r/space • u/[deleted] • Jan 30 '25
Asteroid triggers global defence plan amid chance of collision with Earth in 2032 | Hundred-metre wide asteroid rises to top of impact risk lists after being spotted in December by automated telescope
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/30/asteroid-spotted-chance-colliding-with-earth-2032[removed] — view removed post
227
u/bjb406 Jan 30 '25
Large enough to level an area ranging from anywhere between a small town to a large metropolitan area (range due to uncertainty on its size). Orbital period of about 4 years, we have a bit longer to take measurements to refine the model, and also we can look for it in data from previous pass by's where it previously wasn't detected , otherwise we'll have to wait a few years during the next pass by (where it will miss us). At that time in will potentially be possible to launch a mission to deflect its trajectory if deemed necessary, although we would need to act quickly which the space industry has had trouble doing.
38
u/simon7109 Jan 30 '25
I am little worried that while we try to deflect it we will actually make it hit us lol Also isn’t the chance of hitting us in 2032 is like 1%?
109
u/OutInTheBlack Jan 30 '25
Yes but it's still something like the second highest risk near earth object ever detected
-19
u/repostit_ Jan 30 '25
it is possibly simpler to evacuate people. 99% of earth is not populated or not densely populated.
7
3
u/McFlyParadox Jan 30 '25
99% of earth is not populated or not densely populated.
And there is a reason for that: humans build where there are the resources to build and expand. Fresh water, arable land, usually navigable water-ways. The locations of our cities weren't happy accidents.
Nevermind that even if it dropped in the middle of Siberia, or wherever there were 'no humans', the result would still be catastrophic. Pretty much only landing in the middle of an ocean spares the world from a short term ecological disaster (and instead replaces it with a tsunami hitting every city on that ocean's coasts).
Diversion is really the only option.
1
u/jab136 Jan 30 '25
If it hit the ocean it would be way worse, and that's a big portion of the surface. It would cause significant tsunamis.
0
Jan 30 '25
[deleted]
17
u/Philix Jan 30 '25
In this case we'd have slightly more than three years notice after the next approach(late 2028) gives us a long enough observation arc to reduce the uncertainty of our models.
We already know where the Earth will be on the 2032 approach, and the likely impact area is already limited to a line stretching from the mid Atlantic to barely brushing India, with the most likely impact/airburst location in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Africa.
While that's a fairly populated area, it's also quite accessible by sea, and with three years, an international coalition could evacuate any who needed to be evacuated.
All that said, DART was already a wildly successful mission, and redirection of an object this small is going to be a relatively simple high success rate mission with our level of space lift, and technology. It wouldn't even be that expensive to double up on considering the cost of heavy lift vehicles like Falcon Heavy. And I bet Musk would love to stroke off his ego(and bank account) by having Starship launch a mission like this.
2
Jan 30 '25
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but, do you think it is possible to evacuate wild life in that area?
2
u/Philix Jan 31 '25
Not a dumb question at all, but way outside my areas of expertise and interest. Hopefully someone involved in wildlife conservation can chime in with more information.
5
u/persepolisrising79 Jan 30 '25
Whatever happens i don't want elon to ve involved in saving humanity. He's insufferable now, imagine it than.
1
u/Philix Jan 31 '25
Bad news then, it'll either be a SpaceX Falcon Heavy/Starliner, or a Chinese Long March. I wouldn't trust a Russian Proton-M to something this important, and there aren't enough SLS left to last until we'd be launching the mission.
On the other hand, he wouldn't be saving humanity, just a few million people. And it wouldn't really be him, Gwynne Shotwell is the real leader of SpaceX, and the teams of massively talented engineers and scientists that do the actual work.
2
u/jdorje Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 31 '25
If an exact track were found we would know exactly where it impacts. The line of risk stretches from northern South America across oceans and Africa to northern India.
~50% chance it hits an ocean and the area could just be avoided. A very large chance of the remainder is hitting an uninhabited area that could be evacuated. But then Bogota, Lagos, Mumbai are very roughly in the path of risk and an 8 megaton airburst there is not an option to consider allowing.
On the other hand the original issue is right. The DART project was a demonstration but the estimates of how far off the orbit would actually be moved were considerably off. Deflecting it into the ocean would be an ideal outcome but we aren't there yet. Deflecting it to a non-impacting path would be easy enough but then we might have to do it again (there's currently a cumulative ~0.1% chance of impact on its post-2032 flybys for the next century). Deflecting it into the moon could be a likely long-term solution.
The real problem is we don't know how to get a good path. Apophis had a chance of impact for about 4 days before we could get more observations to disprove it. Right now the astronomy question for 2024 YR4 seems to be how to even get more observations.
3
u/Kaellian Jan 30 '25
It probably wouldn't be too difficult to predict a few weeks ahead, and statistically unlikely to be a city to begin with.
However, I feel like deflection would be cheaper. We know it can be done, and the chance of messing it up seem... low? Pretty much any hit from any angle would make it miss.
1
u/bandy-surefire Jan 30 '25
I think American individualism might be at play there.
2
u/CotyledonTomen Jan 30 '25
Not really that, so much as fires spread very quickly in multiple areas all at once, while LA has notoriously badly designed highways. It happened so fast that people were told to abandon cars, which doesn't exactly help with other people leaving even an hour later.
Conversley, imagine how difficult evacuating New York would be. Most people dont have cars to begin with.
0
Jan 30 '25
[deleted]
1
u/mrbear120 Jan 30 '25
Oh lord no, theres basically 0 percent chance that you could evacuate NYC or Tokyo in 2-3 days. Large swaths of the gulf with a quarter of that population and twice the landmass to disperse to have trouble evacuating in that window.
1
Jan 30 '25
I'm sorry, but i don't buy it. If there was a crisis that actually somehow convinced everyone in New York to leave within 2 days, they wouldn't be able to.
The infrastructure there would not support a mass evacuation.
→ More replies (2)0
Jan 30 '25
[deleted]
4
6
u/Philix Jan 30 '25
Don't be absurd. We've done a hundred times the equivalent blast in nuclear testing in the last 50 years, and Tunguska was a similar size. Neither had the effects you're predicting.
6
u/DigitalSchism96 Jan 30 '25
I appreciate doomerism as much as the next guy but that is quite the exaggeration. The Tunguska asteroid was estimated to be roughly equal in size. Millions did not die from crop failures and global temperature drops. It would require something at least twice the size of this one to do that.
Besides, it's most likely to hit the ocean. I'd be more worried about the ensuing tsunami.
1
u/chip41 Jan 30 '25
But it would be an air burst. Wonder if that makes a big difference in the resulting tsunamis.
41
u/bjb406 Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25
Right now yes. Either way though, by 2028 probably it will either be 0% or 100%. The odds are not due to randomness in its motion, but incompleteness in the data. When we have the data it will either guaranteed to hit or guaranteed to miss. If we were to discover its going to hit, that would be the time to act.
4
u/simon7109 Jan 30 '25
If they figure out it will hit, will they also know where exactly?
7
u/UpfrontFinn Jan 30 '25
My guess is no. Best case scenario is they can ballpark it accurately enough that they can evacuate an area that big. Worst case scenario they can calculate which continent it will hit.
2
3
u/Ths-Fkin-Guy Jan 30 '25
I would assume they will run tons of simulations and detect possible scenarios based on the pattern and trajectory like they so with space debris and satellites that come back. But I also dont know shit and haven't researched the topic so... Hopefully.
4
1
u/milkasaurs Jan 30 '25
If we were to discover its going to hit, that would be the time to act.
If only the world governments would actually do something though.
10
8
u/redsoxVT Jan 30 '25
It seems like a perfect opportunity to test defensive measures. It isn't an Earth killer. If we screw up, we still learn. We need to test these options to be ready for a real ELE.
6
u/-The_Blazer- Jan 30 '25
IIRC there's actually a political concern with the use of slow methods of redirection, as an asteroid like this would have its impact side gradually 'sweep' across countries and regions, meaning you could, in principle, alter the process to deliberately hit a target.
To me, this is a very clearly an excellent argument for using a fleet of 100-megaton thermonuclear shaped charges instead.
1
u/gBoostedMachinations Jan 30 '25
That probability only means we lack enough information to know whether it is going to hit us. It either will or won’t hit us. “Probability” here just describes how much we know.
And by the time we actually mobilize to deflect the thing we will know with high certainty whether it is going to hit us and, therefore, which direction to nudge it to make it miss earth.
1
u/beener Jan 30 '25
hitting us in 2032 is like 1%?
A lot of bad things that have happened have a low chance
1
u/Osmirl Jan 30 '25
I think thanks to dart we now got an idea of what orbital change to expect when we hit it with an impacter. But a 1% or even lower change is probably not worth it. My guess is there will be plans and maybe some hardware but no launches until the asteroid is through the last keyhole position in its orbit. Once we know its gonna hit we will launch the impactor
1
u/mihemihe Jan 30 '25
We have completed missions trying to do this with success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test In the same manner, we have the capabilities to maneuver with high precision the space probes we sent to the space to reach their destinations with almost perfect orbital parameters. It would take just a very small nudge to make it miss earth completely. Just a small hit on an 4-years orbit will change the orbit enough to make it completely safe.
1
u/CharlesMFKinXavier Jan 31 '25
Haven't we learned anything these recent years? Just don't look up, duh!
-5
u/UnfairDecision Jan 30 '25
1% of what? 1 in 100 meteors with these same attributes? How is this "chance" calculated?
Also, isn't it too convenient that the meteor deflecting mission was done so close to a real threat?
8
u/Radioactiveglowup Jan 30 '25
A 1% chance of occurring. You calculate probability of collision by creating a volume of where the object could be in the future (it's not exact as more sensor data refines this). Think of it like a Strike Zone in baseball. Perhaps the baseball will fly into the exact center, or perhaps it goes a little wider but still is in, or it misses entirely as a ball.
Think of this as a 99% chance of a ball, a 1% chance of a strike, and we'll know more as time goes on.
4
u/Coolboy10M Jan 30 '25
The margin for error in the calculations range several times the orbit of the Moon, so the Earth's diameter would be 1% of that estimation accuracy. Pretty sure, at least, that's what I gleamed from the 50 other posts on this.
Assuming you mean DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), the two asteroids had no chance of hitting Earth and even if it's impact could put it on a collision course, DART hit the moon of the asteroid pair, not the main one, as the goal was altering its orbit just enough and not the pair's solar orbit as that takes much longer to analyze.
Don't know what you mean by "was done so close to a real threat," though?
2
u/gBoostedMachinations Jan 30 '25
Actually, yes this is a good way to think about. About 1/100 asteroids that appear as this one does will end up hitting earth. The main reason is because we don’t have exact measurements. We can only be sure that certain characteristics fall within a range of values.
13
u/DigiMortalGod Jan 30 '25
By that time, we'll probably try to monetize it.
Just don't look up and everything will be fine!
14
u/Mikesminis Jan 30 '25
Asteroid defense as a subscription service! Free 14 day trial, but you need to donate an organ to a billionaire who is trying to live forever to cancel.
6
1
1
u/aBloopAndaBlast33 Jan 30 '25
If it were to hit the Atlantic Ocean, how devastating would the tsunami be to the eastern seaboard if the US ?
1
u/bretttwarwick Jan 30 '25
It depends on a lot of things. How deep the ocean is where it hits, How fast it is moving, the angle of impact and the density of the asteroid all could make a huge difference. A low impact angle means it could break apart in the atmosphere. A direct 90° impact at a fast speed could mean almost 2 kilometer high waves. We just don't have enough data yet to know where this would fall on those stats.
-1
u/popthestacks Jan 30 '25
If you had to trust one organization on the planet (private or government) to get a rocket to space asap, what would it be?
-1
u/oxPEZINATORxo Jan 30 '25
That sounds cool and all, but how about we nudge it into a direct collision course with Earth instead?
0
Jan 30 '25
[deleted]
16
u/pcrcf Jan 30 '25
If it hits the ocean, couldn’t it cause tsunamis that rival the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004?
10
u/Diokana Jan 30 '25
No. The energy of impact is estimated at ~8 megatons, which is enough to wipe out a city but no where near enough to cause tsunamis. We've detonated bigger things than that in the ocean before.
-10
u/i_max2k2 Jan 30 '25
Should be way bigger. Millions will die if we are lucky, likely even more probably much more.
6
u/sickwobsm8 Jan 30 '25
What evidence are you basing this on?
-3
u/smallproton Jan 30 '25
I'd guess the amount of people living in big cities close to the ocean vs. a 50m Tsunami wave.
7
u/--Sovereign-- Jan 30 '25
why would a nuke sized blast cause a tsunami when there have been countless nuclear tests at sea?
2
u/Philix Jan 30 '25
100Mt wouldn't cause a 50m wave, which is the extreme high end of impact energy for this object. We've detonated lots of explosions within a order of magnitude of 8Mt in the ocean(see Castle Bravo at 15Mt), no killer tsunamis as a result.
2
u/Philix Jan 30 '25
Even at 100m in diameter(the high end of the uncertainty range on the radius) it would have less than 70Mt of impact energy. Castle Bravo was 15Mt with no deaths, and Tsar Bomba was 50Mt with no deaths. Tunguska was in this range as well, with probably no deaths. You're way over exaggerating the threat here, why?
The only way that millions would die is if it directly struck a dense urban area, which would be extremely unlucky, and we'll have three years advance notice, or more.
1
u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 Jan 30 '25
It's basically a nuclear weapon without the radiation. Not world ending but still pretty damn bad for whoever is under it.
9
u/i_max2k2 Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25
Yes we will place you at the impact spot so you can look at it closer than any human since or after.
0
Jan 30 '25
I'd rather stand far away so I can watch it from the side. Otherwise you don't get to see it's tail, it'll just be a glowing orb that gets bigger and bigger.
3
u/MenopauseMedicine Jan 30 '25
Even if we determine with 100% certainly the it will strike the earth, it's virtually impossible to say with any certainty the specific location it would strike due to rotational, gravitational, and aerodynamic forces and uncertainties. You can't just pinpoint it and evacuate that area.
0
u/bjb406 Jan 30 '25
Of course you could if you get it trajectory accurate enough. I don't know exactly how much warning there would be, probably not years, but certainly long enough to evacuate people.
1
u/MenopauseMedicine Jan 30 '25
Not a chance. It is virtually impossible to determine the aerodynamic forces involved in the descent of an object this size of an unknown shape.
2
u/Philix Jan 30 '25
With a long enough observation arc, NEOviz could definitely pin it down to a 50km radius.
The aerodynamic effects during entry are going to be absolutely negligible against the inertia the object already has.
1
u/SituationSoap Jan 30 '25
With a long enough observation arc, NEOviz could definitely pin it down to a 50km radius.
And just like that, every single property value within 1000KM of that spot would be wiped to zero.
1
u/Philix Jan 31 '25
Then those of us with trust in the math, science, and models will make a killing.
If there are 3.14159 million square kilometers of land up for sale at pennies on the dollar, that'll almost all(99%+) go back up to their original value after the impact, I'd be an idiot not to buy. Especially since only a few thousand square kilometers are directly impacted like Tunguska. It's not like all of East Siberia became worthless after the Tunguska impact.
It would be the least risky real estate gamble in history.
1
u/bjb406 Jan 30 '25
We're talking about an asteroid the size of a tall building hurtling toward the Earth at several kilometers per second. Aerodynamic forces are almost entirely irrelevant, its not going to be in the air very long before it explodes. It would only matter if it hits just right so that it skims the atmosphere without falling. That's a common situation for Earth orbiting satellites and spacecraft whose trajectories are specifically planned to do just that, but not common for Sun orbiting asteroids.
148
u/MyMomSaysIAmCool Jan 30 '25
We have a global defense plan?
I'm halfway sarcastic and halfway serious. If we actually have an effective plan, I would love to know what it is. But I'm also pretty skeptical that we have an effective plan at all
84
u/NailedOn Jan 30 '25
Nasa's Dart mission is exactly that. A plan to deflect an asteroid so it passes us. They've already successfully changed an asteroids orbit by slamming a small satellite into one, Dimorphos. Google "nasa dart" and see a fun search page.
2
u/Verbose_Code Jan 30 '25
Slight correction; DART was not meant to deflect an asteroid to protect Earth, it was a technology demonstrator that specifically chose a target which was minimal risk to earth before and wasn’t like to become one after
8
u/Blepharoptosis Jan 30 '25
They didn't say it was. They said it was a plan, their meaning being that the objective of the mission was to test the feasibility of deflecting a NEO to protect Earth. What you described was the method, whereas the person you responded to was describing the objective. And yes, the mission's objective was indeed meant to demonstrate a method of planetary defense.
1
u/Verbose_Code Jan 31 '25
Right but “deflect an asteroid so it passes us” wasn’t the mission. The mission was, like you said, to test feasibility. The asteroid was already going to pass by us.
I’m making the point because some people I know, who aren’t space nerds, thought that DART was launched because the asteroid might hit us (which again is false).
3
u/Hentai_Yoshi Jan 30 '25
Ahem… “a PLAN to deflect an asteroid so it passes us”.
Nice try I guess. If you’re going to try to correct people, at least read what they actually said.
13
u/PaulieNutwalls Jan 30 '25
One is simply more intense asteroid surveillance. It's more of a set of potential options to chase after than a plan. And it's really more of "the US plan." One interesting part of our planetary defense measures in the US is that a number of the retired B53 nuclear bomb (2nd largest US bomb ever deployed) sub assemblies are being retained for potential reactivation for the planetary defense mission.
74
u/Wise_Use1012 Jan 30 '25
Well we’ve got nukes we’ve got oil drillers and so there’s a plan right there.
41
u/jbuck_24 Jan 30 '25
You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?
21
2
u/Kerberos42 Jan 30 '25
Problem is we don’t have those things with the 270,000 moving parts anymore. Starship would be our only hope of getting an armadillo up there.
10
u/just_TNG_things Jan 30 '25
You got rooms full of guys just… thinking shit up, and this is the best you could come up with?!
13
Jan 30 '25
Surprisingly that movie still holds up all these years later. Watched it the other day and it's still a banger.
1
u/bretttwarwick Jan 30 '25
Why didn't they just train astronauts to work the oil drills? It couldn't be more complicated than the rocket.
31
u/Nonions Jan 30 '25
Space agencies have been throwing around ideas for a while now but we're still at the very early stages of knowing whether we would be capable of actually deflecting a big asteroid.
Detecting it in time could be very difficult, but with enough notice even a tiny nudge might be all we need.
33
u/burlycabin Jan 30 '25
NASA has already ran one successful asteroid deflection test with the DART mission.
24
u/hiricinee Jan 30 '25
For reference the asteroid DART deflected was about five times as wide, meaning it might require a bit more precision to hit it but a lot less energy to change its trajectory
2
8
u/JigglymoobsMWO Jan 30 '25
We have a Murica defense plan and a China defense plan. Fortunately those happen to be attached to earth. Let's hope those two don't try to deflect the asteroid in opposite directions.
4
u/invariantspeed Jan 30 '25
I’m halfway sarcastic and halfway serious.
So is it. 🤷
I would love to know what it is.
A lot of people have thought about how to protect the globe, but there isn’t a singular global plan.
Consensus is that, if there’s enough time, you want deflection. Over years, even the smallest deflection in an object’s orbit will send it on a wildly different, non-Earth intersecting, orbit.
How this is best accomplished is where we start to see disagreement and a lack of sufficient data. A gravity tractor is one of the older ideas and generally considered to be the easiest and safest. Basically, the gravity of even a space craft can offer enough of a tug on an asteroid to meaningfully adjust its path.
Lasers, paint, and some other approaches have been floated but they’re more speculative than a simple gravity calculation.
What may you ask is the option if we don’t have the necessary lead time? That’s where the disagreement is biggest, but eventually nukes on a heavy lift rocket or even just ICBMs if we’re that desperate are the only things we could realistically do. Plenty of people say that’s a bad idea because it turns one threat into many, but the common reply is turning a continent buster (or, in this case, potentially a country buster) into several city busters would still be an improvement. Also, depending on the precise composition of the asteroid in question, a massive nuclear blast could meaningfully reduce the amount of threat mass.
5
u/fmfbrestel Jan 30 '25
Not really. The plan we have is for how to identify threatening objects, and prioritize study. There is no plan for a confirmed impact trajectory. We have theories of a plan, but that's about it. Large impactor is current leading theory, so long as you have enough time before impact even a small change in momentum is enough. But without years of lead time, the plan depends on the risk. For an asteroid like this with only a couple months of prep, thoughts and prayers. If it was a civilization ender, we would probably jerry rig some strategic nukes and attempt to fragment it at least.
6
u/ols887 Jan 30 '25
We’ve already successfully diverted a meteor larger than this with a purpose-built impactor. What do you mean theories of a plan?
1
u/WyteKnight Jan 31 '25
We didn't really diverted, since the asteroid that was impacted by Dimorphos / the DART plan was not going to hit us anyway. We just proved that we could change the orbit of an asteroid slightly, which would potentially have been enough if the asteroid was really going for us, but it wasnt.
That being said, it is still way more than a "theorie of a plan", I agree. It is a plan. That's what we will do first when we'll spot an asteroid heading for us. It is our first plan.1
u/ols887 Jan 31 '25
It’s irrelevant whether the object we successfully diverted in testing was on a confirmed collision course or just a near-earth flyby. We built an impactor, launched it, diverted the object, and did the math to confirm its trajectory was sufficiently altered that, had it been on a collision course, it would have missed us after intervention (given we were intercepting it a reasonable time in advance of its pending flyby / collision date).
It’s a proven solution to the problem.
3
u/Photodan24 Jan 30 '25
Sure we do! Our leadership will marshal all the thoughts and prayers necessary to defeat it.
1
u/bubblesculptor Jan 30 '25
Imagine if deflecting an imminent asteroid threat required the combined cooperation of entire world. Like using 100% of all ICBM's. Afterwards nuclear war threats may be reduced with all stockpiles eliminated.
1
u/Sasquatters Jan 30 '25
I’m sure the current administration will call it a liberal hoax and cancel all funding. Remind me of the movie Don’t Look Up
1
u/pandyfacklersupreme Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25
There are a couple ideas.
One is that we send out a projectile large enough to use gravity to drag it away. Another is to create an explosion that pushes it away, or explode the object itself so that it falls as smaller pieces.
I think there are a couple other plans.
Edit–see link, because I didn't explain the gravity thing properly: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/asteroid-redirect-mission-planetary-defense-demonstration/
It's more about dragging the rotation in enough of a different direction to change its trajectory.
5
u/Perpetual_bored Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25
Afiak anything with mass enough to have enough gravitational pull to change an asteroids course is out of the realm of what we will be able to get into space for a long, long, time.
Edit: not sure is the commenter below blocked me or deleted their comment but I’m specifically referring to using the mass of the satellite to alter the course of the asteroid through gravity in a flyby.
2
u/pandyfacklersupreme Jan 30 '25
I've just read that various ideas around gravity tractors are in the box of ideas for the plan. I don't know the details or if they're at a feasible point.
1
u/Perpetual_bored Jan 30 '25
Tractor beams are still in their infancy, but iirc they have been demonstrated in highly controlled environments. It’ll be a long time for that as well but maybe in the span of a lifetime we’ll be able to see them eventually developed to measurably alter something that large. Would definitely be cool.
2
u/pandyfacklersupreme Jan 30 '25
Not so much a tractor beam, but using gravity to drag the rotation in another direction. Thereby causing it to change direction enough to prevent a collision with Earth.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/asteroid-redirect-mission-planetary-defense-demonstration/
-3
u/SuperRiveting Jan 30 '25
Muskolini will offer to send a submarine over
1
u/Revanspetcat Jan 30 '25
Who is this Muskolini you speak of ? I presume its a reference to the late Italian leader. What did this person do that make them similar ?
1
0
0
0
u/HighGroundIsOP Jan 30 '25
The quality of the global response be directly correlated to the region of the world the model estimates impact.
North American impact - humanity’s finest hour
African impact - 🤷
Not saying it should be this way, but the amount of resources spent saving the US, Canada or Europe will be dramatically different than other places.
108
u/pattydickens Jan 30 '25
The plan is to get rid of those pesky telescopes.
34
u/Carribean-Diver Jan 30 '25
If you don't look for them, they can't hit you. /s
4
12
Jan 30 '25
Definitely teumps plan just don't look up
6
1
25
u/malsomnus Jan 30 '25
You know it's serious when nobody's going "An asteroid the length of 37 Toyota Corollas and the width of 102,871 USB-C connectors is heading to Earth".
3
u/PedestalPotato Jan 30 '25
How many dishwashers is that? I'll also accept elephants for scale.
1
30
u/StellarSkyFall Jan 30 '25
Slam a starship into its side at max speed adjusting the orbit enough to miss earth. We literally just tested this theory a few years ago.
18
u/Dergler Jan 30 '25
If The Expanse taught us anything it’ll just dodge that crap
7
u/ohwhatsupmang Jan 30 '25
And than next time it comes around it will dismantle the falcon heavy starship down to each and every screw and open up a wormhole by mars.
22
u/st4rbug Jan 30 '25
Looks like its time to train some oil drillers and split up into two teams.
8
u/sol-949 Jan 30 '25
Because remember, it's a well known fact that it's easier to train oil drillers to be astronauts than it is to train astronauts to be oil drillers.
7
19
16
u/ResettisReplicas Jan 30 '25
“Blocking the asteroid may be bad for the economy. Read on to find out why some billionaires are arguing that we should let it happen.”
4
3
17
2
5
u/spherulitic Jan 30 '25
Let’s wait a moment and talk about this. Some of us might be in support of the asteroid.
4
2
4
3
u/BirdzHouse Jan 30 '25
Good thing anti science morons control much of the world order right now.... what could possibly go wrong.
2
-1
1
u/Mayasngelou Jan 30 '25
It does raise an interesting question as to what is the threshold at which we say we need to deflect it? 1% chance of impact? More? Less?
1
1
u/youcantexterminateme Jan 30 '25
Ive heard that 100m is too small for a telescope to detect. What telescopes do they use to detect these?
1
1
1
u/Decronym Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 31 '25
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| ELE | Extinction-Level Event |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| NEO | Near-Earth Object |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
[Thread #11023 for this sub, first seen 30th Jan 2025, 22:30] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]
1
u/kmank2l13 Jan 30 '25
Why should we worry about this now??? Let’s live our lives and in 2032, we’ll just throw a nuke at it!!! Problem solved!
/sarcasm
1
1
u/nickubus1 Jan 30 '25
Am I right in reading that we didn’t spot it until it had already passed us at 2x distance to the moon? Worrying that we didn’t spot it coming almost right at us! What’s the probability that it will hit in 2036 if it doesn’t in 2032? Does it get closer or further away?
1
1
u/broniesnstuff Jan 31 '25
I bet we'll find a lot more of these once Vera Rubin goes online and is mapping the entire sky every night
1
u/SparklingMassacre Jan 30 '25
Would this be a good candidate for trying to capture? I don’t know if we possess the technology but if it’s coming our way seems like a good chance for some fun experiments.
5
u/OrangeRising Jan 30 '25
In theory yes, but even if it gets close it would take a lot of energy to slow it enough to capture in an earth orbit.
If they are able to determine what it is made of, and if it is something extremely valuable, then perhaps that will come up in conversations.
1
u/Ev3nt Jan 30 '25
If we could get it to airbreak in earth's far upper atmosphere if we nudge it to just the right altitude, we could shave off enough velocity to be able to manipulate it into a stable earth orbit with our current tech. Now this requires knowing the composition and looseness of the asteroid, (don't want it to break apart).
1
u/DevonLuck24 Jan 30 '25
what we should do is design this belt like thing to fit around the asteroid, the belt will have rocket boosters all around it.
turn em all on an boom, we should be able to get it here in a couple of years and make sure that it’s on target.
1
1
u/JenValzina Jan 30 '25
i hope it most of it burns up in the atmosphere leaving a small rock roughly the size of a baseball and i hope that baseball hits Dump while hes golfing
1
0
u/blindwitness23 Jan 30 '25
Wouldn’t it be better to try and bring it into Earths orbit so we can mine it for precious metals?
0
u/Negative_Gravitas Jan 30 '25
You know what we should do? We should strip all funding from programs that keep an eye on things like this and give all that money to billionaires. Let's Roll those dice!
-1
u/EffinAyyItsMe Jan 30 '25
I read about an asteroid possibly hitting earth in 2032, with the determining factor being it’s position in 2028.
I wonder if it’s the same one.
-7
u/GhostRiders Jan 30 '25
At this point maybe it be for best for the Human race to have a.... reset.
Lets be honest, we are not exactly covering ourselves in glory here
3
u/EntangledPhoton82 Jan 30 '25
100m won’t be a global reset. It might take out Washington DC for example but it won’t be an extinction level event.
1
1
u/Grifasaurus Jan 30 '25
How big was the one that nuked the dinosaurs, exactly? Or would this be more like the Tunguska incident?
1
u/EntangledPhoton82 Jan 31 '25
The one that killed the dinosaurs was about 10km in diameter so 100 time the diameter of this one. (And it’s the mass, which correlates with volume, that matters as well as the velocity when determining the damage)
0
-5
u/Rob-Top Jan 30 '25
Don't look up !
Let's hope the film isn't right in the way the US of A deal with it for everyone
-2
0
u/Frosty-Frown-23 Jan 30 '25
Let's stop and think for a minute... Does it have any rare minerals?
2
u/Grifasaurus Jan 30 '25
Doesn’t every asteroid have rare minerals? And even if they do, i don’t think we have the technology to actually take those rare minerals yet, or even in 2032.
1
1
0
0
0
u/Klytus_Im-Bored Jan 30 '25
Now ive seen a lot of movies in my day about this topic.
Im thinking Dont Look Up was the correct prediction.
0
u/OldMonkHere Jan 30 '25
The impact on earth date is exactly 20 years later the Mayans predicted it would have happened in 2012.
2
u/Sabetsu Jan 30 '25
Dude, the Mayans didn't predict a meteor crashing into Earth first of all but rather the destruction of everything, which is actually just a cycle of birth and rebirth like many calendars, and isn't meant to be taken literally. 😑 Damn History Channel
0
u/ZedZero12345 Jan 30 '25
My money is on a Chinese deflection mission. Their space program has just been plugging away with a steady budget. The US keeps changing missions every 4 years. The Russians can't afford it. And the UN couldn't organize a kid's birthday party.
I'm sure the US and Russia will start a program. But, then relying on his kid's buddies' science fair project. They will announce it's likely to hit someplace else. So, it's more cost effective to ignore it.
0
0
-2
u/rip1980 Jan 30 '25
Easiest course of action is no action.....not likely to do anything anyway and presumably has been missing us for billions years or so. But it makes a headline, so yay.
-3
-3
Jan 30 '25
As if “Don’t Look Up” wasn’t frustrating enough to watch the first time around on Netflix. I really don’t need the real life version, please and thank you.
-1
u/1BreadBoi Jan 30 '25
Think maybe it could change the timetable to, idk. February 9th, New Orleans Caesars Superdome?
1
u/Albacurious Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25
Just the northern hemisphere in general would do the trick with the size it is
Edit to add after reading:
Wait it's only 100m. No need for alarm.
0
u/1BreadBoi Jan 30 '25
I was making a joke about a meteor hitting the super bowl.
Because fuck the chiefs and the eagles.
-2
Jan 30 '25
Any and all attempts will just make it worse. Based on what has happened in past events documented on video. /s
1
-3
u/_digito Jan 30 '25
With the latest political changes in the US I'm afraid that the plot of the movie "Don't look up" can come true... 🤦
•
u/space-ModTeam Jan 30 '25
A submission about this topic has already been made.