# Are scientists who track potential hazard astroids able to predict impact locatiation



## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

Just wondering about prepping for that kind of thing. An impact is one of the things that I can see as a real threat along with...

nuclear disaster, disease epidemic, conventional war, global warming, super-massive volcanic eruption, runaway artificial intelligence, high energy solar flare, and gamma ray burst.

I understand one the major risks of such an event, assuming we can survive at all, is the resulting impact winter. But I'm just wondering if it's even possible to predict the location of impact without this object being extremely close already.


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## A Watchman (Sep 14, 2015)

The only thing I ever heard a scientist correctly predict was that each other was wrong.


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

A Watchman said:


> The only thing I ever heard a scientist correctly predict was that each other was wrong.


Yes I understand that. You can find a published paper to support just about anything. But what I'm talking about is what the accepted theory is.

You can find papers that will say that smoking is healthy. But the accepted position of scientists is that it is not, because the papers finding that it is unhealthy far outnumber those that don't. That's what I'm talking about. An estimated impact point that is not generally disputed by scientists, or made by scientists that are experts in this field.


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## Chipper (Dec 22, 2012)

It would be a guess at best. Wouldn't really matter if it was a large impact with the "winter" that will follow. Would you die quickly in a cloud of dust or die slowly struggling to survive. The end is the same.


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

Reasonably short impact winters are survivable, and there's no reason why long ones wouldn't be survivable in theory for someone with enough food in storage, and water wouldn't be in short supply during an impact winter. This is assuming of course that there are no significant injuries or health problems, and a number of other factors. There is a very small temperature decrease during an impact winter. In fact, the biggest threat would be a significant greenhouse effect that would occur afterwards due to the destruction of most of the world's coral reefs, which are an absolutely massive CO2 sink.

As for estimating the location, scientists have a generally good idea about the location and velocity of asteroids, which is all that is needed to predict exactly when it will impact the earth and from which direction, giving you the location of the impact. I just wasn't sure if their tracking was precise enough to have a real idea of the location of impact. 

But after much more searching online it turns out they actually can, in most cases, predict the location of impact with a narrow 95% confidence interval. So definitely better than a guess, it seems. But I didn't know that before asking.


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## Moonshinedave (Mar 28, 2013)




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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

Moonshinedave said:


>


This is a 50 m documentary, and I don't quite want to sit through that. In case anyone else reading this would like to know, they can predict the impact location + or - 2000-3000 km a long time before impact, and can predict the impact location with a far greater accuracy a few weeks to months before impact.


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## Prepared One (Nov 5, 2014)

We will kill each other long before an asteroid impact I suspect. Don't worry about looking up, look around at the people next to you.


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## Moonshinedave (Mar 28, 2013)

wjwprepper said:


> This is a 50 m documentary, and I don't quite want to sit through that. In case anyone else reading this would like to know, they can predict the impact location + or - 2000-3000 km a long time before impact, and can predict the impact location with a far greater accuracy a few weeks to months before impact.


50 minutes, you must not wanna know very bad if it isn't worth 50 minutes of your life? Don't forget about comets, gravitational pull from other celestial bodies can alter their course and become a serious threat. Have a nice day.


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## rstanek (Nov 9, 2012)

I think if we are going to be hit, I doubt we will be told for fear of panic, it will remain a surprise......


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

wjwprepper said:


> ...I understand one the major risks of such an event, assuming we can survive at all, is the resulting impact winter. But I'm just wondering if it's even possible to predict the location of impact without this object being extremely close already.


The size distribution of asteroids is such that getting hit by 'the big one' happens only once every many millions of years. Smaller ones that we can't really track, like the Chelyabinsk (sic) strike in Russia recently, WILL occur and are dangerous enough if they hit a city. But they will not induce climate change.

What should really concern you isn't an asteroid srike, but a comet collision. Those babies come out of the deep solar system unpredictably, attain huge velocities, and can definitely result in pasteurized planet syndrome.


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## Moonshinedave (Mar 28, 2013)

Actually, they did successfully track and predict a smaller meteor hit in 2008, it's the ones coming from the direction of the sun, that can be a bugger.https://www.universetoday.com/27819/meteorites-found-in-africa-from-first-predicted-asteroid-hit/


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## TG (Jul 28, 2014)

They all seem to prefer to hit Siberia, you should be preparing for 2-5 years of fallout Winter just in case.


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

Moonshinedave said:


> 50 minutes, you must not wanna know very bad if it isn't worth 50 minutes of your life? Don't forget about comets, gravitational pull from other celestial bodies can alter their course and become a serious threat. Have a nice day.


I never said anything about it not being worth it. I had a specific question, not a general one about asteroidal impacts. As for comets, there is no difference whatsoever when it comes to tracking. Asteroids and comets differ only in composition, there is no difference in the gravitational effects from other celestial bodies between the two. In the context of this question, 'comet' and 'asteroid' may as well be the same word.



rstanek said:


> I think if we are going to be hit, I doubt we will be told for fear of panic, it will remain a surprise......


Fortunately that's not the case. Astronomy is an extraordinarily popular science around the world, and there are literally hundreds of different asteroid tracking projects around the world. If there was to be an impact, the information would not be something any government could control.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

wjwprepper said:


> I never said anything about it not being worth it. I had a specific question, not a general one about asteroidal impacts. As for comets, there is no difference whatsoever when it comes to tracking. Asteroids and comets differ only in composition, there is no difference in the gravitational effects from other celestial bodies between the two. In the context of this question, 'comet' and 'asteroid' may as well be the same word.


Well, I'm not exactly clear about the context of your question, but asteroids and comets are definitely different in the difficulty of tracking them. Asteroids travel in the same direction around the sun as the earth, they are "always there" so to speak, and visible if you've got a powerful enough telescope. Comets fall in from the oort cloud, on a close-to-hyperbolic orbit, don't become visible usually until they cross Jupiters orbit, and are much faster. Sometimes we see them once, they round the sun and they disappear forever.

Most asteroids are tracked by well funded, large instruments. Most comets are discovered by amateurs.


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## NKAWTG (Feb 14, 2017)

Predict Impact Location? Not until the last minute, and then only a general area such as the east coast.
At present they can't tell you when and where a piece of space junk will land, just a very general time and location.
So if you hear someone say Chicago or San Francisco will be struck by an asteroid in the weeks or months to come, it's bogus.


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## Sasquatch (Dec 12, 2014)

There are two excellent documentaries on this subject. You can probably find them on most media sources. One is called Deep Impact and the other is Armageddon.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

NKAWTG said:


> Predict Impact Location? Not until the last minute, and then only a general area such as the east coast.
> At present they can't tell you when and where a piece of space junk will land, just a very general time and location.
> So if you hear someone say Chicago or San Francisco will be struck by an asteroid in the weeks or months to come, it's bogus.


Fortunately that's not the case. Scientists 100% are able to predict the location of impact of most objects being tracked. The issue would be those that, due to composition or other, do not reflect much sunlight at all and are therefore both difficult to discover and track. However, for usual asteroids, they know the impact location with a very narrow confidence interval at 95%, of course getting more accurate in the months and weeks leading up to the impact.

EDIT: To give an idea of location impact prediction, potentially hazardous asteroid 99942 is an asteroid that has a very small chance of impacting the earth in 2029 (small chance but a chance nonetheless). Scientists have a very good idea of it's mass, location and velocity (relative to earth). This is all that is needed to calculate it's orbit/path, meaning this is all they need to know the location of impact. However, as with all measurements, there is a degree of error. With this in mind, the scientists were able to give a likely point of impact, give or take a couple thousand km, of somewhere in Colombia or Venezuela.

Of course, as time goes on, scientists will be able to refine their measurements of the mass, location, and velocity of PHA 99942, meaning they can refine the prediction of whether or not it will impact earth, and if so, the location of impact.

Just thought I'd throw that in, in case anyone in the future reading this wants to know.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

Sasquatch said:


> There are two excellent documentaries on this subject. You can probably find them on most media sources. One is called Deep Impact and the other is Armageddon.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


Liv Tyler. Yum.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

wjwprepper said:


> Fortunately that's not the case. Scientists 100% are able to predict the location of impact of most objects being tracked. The issue would be those that, due to composition or other, do not reflect much sunlight at all and are therefore both difficult to discover and track. However, for usual asteroids, they know the impact location with a very narrow confidence interval at 95%, of course getting more accurate in the months and weeks leading up to the impact.


That's right. Deorbiting satellites, etc are hard to predict because of the vagaries of the atmosphere. But an asteroid will bore right in, the atmosphere can be ignored at their velocities, it only takes a couple seconds to hit rock.


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

sideKahr said:


> Well, I'm not exactly clear about the context of your question, but asteroids and comets are definitely different in the difficulty of tracking them. Asteroids travel in the same direction around the sun as the earth, they are "always there" so to speak, and visible if you've got a powerful enough telescope. Comets fall in from the oort cloud, on a close-to-hyperbolic orbit, don't become visible usually until they cross Jupiters orbit, and are much faster. Sometimes we see them once, they round the sun and they disappear forever.
> 
> Most asteroids are tracked by well funded, large instruments. Most comets are discovered by amateurs.


Good info I did not know too well. With further research, it also appears that due to the orbits typical of comets, their impact would likely be more direct with an impact angle closer to the normal of the surface, compared to an asteroid which typically would collide with more acute of an angle to the surface tangent (obviously, the comet would cause more damage for this reason).

However it seems that the chances of a comet collision are significantly less than an asteroid collision (of greater than 1k in diameter) which itself supposedly has an extremely low chance of occuring any time in the next 100,000 years

I'm really interested in most of this for my own personal interests. I honestly don't consider such an event to have any chance of occurring in any of our lifetimes.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

wjwprepper said:


> ... I honestly don't consider such an event to have any chance of occurring in any of our lifetimes.


Yeah, me too. I'm just interested in astronomy.


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## Moonshinedave (Mar 28, 2013)

Tungusta, Russia 1908


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

Moonshinedave said:


> Tungusta, Russia 1908


There were no asteroid tracking projects at the time so this is of no consequence to this thread.

The Chelyabinsk meteor, however, is a relevant event due to our ability of tracking asteroids at the time. It was estimated to be about 20 m in diameter which is way too small for scientists to be able to discover or track (with a few exceptions). This is why it occurred when absolutely no one had any idea beforehand.

According to some sources on the internet, anything smaller than 1 km is very hard to track, but some tracking projects are able to track some objects 100 m in diameter and greater


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## Moonshinedave (Mar 28, 2013)

wjwprepper said:


> Good info I did not know too well. With further research, it also appears that due to the orbits typical of comets, their impact would likely be more direct with an impact angle closer to the normal of the surface, compared to an asteroid which typically would collide with more acute of an angle to the surface tangent (obviously, the comet would cause more damage for this reason).
> 
> However it seems that the chances of a comet collision are significantly less than an asteroid collision (of greater than 1k in diameter) which itself supposedly has an extremely low chance of occuring any time in the next 100,000 years
> 
> I'm really interested in most of this for my own personal interests. I honestly don't consider such an event to have any chance of occurring in any of our lifetimes.


Chances of anything of any size occurring are extremely low for the next 100,000 years huh?, please excuse my math but I don't think 1908 was 100,000 years ago, could you imagine if this had happened over a densely populated area?
No, it might not be on anyone's top ten things to be worried about, but to simply say can't happen in our lifetime? I am begining to detect a sorta smugness to your posts, at first figured you was young, then I figured you are stupid, now, I think you are both, in any case, you are not worth the effort to post a reply.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

wjwprepper said:


> ...According to some sources on the internet, anything smaller than 1 km is very hard to track, but some tracking projects are able to track some objects 100 m in diameter and greater


Oh, man, that ain't right. The big antenna at Goldstone has radar images of 2014 JO25 that resolved features as small as 25 feet, when it passed by 5 times further away than the moon.









Big Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Caught on Radar as It Zooms by Earth (Video)


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

Moonshinedave said:


> Chances of anything of any size occurring are extremely low for the next 100,000 years huh?, please excuse my math but I don't think 1908 was 100,000 years ago, could you imagine if this had happened over a densely populated area?
> No, it might not be on anyone's top ten things to be worried about, but to simply say can't happen in our lifetime? I am begining to detect a sorta smugness to your posts, at first figured you was young, then I figured you are stupid, now, I think you are both, in any case, you are not worth the effort to post a reply.


Read a bit closer. The chances of an asteroid *greater than 1 k in diameter* impacting the earth in the next 100,000 years is very low. And.. what the hell does the Tungusta event in 1908 have to do with that? That asteroid is estimated to be far, far smaller than 1 k in diameter. If it wasn't, you and I wouldn't be on this forum right now.

What the hell? You notice a smugness to my post? What's your problem? This is a simple conversation. If you think you detect a "smugness" in my post, I think the issue is on your end, not mine.

Holy shit I've never seen someone so triggered by reading a simple discussion. You say I'm stupid, but in a single post you've displayed an incredible amount of stupidity, and your inability to read.


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

sideKahr said:


> Oh, man, that ain't right. The big antenna at Goldstone has radar images of 2014 JO25 that resolved features as small as 25 feet, when it passed by 5 times further away than the moon.
> 
> View attachment 46858
> 
> ...


From multiple sources I read that it would be hard to track things less than 1 k. But, as I'm sure you can tell, I'm no expert, merely someone who finds this stuff interesting and I only get all of my info from online which often isn't very reliable

EDIT I googled that thing and found an interesting update from April of this year regarding it's size, if you google JO25, the very first link is an article that says each lobe is approximately 640 meters (I assume in diameter but it doesn't say).

I get that it's just an example though.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

Isn't that a crazy looking thing @wjwprepper ? I wonder if the two lobes are rigidly connected, or if it's two asteroids that bumped together and stuck?


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## wjwprepper (Jun 6, 2017)

sideKahr said:


> Isn't that a crazy looking thing @wjwprepper ? I wonder if the two lobes are rigidly connected, or if it's two asteroids that bumped together and stuck?


No idea. I should have gone into astronomy


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## TG (Jul 28, 2014)

Sasquatch said:


> There are two excellent documentaries on this subject. You can probably find them on most media sources. One is called Deep Impact and the other is Armageddon.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


hahaha That reminds me, it's been a while since I watched these.


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## TG (Jul 28, 2014)

Moonshinedave said:


> Tungusta, Russia 1908











See? Always Siberia lol


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## Sasquatch (Dec 12, 2014)

TG said:


> View attachment 46906
> 
> 
> See? Always Siberia lol


I think the meteors hitting Siberia are proportionate with her size rather than it being a grudge.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


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## TG (Jul 28, 2014)

No kidding 



Sasquatch said:


> I think the meteors hitting Siberia are proportionate with her size rather than it being a grudge


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