[BuyCheapest]

I guess they are afraid of another Tunguska event or worse (human extinction). Since the oceans and Russia occupy so much space on earth, it makes some sense for Russia to want to be the most proactive although everybody should be on board if the threat is legit. We'll probably be all dead by 2036 anyway or wishing we were dead.

Btw...I wonder if France likes to be compared to a rock that may destroy the planet

Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a possible catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia's space agency said on Wednesday.

"We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done" to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.

"We are talking about people's lives," Perminov was quoted by news agencies as telling the radio station.

"Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed," he said.

The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France.

Russian scientists mull asteroid plan

[disappointment2]

Dude how are we going to get Bruce Willis to hang on till 2036?

I kind of smell an ex-soviet scientific establishment looking for something to guarantee work in a post-Cold War environment, myself. NASA's 4 in a million ain't bad.

[disappointment2]

Also the rock is only 350 meters or about a 1/4 of mile. The area it would devastate if it hit is about the size of France.

[ZZipZZipe]

Dude how are we going to get Bruce Willis to hang on till 2036?

Wouldn't need him. By that time Hollywood would have remade the movie two more times.

[Caunnysup]

plus, the CGI work would have been outsourced to Bollywood anyways...


BTW, a lot of ex-Soviet scientific/military guys probably got bought by the Chinese in all their reverse-engineering and cloning factories. Since the early 1990s, China has been able to build/reverse engineer some interesting fighter aircrafts, for example. Russians may also have sold the Chinese some of their thrust vectoring aircraft engines too.

Chengdu J-10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[GAGNAPPEAPH]

This is what has Russia somewhat worried...


A computer model, that's nowhere near accurate (because the orbit of the asteroid is a calculation, not entirely as precise as it could be w/o a tracking device on the rock).

If the asteroid fell into Earth on the 2036 encounter these are the estimated landing points depending on where the Earth is rotated. As I said before, it's not exactly an accurate portrayal of what will happen that far out. They're using orbital simulation models. More precise information like how dense the object, if the rock is rotating, and what angle, are there any other objects nearby it might pass by to make slight changes in the rock's orbit... and like 10,000 other variables:

[mv37afnr]

This is what has Russia somewhat worried...


A computer model, that's nowhere near accurate (because the orbit of the asteroid is a calculation, not entirely as precise as it could be w/o a tracking device on the rock).

If the asteroid fell into Earth on the 2036 encounter these are the estimated landing points depending on where the Earth is rotated. As I said before, it's not exactly an accurate portrayal of what will happen that far out. They're using orbital simulation models. More precise information like how dense the object, if the rock is rotating, and what angle, are there any other objects nearby it might pass by to make slight changes in the rock's orbit... and like 10,000 other variables:

As long as it happens with cool Dark Side of the Moon music, I don't care where the damned thing hits.

YouTube - Asteroid Impact (HD)

[betraaaus]

Anywhere in the Pacific and that'd be one big Tsunami...

[kasandrasikl]

Of course, the news tends to be a little alarming...

In Russia, Apophis impacts YOU! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about actual asteroid impacts — I think about them, but the odds of a big impact are too low to panic about. We should be concerned, and absolutely we should take steps in case we find The Big One headed our way. But I sometimes wonder if I should worry more about our reactions to potential impacts. Or, more specifically, Russia’s reaction.

Apophis is an asteroid, a chunk of rock over 200 meters across orbiting the Sun. The problem is, the orbit of Apophis crosses that of the Earth. If the two are in the same place at the same time, well, bang! It’s big enough to blow up with the force of several of hundred megaton bombs. That’s not enough to wipe out life on Earth, but it’s certainly enough to do a whole lot of damage, and if it happens over a city… well.

In April 2029 Apophis will pass within a few thousand kilometers of the Earth’s surface. It won’t hit, but Earth’s gravity will change the orbit of the asteroid. If the asteroid passes us at just the right distance — in a region of space a few hundred meters across called the keyhole — it’ll swing back in seven years and hit us.

We don’t know the exact orbit of Apophis well enough to know for sure how close it’ll pass in 2029; we can only assign probabilities. The odds of it hitting the keyhole are pretty low, though: about one in 250,000 (downgraded from 1:45,000 recently as better orbital determinations were made).

Enter the Russian space agency. Anatoly Perminov, the head of the agency, was recently quoted in an AP news article that he wants to consider putting together a mission to move it out of the way, making sure it doesn’t hit. I’m all for that! What worries me is this quotation:

Without mentioning NASA findings [of downgraded odds of an impact], Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. “I don’t remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032,” Perminov said.

Now, I know he’s not an astronomer, but he does run a national space agency. I’d feel a whole lot better about his organizing a meeting to deflect this rock if a) he had the date right (it cannot hit before 2036, and the odds then are very low), and 2) he could actually, y’know, name his source.

Yikes.

Now, maybe he was misquoted by the AP. Or maybe it was out of context. And again, I don’t expect the head of the space agency to be on top of every detail; it could simply be an honest mistake with the date. But I am not particularly happy when someone in that position bases a decision at least partly because he heard it from some guy he knows but can’t remember who or when.

Did I say yikes before? Yeah.

I do think governments should take this seriously. I also know that as of right now, NASA is not taking this seriously enough. Perhaps if Russia gets this ball rolling, and other countries (like India, China, and Japan) join in, then NASA will be forced to take a better look at this situation. I know I was being a little snarky above (this is a blog, after all), but in the end some good may come of this. We just don’t know enough about asteroids and how to push them out of the way. We need to set up and fly missions to a few near-Earth asteroids to understand them better and add to our knowledge of their composition, structure, and behavior.

Theory is all well and good, but nothing beats some good practical experience. And while I dread the day when an announcement of a statistically significant likelihood of impact for a rock is announced, I’d be a whole lot happier and more comfortable if we had a dozen missions to asteroids already under our belt when that happens. Even if they got their start with this sketchy quote from the head of the Russian space agency. Odds are, nothing bad will happen. Although it can't hurt to be prepared.

[betraaaus]

Yeah, but this kind of hysteria gets you fired, ask the former head of the national hurricane center:

Under fire, Hurricane Center chief removed | National | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

[Haibundadam]

I know asteroid deflection sounds goofy, but it's actually not so trivial. An asteroid strike has very low probability, but it could kill a lot of people, making the risk of death from an asteroid as high as some problems that we spend lots of money to mitigate. Interesting discussion here:

Marginal Revolution: Asteroid Deflection as a Public Good