Scott Manley did a great video explaining how easily we could redirect it if we found out it was going to hit the earth. We have multiple launch vehicles that can launch a mass at sufficient velocity to nudge it the small amount we need.
Fly safe.
Wait…
We don’t even need to land, drill into the center, drop a nuke and leave behind an American oil driller to detonate it?
I’ll be AJ! Liv Tyler was the main thing from that movie that stuck in my 13 year old brain.
I was disappointed about that, too
I say we still do it, for good luck
I’ve seen Don’t Look Up. Having the technology to carry out a mission like that is the easy part.
In the world of astronomy a billion kilometers is like a missile hitting the neighborhood next to yours. So while there’s a good amount of hyperbole there, it’s still relatively close. You’re still shaken up by it hitting your town. And eventually we will win the lottery and have an astronomical event outside our control devestate the earth. It’s happened before.
Well when they’re saying there’s 2% odds, that’s…probably still higher than you want for the probability of a world ending asteroid strike.
It’s not a world ending strike. It’s 2.3% odds that a city ending strike lands somewhere on earth, most likely in the ocean.
It’s a fraction of a fraction of a % that it’ll hit somewhere with any humans at all, much less a populated city.
And on top of that, we have until 2032 to decide what to do about it, with enough time to potentially redirect it with technology we’ve already demonstrated that works. And if that isn’t enough, we just need one or two more data points to figure out almost exactly where it will hit, and can evacuate the area.
Just like we do for hurricanes and other natural disasters.
This is not an emergency, this is an easy mode try out for a real disaster.
This is not an emergency, this is an easy mode try out for a real disaster.
So it’s going to be horribly fumbled in the stupidest manner possible and will definitely become a worldwide disaster. Got it.
45/47 is going to shoot down anything that tries to divert it, then. Gotcha.
The one caveat is, it’s going to be out of visual range soon and we won’t get any more info for a few years
The caveat to THAT is that we do have historical data, and if we can find one or more images confirmed to be the target, we could narrow it down without additional imaging.
City ending will cause weather chaos and possibly radioactive fallout.
But the funny part is that you think 2032 is enough time. Humans are USELESS when we need to do large international projects to a deadline.
China Sets Up ‘Planetary Defense’ Unit Over 2032 Asteroid Threat
This is just the plot to Don’t Look Up.
There’s a great video by Scott Manly on the subject if you want to learn more. It’d smaller than some nukes we’ve tested, and would land somewhere around the equator between the Atlantic and China if it does hit. It looks surprisingly feasible to deflect, but it’d be a time crunch to put a mission together in only a couple of months. Plus it might deflect it into hitting a different country.
Not high enough odds
The aliens are a nice touch.
They came to tell us Betelgeuse is going to go super nova any day now
Yeah. YR4 will get as close as 106,000km if it misses.
It’s pretty much speculation based on a probability that includes the chance to hit a narrow ring of places along earth’s surface, but we don’t know how dense it is, although we’re relatively sure it’s solid, and whether other debris will change its path before it remerges in 2028. It has no risk factor to us until 2032, just in case people are wondering why reputatable science journalists aren’t completely poopooing the narratives of other outlets. We’ll know what it eats for breakfast by 2029.
Don’t threaten me with a good time
Are we even training the oil drillers yet?
