No big bang: Asteroid will miss Mars

What a relief!

They really had me worried, weren't you?

Ya, they can't find them until the last moment and then don't have the data to predict. Hmm you would think that a system could do it fairly cheap. Data collection would be the key and an algorithm to process it.

Brad

<"PASADENA, Calif. - The possibility of a collision between Mars and an approaching asteroid has been effectively ruled out, according to scientists watching the space rock.">

That is some ruler, perhaps we could get the dimensions of it, plus where the fulcrum was.

So the news is good, I'm re-packing my suitcase, as I shall take my long-overdue holidays on the Red Planet, after all.

Kind Regards....

Guys, this is SAD news not good news. Don't you know what they could have learned from that? Watching the blast cloud would have told them things about Mars we cannot find out without actually going there with manned ships and making a base there.

We are missing the spectacle of the millennium here.

Bummer! Now I am going to have to find another topic for my next MASU on Meteors blog.

Mind you, I will definitely have my telescope pointed at Mars on the 30^th January just in case that 1 in 10,000 chance comes off.

Same here, cannot trust them

How come they don't know if it is going to hit but they know that if it does, the rover is safe?

• How come they don't know if it is going to hit but they know that if it does, the rover is safe?

The rovers are on opposite sides of Mars so it would be fairly difficult to wipe out both and in any case it's a fairly small asteroid, about 150 metres across so the energy isn't that great. On the other hand Mars's atmosphere is very thin so it will not slow down the asteroid that much before impact.

It's sort of a pity that it isn't going to hit Mars as it would have been a great wake up call for governments around the world to start taking the tracking of near Earth asteroids seriously. NASA covers the northern hemisphere fairly closely but nobody is looking at the southern hemisphere with anything like the level the northern skies are monitored. The Australian government was approached over a decade ago to a jointly funded venture but they deemed that it wasn't worth the cost and sank the whole concept.

It's something of a serious worry as at the moment we have at best a 50% chance of detecting an asteroid that could hit Earth.

Detecting and tracking is one thing; redirecting is another.

With technology for the latter, we could potentially protect ourselves on one hand, and have directed this one towards Mars for the light show on the other. Practice might even be a good idea.

Just a thought.

Nice one for the future perhaps. They only detected this one in November last year so not too much time to achieve that in I am afraid.

As N&P said in #9 a little practice might be a good thing for when we really need it.

Lets just do a little target practice on asteroids that aren't a menace. You know, practice makes perfect.

However, we sure don't want to knock a good sized one into an undesirable trajectory.

No but if you could park one in say L4 you could mine and experiment with it.

At 10,000.US Federal reserve dollars per pound a 1/4th mile metallic asteroid is worth approximately 48,170,417,148,610,730.00USD or 4/3Πr³ x 500lb per ft³ x $10,000. and of that it is estimated to contain 20 metric tons of the gold and platinum group.

Sounds like the makings of the first spaceship yard.

2bits from

Brad

I must agree that practice is something I would like to see carried out. There have been a couple of near misses over the past few years that we didn't detect till after they had passed Earth passing between us and the Moon. If we did spot one on a collision course there is a good chance that we wouldn't have that much time to react.

If it were detected early enough and I'm talking several orbits prior to impact, then a gentle nudge in the right direction is all that is needed to change it's orbit enough of miss. After all it only has to miss by as little as 100 km and in astronomical terms that on a similar par to the hairs on a gnats bum.

On the other hand if the time frame was too short then scientists are not quiet sure what we could do. The concept of blowing it to pieces with a thumping great thermo nuclear device may actually make things worse. If the explosion was not energetic enough to overcome the asteroid's gravity all it would achieve would be to turn it from a single bullet into a shot gun style blast. It would also make trying to do anything else with it pretty much impossible. If you tried to push on a pile of rubble it just changes shape and doesn't go anywhere.

Anyway, considering the possible consequences of an asteroid impacting Earth it is something that needs to be worked on well in advance. However, I'm afraid politicians and the powers to be won't do anything about it until it is absolutely essential and most likely too late. That's why this asteroid missing Mars is a great pity. Such an impact would definitely be a big wake up call for the powers to be and get it into their thick short term goal oriented heads that this is a very real and serious problem that needs to be treated accordingly.

They already know what to do which is an explosion in front of the object and let the shock wave slow the object down. Any decrease in speed will result in a shorter orbital turning circle which in turn causes the object to take a different path and will miss earth.

Problems arise when the new orbit gets more refined with the plane of our rotation which would turn the object into a repeated threat.

All is slightly academic anyway as so far we have never found one early enough to even call the president on his red phone.

One thing tricky about this is that blast waves are only a through the air phenomenon like sound. At best, if the explosive is not at least on the surface the object, it would only see limited explosive debris spray, and some heat.

As suggested, it is necessary to change the energy of the object, and not, as Masu warns, to simply change its form.

Changing the objects energy with an explosive is a significant engineering problem involving required explosive energy, placement, object material characteristics, planned material ejection if any, etc.

So, while hopefully the odds are with us, experimental validation at some point would seem to still be in order.

Most definitely agree with experimentation. Not only good for practise but bound to be a spectacle as well In other words please let them do it on my watch!

I believe it was Isaac Asimov (read the story as a pre-teen, so it's kinda dimmed) who wrote a sci-fi (how he hated THAT abbreviation!) tale about redirecting an asteroid with high thorium content into a mineable orbit. Did it by putting a crew on the surface with small thermonuclear devices to repeatedly nudge the orbit at critical moments.

We would need like 5 years lead time.....take them that long to argue whether it will hit, where it will hit, who's responsable for the cost of the project, then letting the bid out to be granted to the lowest bidder, more meetings to fiqure how to cover cost overruns, then give it a luanch date to have it delayed numerous times for weather, cracks in the foam, a leaky fuel line, AND then maybe it would launch only to miss because one team used standard and the other team used metric.

NASA is that you?

Now they are trying to bring back the Saturn V after they cried how bad it was, to get the Space shuttle.

Politicians: Who's in your wallet?

Love for them to prove me and you wrong but we dare not hold our breaths.

Brad

As far as I am concerned even if it hits mars with the power of 1000 atom bombs with the resulting mushroom and a light that shines bright for a month, I would still not see a thing as I think I have 3 mile of clouds over my house PERMENANTLY!

And it starts to aggravate me

There is however something else of interest.

It may not hit or threaten anything as such but it is an almost once in a lifetime to observe this kind of thing.

A day before the predicted flyby of WD5 2007, there is an even closer flyby of TU24 2007 with Earth!

Now that is weird, hundreds of years nothing comes past of worthy interest and BANG, we have 2 in the space of a few months. Bet David Icke is going to have a field day with explaining how they all orchestrated this heavenly stage play to mask something big they have planned.....or something

Anyways, on 29 Jan there is a flyby of this 400 meter wide chunk of ice and rock which passes within 1.4 lunar distances away from us or 0.0038 AU.

Orbit details here.

What baffled me was a report that said the US military is playing it safe and backs up all sensitive data and even switches delicate equipment off for the night in case it gets interfered with???? Magnetic storm interference perhaps?

I really cannot make that one out correctly but hey, I am no rocket scien........HHmmmm donuts.

It will fly through Cassiopeia ( I think) and should reach magnitude 10 or 11 which will make it visible for medium sized telescopes IF WE HAVE CLEAR SKIES!

The magnetic poles are not always behaving very well. It appears that they have changed their position in the past, millions of years ago, with dramatic effects.

The theory is not understood very well but the fact we now have an anomaly in our magnetic field in our southern hemisphere, is regarded by some as an indication that it might be about to change again. If the field swaps true north to south in a matter of days, it would probably be ok except for all our instrumentation that relies on it.

If it decides to go cock eyed and take months, it would mean that our atmosphere could get stripped of it's protective properties which would leave us all exposes to the sun's bad rays.

Without further scientific evidence I take this one with a big lump of salt (you know that expression where you are? Means you don't trust or believe it fully)

Replying to two posts,

"...what would a rock like that have that could harm equipment ..."

Hard to say, unless it's some unusual electro/physical/chemical property (magnetism/radioactivity/etc.). Or maybe we only thought we were kidding about...

As to this post, I think the reference was originally to the sun's magnetic poles, not ours. However, our north/south poles apparently have swapped periodically over the eons. I don't know how good the evidence is for how long we should anticipate the change to take, and I don't know if any of the likely symptoms are present. I have my doubts that the effects would be serious apart from navigation, and if the swap was accurate enough, the compasses would still work, just have to rotate the N-S dial 180° to read them. Maps might need a bit of adjusting, but all relative positions would remain stable.

Ok, like EnviroMan's post #56, this is in response to several posts.

There is no question about it the Earth's magnetic poles have reversed on numerous occasions over the known geological history. The evidence can be seen in numerous places but one of the most pronounced effects can be seen in the Mid-Atlantic Rift where the plates are moving apart. When the magma that is extruded from the earths mantle hardens the ferrous elements in it align themselves with whatever magnetic field is present. As you move out from the rift the alignment of the magnetic field in the igneous rocks switches back and forth on a fairly regular basis.

The next point I would like to make is the Earth's magnetic field is not exactly aligned with the Earth's axis of rotation and both the north and south magnetic poles wander about moving by up to 15 km in a single year. If you wish to find true north using a magnetic compass you need to apply what is referred to as the declination. The declination varies depending on your location and the movement of the poles over time. The image below shows the declination or angle you need to add to a magnetic bearing in order to convert it to a true bearing.

Nearly all maps are drawn wit reference to true north and if the map is worth more than toilet paper it will have the declination and or lines of declination stated clearly.

The time that it takes for the Earth to swap poles is pretty much an unknown property. There are numerous models that have been developed over the years to describe the Earth's magnetic field and the change over time varies from a few hours to millennia depending on the model in use.

However, one thing that is known is that the lack of a magnetosphere could be very disadvantageous to all life on the surface. The magnetosphere is vitally important and shields us from the dangerous effects of CME, solar radiation, magnetic transients and a whole host of other things including the ozone layer which protects us from all sorts of nasty radiation. The loss of the magnetic poles would also pretty much wipe out all forms of RF communication and probably the only form of communication that could be guaranteed would be fiber optics. Mind you that's if the variations in magnetic flux didn't fry all the electronics in the first place.

Currently nobody knows when or how rapid the next terrestrial magnetic pole reversal will be but the one thing that scientists agree on is that it has happed before and will almost certainly happen again.

In answer to EnviroMan's for sites the following links may prove informative.

• Solar Cycle: Wikipedia
• Solar Physics: NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre
• Solar Cycle Update: NASA

Probably the best place to go is the NASA Home Page and then use their search facilities to find information on solar cycles or any space related topic for that matter. I would also suggest being weary of sites that are not affiliated with a reputable organization like NASA or the Astrophysics Departments at larger well known Universities.

Yes I know about CME but this report was not linked to that at all, it clearly stated that the military was playing safe with regards to this passing lump of about 400 meters wide. They also have dedicated several telescopes to observe it for a few days now and some after in order to ascertain correct orbit data and contents. They know very little about this one except that if it would hit, it would be difficult to even imagine what would be the result. The mars "impact" object is only 60 meter across and that would have wiped out a 100 mile diameter spot, which is Greater London Area for comparison. This lump has 50 times the energy so the devastation would be unimaginable.

Digressing a bit, what would a rock like that have that could harm equipment as such? It all sounds strange to me.

Definitive proof has been established that this object is now not on any further collision course with any other planet for the next 100 years or so.

I don't know where Mars is here but the circle is the dot.

The other dots are background radiation interference and the stretched images are stars as they moved at a different rate than the asteroid.

They calculated it's proper orbit now for at least 100 years and they think we will not even be seeing it again, let alone come near us.