Don’t panic, but an asteroid has a 1.9% chance of hitting Earth in 2032
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/thanks-to-nasa-you-probably-wont-have-to-worry-about-this-asteroid-killing-you/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works198
Comments87https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/thanks-to-nasa-you-probably-wont-have-to-worry-about-this-asteroid-killing-you/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works
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.
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.
But I'm on team meteor
Just in case this comment is not a joke, here's the WHO page on suicide prevention.
Either way, there are a few billion other people on this planet who would rather not die by meteor, thank you very much.
I mean, if I was going to go out, then getting my shit mixed by a meteor is pretty awesome. I'm sure I'll make it on to a few Buzzfeed articles over the next ten or twenty years.
All things considered though, it would indeed be nice if it landed somewhere inconsequential like the ocean; the desert; or Florida.
You jest, but the Kennedy Space Center is in Florida. Putting the world's busiest spaceport out of commission might put a damper on future asteroid deflection missions...
Eh, they can launch from Vandenburg if it's that important. (Or, ya know, Guiana or Baikonur or whatever.)
Assuming any foreign space agency will work with NASA now...
Hell yeah this would be my choice too on preferred way to die. There's something beautifully deterministic about it, a random space rock flying around for millions of years and all my lifes choices and circumstances ending up in standing on the exact spot the meteorite ends its journey. Right in my head. Lovely.
What about hitting the Republican National Convention?
Not to be a doomer but most of us will be dead by then I just hope the meteor takes out any lucky oligarchs still alive in a bunker.
You think "most of us" will be dead in .... 7 years? That's pretty doomer if you ask me.
I just read the ipcc reports and if you read those and don't start a bucket list for the time we have left. I don't know what to tell you. Trust me I don't want to be this way I will fight where I can but I'm going to live my life the same time way a terminal patient lives. Cherish the days we got and if I'm wrong I will eat crow happily with a big smile on my face.
Very doomer. Does lemmy have a "remind me in 7 years" bot? 😅
I'm not even joking. I want this asteroid to hit our planet and make us all go the way of the dinos.
Yes, please!
Panic?!
You mean throw a welcome party?
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.
You mean populate the impact zone because I'm going to watch
Yeah, my dogs will be gone by then so I would absolutely set up a tent close enough to catch it. I'd even bring a baseball glove for shits and giggles.
Aw, you think we'll still have permafrost by then.
It'll be an equatorial impact.
Well that’s disappointing
I'm team asteroid.
Unexpected Waterworld dipstick guy
He's my go-to for posts like these
Underutilized meme format, honestly. It can apply to almost anything in daily life circa 2025.
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.
I’ll only panic if it misses
Provided it enters in a similarly uninhabited location.
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
I science podcast I follow already warned last week that the probability would go up at first as they narrow down its trajectory.
They gave the example of a fan closing, as it gets narrow, the earth represents a bigger percentage of the remaining fan. If you keep closing the fan the Earth eventually will fall outside the fan and the percentage drop to zero.
Unless it turns out that it is dead center.
is there any way to hurry it along?
Jesus is coming back and he's pissed...
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 right now. Show that stupid asteroid.
Nuke the far side of the moon and plunge it into earth. Give the asteroid inadequacy issues.
Wouldn't detonating on the forward side rather than the zenith side be most effective at lowering the perigee of the moon?
all i remember from my ksp days is add more struts
Fixed it for you.
Alas, without the struts, the boosters shall return unto The Lord, leaving thine kerbalnauts Kerbinbound.
You think humanity would be in this spot if the average person had a fucking clue whatsoever?
Tell me you've never played Kerbal Space Program without telling me you've never played Kerbal Space Program.
Project Sundial can still make a comeback.
that was Trump chances in 2016...
should I mention "don't look up" ?
Okay so how big is this meteor then
Exactly one meteor wide. Do you need the height as well?
Is it meteoric?
The meteorest.
It's around 1000 millimeteors
130 - 400 meters
Listed in the article:
How many giraffes is it tho
![email protected]
Fuck, I was hoping for a 10-15 km wide one.
Were it to hit it would hit like a large nuke
Those are better odds than the lottery. Has anyone set up a betting pool yet?
Wow this is the most depressing comment section I've ever seen.
it's just standard "haha self harm funi", it's so easy to post and reliably gets a few upvotes, so it's just a kneejerk response to posts like these.
Yeah, even for Lemmy this is bad. I hope most of them are semi-facetious?
Scott Manley video explaining the subject
Great video, the probability will keep going up till it goes way down. Unless it doesn't.
Is there any way to speed this up
Those are rookie numbers. Gotta pump those numbers up.
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
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.
Which direction do I need to fart to up those numbers?
Can we speed that up a bit?
Eh, Paradise and Silo got me ready for the future.
Reading this headline instantly brought a huge smile to my face 😁
Is there any way to get it here sooner?
I wonder if the "important" people know the chances are higher, so they're going for broke in order to build their escape ship.
Fucking finally goddamn