Are we going to die in 2036?

Question

An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.

Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.

"It's not just Apophis we're looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue," Schweickart, a member of the Apollo 9 crew that orbited the moon in March 1969, told an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco.

Answer 1

Odds-making is a peculiar science. The last serious asteroid strike documented was in Siberia in 1906, but the rest of the world scarcely noticed. There is good evidence that life on Earth was nearly destroyed by a meteor strike millions of years ago. So are we due for a big one or is it so far, so good?

Dangerous asteroids are fortunately rare. Smaller rocks can do great damage but they aren't world-killers. Among the ones that pose a major threat, we are now beginning to pay attention because we are finally becoming capable of tracking these things. The exceptions are rocks with extremely long orbital periods or unpredictable rogues from outside the solar system. There's nothing we can do about those.

Among the predictable threats, there is still uncertainty. To predict a threat, one needs the precise masses and orbits of the Earth, the asteroid and any other bodies that might exert an influence on them. The Earth and the asteroid will likely have different orbital periods so the collision won't take place for many cycles. One day Earth is at the intersection, 5 months later it's the asteroid, then the Earth 7 months after that, then the asteroid 8 months later, etc. Each time, the path may be slightly different because the asteroid passed near Mars or the Sun. The Earth presents a target 8000 miles wide for a body travelling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. It's easy to miss. There's up to a quarter-million mile gap between Earth and the Moon, so even a near miss might go unnoticed.

But the orbital mechanics are a headache. All those factors so far out in the future, can you really predict a direct hit? Several have been made, then retracted after reconsideration. Is it math or politics? You don't want to create a false panic any more than you want to ignore a genuine threat, but how can you be sure?

Even if the math conclusively showed a head-on at a specific date, what do you do? Blowing it up will create a debris field nearly as devastating. You could strap rockets to it, the earlier the better, but how powerful and which direction? Or you could try maneuvering another asteroid near its path to influence it. But there are too many variables to produce an exact effect. You'll have to recalculate everything once you understand the new orbit. You'll probably be luckier but you could inadvertently turn a different near miss into a direct hit. What goes around comes back around.

The optimum goal would be to change the asteroid's orbit so it never intersected Earth's, but that may take more directed energy than we can produce in one place. We need to identify the most likely threats and brainstorm ways to effectively change astronomically powerful vectors without making things worse. But we aren't there yet. We likely won't be able to make any difference by 2036. (We can't even agree on the dangers of global warming!) The odds are still on our side, but it may take a very close call or even a small disaster to motivate us to improve the odds.

Answer 2

dear asem:

who ever rusty schweicharts bio person was at NASA, really didn't know much.

Rusty's crew in Apollo 9 never left earth orbit. they tested the lunar lander and its function while circling the earth. Rusty's crew never went to the moon, even for an orbit.

and no, I'm not really worried about an asteroid hitting the earth in 2036. I'm going to sit on my porch with a good bottle of wine, and watch it all end . If we were to wait for the UN to get off its collective *** to do anything, we are going to be hurting.

Answer 3

Human beings have been around for quite some time without being wiped out by asteroids. That being said asteroids are probably the biggest risk to organic beings for mass extinctions.

Personally, I think we're going to wipe ourselves out far before any asteroid does. When you see how close we've come to nuclear war in just the last 100 years (a tiny speck on the timeline of the earth), I'd say we're doomed.

Answer 4

there had been a threat of comets and asteroids several times to collide with earth but each time God almighty helped us and our planet was saved. when an observatory predicts that a low pressure is advancing towards us likely to cause heavy rain, but before reaching to us, God changes its direction. So, we should trust in God and seek his shelter.
Once a scientist said if one closes his eyes and fires towards sky, there is more risk to kill a flying sparrow than this collision

Answer 5

I'll be 91. If I'm still around it will be as good a way to go as any. I'll sit out in the garden with a beer and watch it happen.

Answer 6

No. What part of "1 in 45,000" do you not understand?

Answer 7

Dec 12 2012 according to the Maya, cosmic events will trigger the end.... there is more on History channel. ................................ If not that, or the next , we'll wait for That "rock".

Answer 8

a) blooming hope not
b) the pyramid predicticts 21?? i cant remember exactly and the pyramis has predicted every thing from wars to famine and has been right!!!!

Answer 9

alot of us wont even make it that far.