Can we speed that up a bit?
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Astronomy
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Reading this headline instantly brought a huge smile to my face 😁
Wow this is the most depressing comment section I've ever seen.
I'm team asteroid.
Scientists estimate that 2024 YR4 is between 130 to 300 feet (40 and 90 meters) wide, large enough to cause localized devastation near the impact site. The asteroid responsible for the Tunguska event of 1908, which leveled some 500 square miles (1,287 square kilometers) of forest in remote Siberia, was probably about the same size.
So nothing to worry about
Provided it enters in a similarly uninhabited location.
Sarcasm?
Idk about you but if it levels 1287 km² of forest, I don't think that would exactly be good news for a populated area. On the upper range, it could be equivalent to a 40 megatonne bomb.
Unexpected Waterworld dipstick guy
He's my go-to for posts like these
Panic?
I'm crossing my fingers for the wellbeing of the universe. We're awful.
Worry not, for we are insignificant to the universe.
Right now.
Forever, humanity could only ever conceivably expand so far due to the expansion of the universe, so as far as we know a still insignificant portion of the universe we could colonize.
Until we make some scientific breakthrough which might solve that problem. If there is any possible of course. There is so much we still don't know.
Those are rookie numbers. Gotta pump those numbers up.
That's 0.9% more than the last time I checked. I know those are still really low odds, but we can hope...
One of the things they're doing is calculating what it's orbit would have to be to hit the Earth, and where it would have had to have been on its last orbit to be in that orbit
So they can look at any astronomical images of that part of the sky from then and see if it's in the right place
If they find images of the right part of the sky at the right time and the asteroid is not in it, they know it's not on an orbit that will hit the Earth in 2032
don’t worry, it’ll just be like a small nuke, not a planet killer… (until they update the size estimates)
Which direction do I need to fart to up those numbers?
Am I supposed to panic because it's unlikely to hit? Meanwhile I'm out here wishing for death by meteor.
Yeah I'll take one for the team. I go to the point of impact and when it finaly hits, I'm gonna try to punch it back into orbit.
You don't have to thank me.
But I'm on team meteor
Honestly, at this point, there might be enough of us volunteering to bounce that fucker back to Jupiter. A lot of us will be turned into jam but I think it’s worth the sacrifice.
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I’ll only panic if it misses
Panic?!
You mean throw a welcome party?
Is there any way to speed this up
If we are able to nudge an asteroid, would an asteroid of this size nudge the earth?
Technically the solar system is a multi-body system, and everything nudges everything else, but the mass of the earth is far greater than the mass of the asteroid, to the point that it doesn't matter.
To people having panic attacks, it is not large enough to destroy the earth, and we would have plenty of time to evacuate the impact location. Though let's hope it isn't anywhere with permafrost.
Aw, you think we'll still have permafrost by then.
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i don't like those odds. anything we can do to bump it up to around 75%-100%?
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Sigh. Why can't it be 109%
This place sucks.
It's not big enough to fix anything. If it hits, it won't hit America or Europe
It's in the big nuke scale of energy, enough to do a lot of damage to a small area. Were it to hit a city, the city would need a lot of rebuilding. Were it to hit, few people would be in danger as we will have years of warning. The only people in the impact area would be "storm chasers" travelling to see the impact
Can we launch a satellite at it, perhaps detonate a huge nuke on it to make that chance higher?
Wait, we could just detonate all those huge nukes here right now. Show that stupid asteroid.
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