Comments on: Apophis danger downgraded

By: james

james — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 04:07:37 +0000

100,000 degrees that’s violet hot

By: Plutonium being from Pluto

Plutonium being from Pluto — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:33:47 +0000

@ 52. Naked Bunny with a Whip Says:

@Plutonium being from Pluto: You added a word to my question, which was actually a tongue-in-cheek response to #31.

Yeah, well my response to your response was pretty tongue in cheek humour too!

Added a word? All I can think of there is ‘Apophis’ in brackets – is that what you mean?

@ Charlie in Dayton :

Reminds me of a B-grade movie where at the end the main character heroine is given huge congratulations for “postponing” a major disaster!

(She actually prevented it from happening – a nuclear meltdown of some sort I think – but I swear they *said* ‘postponing’ which really isn’t that good!)

By: Plutonium being from Pluto

Plutonium being from Pluto — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:33:46 +0000

Ooops! Inadvertant double post deleted by its clumsy author.

(Disaster postponed ..er prevented! )

By: Bad Astronomy | Curtropolis

Bad Astronomy | Curtropolis — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:48:22 +0000

[...] a result, stuff that I normal would not care about i.e. the danger level of Apophis, I get sucked into. Reason being, Mr. Plait explains why it’s really interesting and makes [...]

By: Charlie in Dayton

Charlie in Dayton — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:09:37 +0000

Does this mean there won’t be…

…(wait for it)…

…an Apophistrophe?

By: Joel

Joel — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:13:46 +0000

what sort of satellites are 30 000 km away?

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:54:34 +0000

62. JoeSmithCA

I started that story after your suggestion, then realized it would take WAY too much time to adequately develop the character interaction and since I’ve been writing another story for the last three months, I really have to concentrate on that one. I DID initiate the characters, some based upon people we all know and detest, such a an actress, named Jenny McKoont and her boyfriend, US President John Cloacus. Feel free to run with the idea and sell it to Syfy. I’m sure they can totally screw up the science if they try,,,

Gary 7

By: Paul A.

Paul A. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:32:49 +0000

So the odds are 1 in 250,000 that the asteroid will and… End Human Civilization?! At what point do we worry? If it is risk versus reward we should worry now. At what point does earth redirect all its efforts and wealth to solve an highly unlikely but utterly devastating event? Of course thanks to religion a large portion of the society would opt for doing nothing and just praying the problem away, or accepting it as god’s will.

By: ParrotSketch

ParrotSketch — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:04:22 +0000

@#56 Eightman:

“Yeah, great, except now there’s a possibility of impact in 2068.”

A possibility of 1 in 9 Million. Big Deal.

By: ND

ND — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:28:51 +0000

I’m not sure if you want to play gravity tractoring with Apophis given how close it’s going to miss. Maybe nudging an astroid belt object would be a better idea. Maybe.

But … I would be interested in impacting Apophis into the moon. that would be cool.

By: JoeSmithCA

JoeSmithCA — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:21:52 +0000

@Gary (#58)
Wayyy to realistic for something like SyFy channel. It’d have to be a piece of a star that got knocked off by the collision with a blackhole. Require one scientist a nuke to fly solo up to the star to make it implode and disapear. Oh and of course during the whole time there would be tsunamis, floods, earthquakes and tornadoes–maybe some volcanoes if they can squeeze it in. See now there’s some kwality science ficshun for the masses.

On the serious side, that’s an awesome idea. Seriously, you should write a story about it.

By: Naked Bunny with a Whip

Naked Bunny with a Whip — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:16:32 +0000

@bouch: Glad I’ll be retired. (Haha! As if!)

By: THE REAL USES FOR GOOGLE EARTH.. « Buzzmunkeysmunkeycage Blog

THE REAL USES FOR GOOGLE EARTH.. « Buzzmunkeysmunkeycage Blog — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:12:35 +0000

[...] Apophis danger downgraded //

By: bouch

bouch — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:54:45 +0000

Nuts. I was hoping it would hit, and then I won’t have to worry about solving that nasty “unix time_t” issue which might become an issue in 2038. That’s going to be even bigger than the Y2K bug and the Myan calendar ending combined!

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:46:37 +0000

One of my favorite SciFi scenarios is a fairly large(say 10 Km) solid nickel/iron asteroid with exactly the right(read: low) velocity that enters the earths atmosphere at an angle, dipping to around 50 miles above the surface, shedding JUST enough velocity to assume a highly elliptical orbit around earth and having a gradually decaying orbit(say, impact with the surface in 50 years or so). THAT would certainly impel us to DO SOMETHING. I’d like to point out that such a scenario would also produce super heated air in front of the object as it dips into the atmosphere on every orbit,(compression effects could raise atmospheric temperature in front of the asteroid to 100,000 degrees) and at these temps, the plasma formed would radiate in the X-ray range, irradiating the surface on every pass. Lots of fun to surmise all the radiation induced illness of critters on the surface(and, of course, a rise in mutation rates).

Isn’t SciFi FUN?

Gary 7

By: Alan B.

Alan B. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:45:47 +0000

For more information about Apophis and all other near-earth objects check out http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/.

By: Eighthman

Eighthman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:22:33 +0000

Yeah, great, except now there’s a possibility of impact in 2068.
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Apophis-TholenOct09/

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:19:09 +0000

24. XMArk:

Nah! What we REALLY need are aliens threatening OUR WAY OF LIFE,,,then we could get all the big bucks and investment we need to develop the High Frontier.

44. Tim G:

If you mean DETECTED asteroids/comets, the odds are nearly zero however,,,for anything currently UNDETECTED,,,let’s just say OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE,,,or maybe not. If they’re UNDETECTED we just don’t know.

Now, doesn’t that make you feel better?

We know about 90% of the bodies in an equatorial orbit around the sun and they’re all pretty safe (as far as WE’RE concerned). For random rocks coming in from North or South of the ecliptic we have little observational data so OH MY GOD WE’RE,,,hey, the universe is a chaotic, violent, beautiful place. How does that Randy Newman song go, “This world(read universe) we all love so much just might be trying to kill you,,,”.

Every night I like to go outside, moon the sky and yell, “Hah! Missed again, Turkey!”.

Peace,

GAry 7

By: mike burkhart

mike burkhart — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:48:36 +0000

I have a question if Apophis is going to hit the Earth what do we do about it .nuke it? the fact is this is not an option because you would turn one big rock into thousands of big chunks all headed for Earth thus we make the problem worse

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:29:36 +0000

I move that we assemble a team of heroes to intercept Apophis. Instead of hairdressers and telephone booth sanitizers, I propose the following persons:

- Nancy Grace
- Lindsay Lohan
- Bill O’Reilly AND!! Keith Olberman
- George Bush (the younger) AND Hillary Clinton
- The Fox executives who cancelled Firefly.

Of course, with current technology, this would be a one-way trip, but these folks would be making the ultimate sacrifice for humanity.

(Remember: noone tells them that it isn’t really going to hit the Earth. They are our last, best hope for *snort* human… *laugh* humanity *snicker*)

(Also: thanks and RIP to Douglas Adams).

By: Naked Bunny with a Whip

Naked Bunny with a Whip — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:05:44 +0000

@Plutonium being from Pluto: You added a word to my question, which was actually a tongue-in-cheek response to #31.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:37:41 +0000

Phil, were you aware that the USAF recently carried out an exercise to test the readiness of various emergency management systems to see how we would cope with a 50 m impactor?

New Scientist ran an article on this a week or two ago, and I kept thinking: it’s rather like chapter 1 of DftS! And they didn’t even mention you once!!

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:34:56 +0000

@ everyone speculating about using a gravity tractor on Apophis -

How else do you think Earth is altering Apophis’s orbit? We already know that a gravity tractor will work, because we know how to predict the effects of gravity. What benefit do we obtain from some random test on a rock that is mostly harmless?

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:31:28 +0000

Plutonium being from Pluto (45) said:

Would be awesome if the shuttle could land on it or something like that

What would be even more awesome is if the shuttle had been capable of reaching an orbital altitude of 30,000 km in the first place. IIUC, the orbit of Hubble (about 600 km up) is the furthest from Earth the shuttle can reach. It simply doesn’t carry enough fuel to get higher.

By: Plutonium being from Pluto

Plutonium being from Pluto — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:24:08 +0000

@ 31. Monkey Says:

PS – Earth….not THE Earth. Please!

Huh? Same planet, same difference – what’s the problem for you there?

@ 33. Naked Bunny with a Whip Says:

… How frequently does it [Apophis] orbit our Sun?

Quite a lot more frequently than it orbits any *other* star I’d think!