NASA refine asteroid Apophis' path towards Earth - world (probably) won't now end in 2036

Originally posted by Copernicus

I would focus on 2010 and 2011 if I were you.

Originally posted by Le Colonel
according to your source it was a 4 in a million chance, not 1 in 4 million. so basically it went from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 250,000

Originally posted by Essan

Personally I've been looking forward to the impact, reckoning that as I'll be 70 in 2036 it'll be fun to see it before I die ... Oh well.

Originally posted by Essan
Looks like all those books planned to be published in 2013 saying how Nostradamus, Mother Shipton, the Bible, Zeta Reticulians and the bloke you met in the pub last week all predicted the world will end in 2029 and/or 2036 may have to be re-written .....




Mind, a 1 in 4 million chance of impact is still better odds than of me winning the lottery (if I ever entered it!) and I'm sure the coincidence of both by-passes occuring on April 13th will still help spawn plenty of pulp reading material.....

Detection of A Potential Hazard

When high-precision radar meaurements were included in a new orbit solution, a potentially very close approach to the Earth on March 16, 2880 was discovered to exist. Analysis performed by Giorgini et al. and reported in the April 5, 2002 edition of the journal Science ("Asteroid 1950 DA's Encounter With Earth in 2880: Physical Limits of Collision Probability Prediction") determined the impact probability as being at most 1 in 300 and probably even more remote, based on what is known about the asteroid so far. At its greatest, this could represent a risk 50% greater than that of the average background hazard due to all other asteroids from the present era through 2880, as defined by the Palermo Technical Scale (PTS value = +0.17). 1950 DA is the only known asteroid whose hazard could be above the background level.

Understanding the Risk

However, these are maximum values. The study indicates the collision probability for 1950 DA is best described as being in the range 0 to 0.33%. The upper limit could increase or decrease as we learn more about the asteroid in the years ahead.

Expressing the risk as an interval is necessary because not enough is known about the physical properties of the asteroid. For example, radar data suggests two possible directions for the asteroid's spin pole. If one pole is correct, solar radiation acceleration could significantly cancel thermal emission acceleration. Collision probability would then be close to the maximum 0.33%. If the spin pole is instead near the other possible solution, there would be little chance of collision. There are other factors also.

The situation is similar to knowing you have a coin that is biased so one side will land up 80% of the time -- but you don't know which side. You can only say that when you flip the coin, the chance of heads is 80% or 20%

Originally posted by rugbyguitargod
reply to post by AlBeMet

---

which one? Apophis or
? you are right, either way, if one of them impacted the moon, it would destroy it, causing fragments from the moon much larger than the asteroid itself to impact the earth.

Originally posted by shade454
About the 1950 DA impact, why even worry about an impact that's not due for almost 900 years?

First off, since the Apophis calculation went from being 1:45000 to 1:250000 and its only about 25 years away, who's to say they won't recalculate it from 1:300 to 1:1billion by the time 2880 rolls around.

And second, assuming we preserve our way of life and scientific achievements until then, we'll PROBABLY have some way of destroying it before it gets remotely close to our planet (or any other planet we might colonize by then )

Originally posted by Schmidt1989
reply to post by Codazzle

---

Haha I liked that.

Am I the only one who noticed that the original poster said, "...the world will end in 2029 and/or 2036..." and thought, How can the world end in 2029 AND 2036?