any asteroid deflector would have that capability; we would be looking at a true Doomsday Device.
I feel much safer taking my chances with nature than with man.
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~shrug~ Science, technology, heck even knowledge in general is always a double edged sword; in most cases what can be used for beneficial purposes can be used for malevolent purposes as well. I don’t find the notion of possible misuse all that persuasive an argument to dissuade advances like this.
john robertson says:
February 15, 2013 at 8:03 am
http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec02/TagishLake.html
Meteor injures more than 980 in Russian city
I heard early on TV (ABC GMA) that the CHELYABINSK fireball meteor and the 2012DA14 asteroid were unrelated and coincidental, but I wanted more information, which I’m unlikely to get on that station. It seems like these are very close together. But that is a frames-of-reference problem.
First off, just how close together were they in time?
Chelyabinsk was at 9:23am local time (UTC+6hr) = 2013.02.15 03:23 UTC
2012DA14’s closest approach is 2013.02.15 19:25 UTC.
The difference is 16.033 hrs.
The earth travels around the sun at 107,279 km/hr.
So, from a solar frame of reference, the points of closest approach to earth are separated by
(16.033 hr * 107279 km/hr) = 1.72 million km,
or 135 earth diameters.
Add to this fact that 2012DA14 is traveling from south to north and the Chelyabinsk meter seems to have a north to south component (down and right looking at the morning dawn) and east to west when looking south from the dawn.
So they are likely traveling in very different directions intersecting with the earth’s orbit 16 hrs and a million miles apart. It seems clear that this is a cosmic coincidence and proof that the two rocks are unrelated.
What is less clear is whether there is a God has a sense of humor. What better way to get humans to pay attention to the 2012DA14 close call in a few hours?
My personal view is that God does play dice.
It is an open question whether sometimes the dice are loaded.
A toast: Here’s to making a Pass in 2 hrs.
While I was investigating N. hemisphere’s magnetic field I came across Nastapoka arc, the Canada’s greatest natural ‘wonder’, near-perfect circular arc, covering more than 160° of a 450 km diameter circle at the edge of the Hudson Bay. The area is one of the globe’s deepest gravity depressions and until about 1997 had the strongest magnetic field in the northern hemisphere.
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/41/83/04/PDF/NATA.pdf (pages 7 & 8)
If that was a lump of iron that hit the Earth, it must have been huge to create a crater of 450 km across http://webecoist.momtastic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/nastapoka_4.jpg
Here is a sky map from Heavens-Above.com that shows the sky track against the stars for 2012DA14 as seen from Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is 23:30 at the time of this post, passing in front of the arm of the Milky Way.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=35k8lco&s=6
If it was a fragment of the asteroid 2012 DA14, as it approached closer to Earth on the same trajectory and as it was pulled in it is possible for it to have a east to west trajectory, I think NASA and some other astronomers have jumped the shark on this event declaring it a coincidence, everyone should wait for the evidence to come in, there are reports now coming from Russia that this meteor was spotted and a warning had been given.
Tunguska has been tied to the Taurid Complex, which is cometary in nature.
I would suggest that comets are a greater threat than asteroids, as they come from all angles. Asteroids tend to cluster around the plane of the ecliptic. Comets also fragment easily, with several being observed and photographed over the last few decades (Linear, Shoemaker – Levy 9, Schwassmann – Wachmann 3, Elenin). Once the pieces quit outgassing, they are very dark and difficult to track.
Of course you have the problem that there is not a strong dividing line between what is an asteroid and what is a comet. Up to half of the Near Earth Objects are thought to to be inactive comets. A few asteroids have been observed with a tail.
And it won’t be the feds that protect us from them. It will be NewSpace. There are at least two US small businesses talking about asteroid mining, with water ice being the most valuable commodity of all. Deep Space Industries is the newest. Cheers –
http://deepspaceindustries.com/
‘No Link’ Between Meteor That Hurt Hundreds And Asteroid About To Fly By
It can be seen from seafloor isochrons that the destruction of the earth’s crust from the Club Med impact is not terribly impressive.
http://geosciencebigpicture.com/2013/01/06/seafloor-isoch…icxulub-impact/
The angle of incidence seems very important and it could be that the isochrons record the incoming side of a steeply angled impact. Another possibility is that an impact nearly square would leave only a bullet hole.
Regarding altering the course of history, it ihas been suggested that the Majuika impact may have destroyed the Ming Fleet just as they seemed poised to beat European civilization to the punch in colonization.
By the way, we have GOT to get better names for these impacts…
The list continues to grow . A major comet will come extremely close to earth at the end of 2013 and early 2014
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/06/first-images-captured-of-comet-of-the-century-ison-as-it-buzzes-nasa-deep-space-probe/
Err, can someone in the know please explain why the objects of smaller mass could not simply have been caught by the Earth’s gravity, and looped around the sphere of our planet in an unstable orbit, thus appearing (to an Earthbound observer watching the angle of impact near the surface) to have a different angle of approach from the main asteroid? I don’t trust myself with the math of this scenario—the approximate, since estimating the exact mass of a fragment or fragments during approach might be a problem—but it seems plausible to me, contrary to the NASA claim.
Another Heavens-above.com sky map of 2012DA14. This one from Medan, north-west Sumatra, Indonesia, East of Sri Lanka at about the same latitude.
http://i47.tinypic.com/121sugm.png
This track is visably westward against the stars from the one from Colombo due to parallax.
Can’t possibly see it in person from Texas, so arm-chair astronomy is the next best thing.
Asteroids will be banned on this basis — and a tax implemented to assist in hunting them down and exterminating them…
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/02/15/asteroid_to_buzz_earth_today_in_closest_ever_flyby_we_are_in_a_shooting_gallery.html
“We are in a shooting gallery, and this is graphic evidence of it,” said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman emeritus of the B612 Foundation, committed to protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids.
Anyone caught harboring a fugitive Asteroid will be prosecuted as it endangers the general populace…
One more Heavens-Above.com Sky Chart: This one for our friends in Perth, Australia
http://i49.tinypic.com/rucp7c.png
02:30 am local time right now.
UPDATE: (via NASA’s spaceweather.com)
It is natural to wonder if this event has any connection to today’s record-setting flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14. NASA has issued the following statement:
“The trajectory of the Russian meteorite was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object. Information is still being collected about the Russian meteorite and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14′s trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north.”
Are they trying to snow us or what? Such a trival observation does not give any indication of its tragectory before it interacted with the Earth.
An object coming towards Earth “from the South” that got captured could do half a rotation over the N. Pole and end up coming down in Russia “from the North”.
That would invovle it passing over the Pacif instead of the Indian Ocean but what was the orientation and position of the Earth at the time it was captured.
It beggars the imagination that NASA are prepared to make such a naive statement based on such little informations as ” In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun”.
This is a best a blantent attempt to reassure the public.