we're all gonna die!

[DJDD]

conspiracy theorists start your engines.
It's a 1 in 450 chance of collission not 1 in 45,000.
Why did they lie to us? hah!

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/...025230056.html

[Calin]

A 13yo from Germany corrects NASA ! Between 'crazy nappy-wearing astronauts' and their inability to calculate maths, it's a wonder they ever got off the ground.

I like the 'guess' work calculations in the story .... if per chance the asteroid hits a man-made satellite, "this will push the asteroid on a direct trajectory to Earth, next time round" ??? What the ... ??? Why wouldn't it just as likely push it the other way, or into the Moon or the Sun .. sounds like a bit of sensationalist game playing and a whole lot of 'what ifs', hardly science news ... and for a school science project. That's really cool He should get a tacho-bell prize for that !!

Time to start on the bunker as the skies will be a tad obscure after 2036 Anybody want to buy some astro gear around 2036 and a bit .....

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Yeah, right. Is it an asteroid or piece of neutron star? Assuming that the offending asteroid is a cube 320m on sides and it weights 200 billion tones it would have to be composed of material weighting 6103.5 tonnes per cubic metre. Iron is about 7.8 t/m3.

[astroron (Ron)]

Not into maths, but most of the satellites are within the the 10,000km distance from earth ,only the spy and geosynchronous satellites are at about 36,000kms, and there are nowhere near 40,000 of them.
Ron

[renormalised (Carl)]

A factor of 10^3 larger than it actually is....typical journo stuff up of any science which MAY have been in the original article.

[erick (Eric)]

449 chances out of 450 of no collision. Yep, I can live with those odds!

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by erick

449 chances out of 450 of no collision. Yep, I can live with those odds!

yep buts its that odd number that gets you

[goober (Doug)]

One in a million shots come off 9 times out of 10.

Still, anyone want to hook up in 28 years and charter a boat in Bermuda? Could be interesting!

[astroron (Ron)]

Fred Watson from the AAT seemed impressed with this kid.
There was a good interview with Fred and he seemed to agree with the prognosis, but with same more information added.
Ron

[Kokatha man]

Oh - I thought this thread said "diet." Had visions of WW's hooking up with AA's to create something - or maybe that should read destroy/reduce something.....and would we end up with AW-AW's or WA-WA's?

Anyway, my misinterpretation: but hardly any less idiotic than this thread's subjest (not a typo) matter. Pity, I could lose a couple of kilos.....

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by goober

One in a million shots come off 9 times out of 10.

Still, anyone want to hook up in 28 years and charter a boat in Bermuda? Could be interesting!

Nothing will happen...it'll land in the "triangle" and disappear

[middy]

Yes, if the asteroid hits a satellite it will be deflected onto a collision course with the Earth ..... just like when a bird flies into the side of a moving bus and the bus gets deflected onto the pavement and through a shop window.

[Kokatha man]

Originally Posted by goober

One in a million shots come off 9 times out of 10.

Err....?!? Must be the low level of maths education I received....!

[fringe_dweller]

yes yes we will all die sometime, hasnt been a successful avoidance of it yet to my knowledge?

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

I wonder if anyone has actually plotted this thing out and the number of variables and permutations? The story seems pretty sure of itself when it says that IF the asteroid POSSIBLY hits ONE of the 40,000 satellites that ARE MOVING at 3km/s, but probably DONT intersect the path of the Asteroid, THEN IT WILL DEFINITELY RETURN TO EARTH 7 YEARS LATER and CRASH into the ATLANTIC OCEAN????????

Who are they trying to bull**** here?

So a 13 yr old German kid has done ALL the maths of EVERY option of the Asteroid of that size hitting EVERY option of satellite in the 40,000 that supposedly are out there and then calculated EVERY impact trajectory of the asteroid and EVERY one of the 40,000 satellites using ALL their details of mass, size and speed (which he looked up in his Encyclopaedia of Everythingica) and then worked out that without a doubt that the asteroid would THEN return to Earth 7 years later and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean AFTER the impact had taken place, the asteroid went back out (now in an UNSTABLE orbit) past the massive BIG satellite we call the MOON, past the GAS GIANTS with all of their MASSIVE gravitational pull and then back again towards Earth and then toddle back through the atmosphere WITHOUT burning up to cause untold damage to life as we know it? (in the 1 in 450 scenario).

OH THE HUMANITY!!!!

Sounds like a 1 in 1 chance of being a story beaten up by some dip**** reporter who probably bought a lemon of an American car and now owns a BMW, listens to Kraftwerk and wears a Tag Heuer watch and now loves everything Germanic and wants to flip the finger at NASA again by using the old : "German rocket scientists build Moon Rockets for the USA" line.

My opinion is that its all a crock of S%#t!!!

There, next time I will tell you how I REALLY feel.

Chris

[badchap]

The media can sometimes get excited. I've just been having a read of this -

http://cosmos4u.blogspot.com/2008/04...ence-fair.html

[AlexN]

I've seen this movie... Robert duvall and morgan freeman were exceptionally good.....


news media = (2005 hollywood movie / a few sensationalists)+(German mathwiz kid / a steaming pile of horse crap)

[avandonk]

I think the last time a schoolboy showed up the professional astronomers was when he pointed out the Universe was getting 'lighter' all the time as all the stars were converting mass to energy.

I agree that the claim that a collision with a satellite would increase the chances of a hit down the track is totally wrong. It is far more likely to decrease the chances.

There are far to many assumptions to even start to get a meaningful estimate.

We would be better off to use Baldricks cunning plan. You know how in war there is a bullet with your name on it. Just put your name on another bullet as the chances of two bullets with your name on them is very low. So catch an asteroid and write EARTH on it!

Bert

[madtuna (Steve)]

German whizzkid got it wrong: NASA


Thursday Apr 17 09:17 AEST
It was an incredible tale of a German schoolboy spotting a miscalculation by the US space agency, proving the chances of an asteroid hitting the Earth were higher than initially believed.
But the amazing story of the whizzkid versus the space bureaucracy turned out to be wrong, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has said.
The agency, sounding a bit like a weary math teacher, said its figures are correct when it comes to the asteroid Apophis, not the boy's.
"We stand by our numbers," NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown told AFP.
The agency that oversees space shuttle missions and unmanned space probes issued a statement after the German newspaper Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported on Tuesday that student Nico Marquardt had calculated there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth.
He argued in his project for a regional science competition that scientists at NASA had got it wrong when they estimated the chances of a collision at only 1 in 45,000.
But experts at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California had no doubts about their calculations, Brown said.
The Near-Earth Object Program Office "has not changed its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036," Brown said in a statement.
And the newspaper's account was also inaccurate when it described NASA telling the European Space Agency that the German student's calculations were correct, Brown said.
"Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate," the statement said.
The student's estimates were reportedly based on the asteroid hitting a satellite in 2029.
"However, the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote," it said.
While the German newspaper article had spread across the Internet, NASA said the probability of Apophis colliding with Earth remained at 1 in 45,000.

[Alchemy (Clive)]

chuckle chuckle, the prediction of asteroids is not bad but...... no-one can predict all the tiny forces that come into play throughout a 20 year series of orbits, all these things are a best GUESS type scenario. Sunlight, varying solar winds, gravitational pulls from other planets asteroids etc it will be near in that time.... NO-ONE can figure it all out to that level of degree as there are too many unknown variables.

if were going to get wacked we will get about 3 weeks notice thats it.

mind you fringe dweller got it right... were all going to die sometime.. might as well take the planet with us.