A million to one may not sound that dangerous, but it's still much more likely than winning the lottery. We might just break the jackpot. ;)

As they refine the orbit, the probability will change. Most likely outcome is "No chance of impact".

Probabilities are used to hide the uncertainties in exactly what the orbital parameters are. They start with a "most likely" orbit based on the numbers they have and and then based on the error bars they construct a tube of possible orbits. Each of the possible orbits has a range of locations at which the asteroid might be at the time of closest approach. You get a volume of space made up of nested equiprobability surfaces with a cutoff at some low value of probability.

As more and more data are acquired, the uncertainty goes down and it becomes less and less likely the Earth is still contained among all the possible points the asteroid where the asteroid could be at closest approach.

It's really hard to do this across without a graphics department!

Not sure why it should be all that expensive to divert this rock. After all, its not THAT big - a little over a klick in diameter, and we just need to nudge it enough to kick it off line with our planet. I'm sure the engineers could tell us how many mongo hydrogen bombs (which we have plenty of; perhaps North Korea could kick in a few nukes, too) it would take, and then it is a fairly straightforward rocketry issue.

Trust me, dealing with this is not as easy as it seems. The sooner we apply any sort of thrust, the less total velocity change we will need to avoid a hit, but we can't do anything until we learn more (and if we do learn more, we don't have the hardware to do a lot quickly). This is *not* like the movie Armageddon, where all we have to do is zap the satellite with seconds to spare.

As an example of the complexity, if we just launch a big nuke at it, a likely scenario is that we fragment it into a bunch of pieces, many of which are large enough to cause a lot of ruin, and *increase* the chance that Earth gets hit from the "shotgun pattern" effect.

Sounds like a terrific Public Works project for the US Army Corps of Engineers.

I'll post on it again if it gets interesting.

Let's just hope it doesn't become interesting enough to interest Mr Bruce Willis in a new film role! :-)

I'm enough of a sci-fi fan to hope just a little tiny bit that something like this might actually work to get us to forget all the reasons we have invented for killing each other and join forces for awhile.

One thing positive, it will prevent the collapse of the SS system in 2037. Seems a bit of a premium price to pay, though.

Army Corps of Engineers?

Judging from some of the "flood control" rubbish I've been shown around central New York State, I wouldn't let a single one of those idiotic bastards out of a cage from now until we all positively know that the asteroid is safely in the bag.

Besides, one judge would tell the Engineers to blow it up, and another would tell them to stop because it would endanger the astroidal song thrush or some such.

If it's a million to one, can I put $10 on the asteroid. And a $2 exacta box, asteroid and Mars.

http://www.angryflower.com/astero.gif

It's Bush's fault!

It's looking like the 2014 impact possibility has been discounted on this one.

The problem with H-bombs is that they're like high explosives in that they shatter rather than pushing. The inertia transfer on an H-bomb isn't really all that big.

The most likely propulsion designs I've seen are solar powered and use the rock itself as propellant.

I'm not one to go quoting Terry Pratchett all over the place but:

"Million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten."

Doomed, I tell ya, DOOMED!

Isn't that the date that the Mayan Calender ended ??

Why can't they get up there and fit it with thrusters? That shouldn't take an inordinately long time.

Dale said: It's really hard to do this across without a graphics department!

I found this link from JPL:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/gif/mea-orbit-big.gif

Pretty nifty little animation.

Isn't that the date that the Mayan Calender ended ??

No. Mayans were a whole two years out...

The inertia transfer on an H-bomb isn't really all that big.

Exactly; the clue is in the name: thermo-nuclear device. You get lots of heat, but in outer space there aren't any gases to expand and provide a shock wave except for whatever's lying around in your asteroid to vapourise. If we were really unlucky, an unfortunately located big lump of ice could act as a booster and make things much worse.

This explantion will bowl you over....

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/armageddon.html

Rob.

"Million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten."

True.

And 92.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.

It's actually worse than already claimed on this thread. While we like to think of planetoids as solid chunks of rock, the evidence points to them being much more like big piles of gravel. A nuclear device wouldn't shatter them because they've already been shattered by billions of years of collisions. So you have to move not a solid object but a rock pile held tenuously together by miniscule gravity and weak vacuum welds.

I ran NASA's JPL Orbit sim twice once the day of the first report, and once today.. the first run provided a visual conflict much earlier- 2005 Mar 5-6, Todays run with updated data no doubt shows possible conflicts Mar 16 2005, May 17 2011, Mar 22, 25 2014

The momentum transfer for an H-bomb is via heating up and vaporising a cap of matter on the surface which expands radially, thereby pushing the asteroid in the opposite direction. I played with the calculus on this about 15 years ago, and it gets pretty hairy pretty quickly (integrals of trig functions to three-halves powers and things like that). Anyway - problem ain't the bomb, it's getting the thing there.

They are still looking for the one to end it all in 2012.
It is very difficult to see the bullet that hits you.

It reminds us that we all belong to one world,
not to a single country.
We have to face it together,
not as a single man.
So it's time,
to stop violence against each other,
and join hands together.