June 23, 2019
Czech Physicist and String Theorist Lubos Motls pens a rather disturbing essay on the dangers of 2006 QV89, an asteroid that is going to pass the Earth in September.
From the Reference Frame:
Sorry but 1-in-7,000 is very far from zero. Let's look at this beast, 2006 QV89, through Sentry, NASA's mostly automatic system to monitor such objects (Wiki on Sentry).
OK, its mass is 40,000 tons and the diameter is 31 meters.
Without the extra acceleration in the Earth's gravitational field, the speed during the impact would be[Math Processing Error]vinfinity=5.16km/s. However, the Earth's gravity adds some speed that is calculable from the escape velocity [Math Processing Error]vescape=11.2km/s so that the actual speed of the asteroids near the Earth's surface would be the Pythagorean hypotenuse[Math Processing Error]vimpact=vinfinity2+vescape2=12.28km/s. A football stadium could hit the Earth by the speed of 12 kilometers per second. The probability is 1-in-7,000. If you throw a die five times and you get 6-6-6-6-6, the asteroid will hit the Earth on September 9th. So please don't throw any dice if you want to preserve the safety of the people.
The impact kinetic energy is 0.72 megatons of TNT, about 50 Hiroshima bombs. Because it's below 1 megaton, this asteroid cannot make it to the Torino scale at all: it's Torino scale 0 right now. If the probability grew for that asteroid, it would be a routine discovery, scale 1, or the localized destruction, 3 or 8, depending on whether it's certain.
There is no way how this small asteroid could terminate the life on Earth but I still think that you don't want this asteroid to hit a major city.
The mankind should be learning to fight against these threats – because at some moment, larger and more urgent threats of this kind are guaranteed to arrive. To make some experiment, I propose to simply send some ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead against this particular asteroid to break it to pieces. Note that when the asteroid is still far away, it is moving by the speed of 5 km/s or so relatively to the Earth. The ballistic missiles also move by up to 5 km/s. But we don't need to chase the asteroid, it's approaching us. That makes it much easier to achieve the collision.
Motls is a powerhouse intellect and not someone to dismiss lightly. While the chances of Earth being hit are small, they aren't THAT small.
I don't expect any problems, but at some point we are going to take it on the chin from one of these chunks of interplanetary debris. They killed the Dinosaurs, after all. We need to work out a system for dealing with them.
Well, if this thing is going to hit Earth, maybe it can hit the U.N. building? Or land on top of CNN's headquarters? A fellow can dream...
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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