Asteroid heading our way?

[Czar]

Yes Daz, what you are saying is true.
The geologists said that the board/panel/whatever-you-call-it-in-UK  shifting was so powerful that the earth swinged around it's axis for a moment.

Yeah.

And i think we should better call Clint, cuz he's DA SPACE COWBOY!

And about death options, by then, i would hire a plane, or a space shuttle (which would i learn to pilot by M$ Space flight simulator 2028, the 2029 version will have too many bugs and the holo-multiplaying option disabled without the service pack 3 for Windows XXXLongtube).

Yeah!
Pilot Up!

(or i would just learn to surf like hell, so if it falls in the ocean, it would make a hell of a tsunami to surf on.)

Woo hoo!
700 km/h Surfs' up!

C.

[Sam.]

ill be 28.

So that makes you what, 3 years old?

i just added the 12 years from lgms post without checking. i will in fact be like 41, thats not a bad age to die.

[fanton]

No one will die. Even if an asteroid the size of US hits earth, a few people will still be there. But no asteroid is that large. And if an impact is on the way they will evacuate people on the other continents, or on boats, or whatever. Few will die, almost none at all. IF there will be

42 years old is half your life. You must be nuts to think that it is a good age to die.

It will be probably something simmilar to this earthquake that took place in Indian Ocean, except fewer deaths. some months of darkness (perhaps years), lots of snow or rain, and strange weather troughout the year. If it falls in water then there is no problem, only tsunamis which can be avoided, floods, and that's it, no other side effects. I am just guessing

[Domino]

I'll be 56 if this does happen, or i could be long gone before it happens.



Time to call in this guy for help.

Now get on that rock and start drilling. 

[fanton]

I read this on Slashdot earlier. I'm not too worried yet.

1/243 chance it won't hit, and not for another 12 or so years.

You have better luck in dying in a car accident.

actually is more like 1/45 chance of hitting now. At least that is what I've read. The worrying has got a bit higher.

[ghostface]

some months of darkness (perhaps years), lots of snow or rain, and strange weather troughout the year. If it falls in water then there is no problem, only tsunamis which can be avoided, floods, and that's it, no other side effects. I am just guessing

Maybe some global warming? Hmmm?

[fanton]

well, why not?

let's add some earth destabilisation, changing the inclination of the axis. probably some species dissapear. permanent change of the climate. whatever.

anyway. it won't happen. i have faith in the future.

[Nacho]

Avatar, your lack of knowleadge of what a meteorit of the size of Manhattan (Not the entire US, I am talking of just Manhattan) could do to earth is very funny... ^_^ You must be a happy guy...

[Barbarian]

Now they say this Asteroid won't hit the earth in 2029. (It will now hit sometime in 2005 insteadÃ,  :o hehe, just kidding!Ã,  )

Anyways, what follows is a little news snippet I grabbed from Yahoo news:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whew! Asteroid Won't Hit Earth in 2029, Scientists Now Say

Wed Dec 29,10:14 AM ETÃ,  Ã, Science - Space.com


Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
SPACE.com


The world can exhale a collective sigh of relief. A newfound asteroid tagged with the highest warning level ever issued will not strike Earth, scientists said Monday.


The giant space rock, named 2004 MN4, was said on Dec. 23 to have an outside shot at hitting the planet on April 13, 2029. The odds climbed as high as 1-in-37, or 2.7 percent, on Monday, Dec. 27.

Researchers had flagged the object as one to monitor very carefully. It was the first asteroid to be ranked 4 on the Torino Scale, a Richter-like measure for potentially threatening space rocks. The asteroid is about a quarter mile (400 meters) wide, large enough to cause considerable local or regional damage were it to hit the planet.

All along, scientists said additional observations would likely reduce the chance of impact to zero for the April 13 scenario, but they did not expect any significant new data to allow such a downgrading for days or weeks.

Instead, old observations provided the data necessary to rule out an impact.

Several groups were looking for the asteroid in past observations. Jeff Larsen and Anne Descour of the Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, found very faint images of asteroid 2004 MN4 on archival images dating to March 15 this year. Astronomers already had observations in June and from this month.

"An Earth impact on April 13, 2029 can now be ruled out," read a statement issued Monday evening by asteroid experts Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It is not the first time a potentially threatening asteroid has been theoretically defused by looking into the past, pointed out Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute. Most famously, a space rock catalogued as 1997 XF11 was said, in 1998, to be on a collision course before archived data showed it would pass harmlessly.

"Past observations can greatly extend the time baseline and strongly influence knowledge of the orbit," Chapman told SPACE.com. "At some level, we are 'lucky' that these earlier sightings were made since 2004 MN4 is usually too faint to be detected by near-Earth-object search telescopes."

The difficulty in predicting a precise path earlier in the game owes to knowing only a small section of an asteroid's orbit around the Sun. New observations -- or old ones -- make the known path longer and allow a better prediction of the full path, as well as where an asteroid will be years from now.

Orbits change slightly with time because of gravitational tugs by the Sun and planets, among other factors.

2004 MN4 circles the Sun, but unlike most asteroids that reside in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, the 323-day orbit of 2004 MN4 lies mostly within the orbit of Earth.

Scientists cannot say that the asteroid will never hit Earth, but there are no serious threats in the foreseeable future. "No subsequent Earth encounters in the 21st century are of any concern," the NASA statement read.

[Oz]

No one will die. Even if an asteroid the size of US hits earth, a few people will still be there. But no asteroid is that large. And if an impact is on the way they will evacuate people on the other continents, or on boats, or whatever. Few will die, almost none at all. IF there will be

42 years old is half your life. You must be nuts to think that it is a good age to die.

It will be probably something simmilar to this earthquake that took place in Indian Ocean, except fewer deaths. some months of darkness (perhaps years), lots of snow or rain, and strange weather troughout the year. If it falls in water then there is no problem, only tsunamis which can be avoided, floods, and that's it, no other side effects. I am just guessing

Haha. I think you would be in for quite a nasty surprise...

[Robert Eric]

I guess I had better start coating my house with lead paint or something, huh?

[wyr3x]

I read this on Slashdot earlier. I'm not too worried yet.

1/243 chance it won't hit, and not for another 12 or so years.

You have better luck in dying in a car accident.

it is still a chance ...

[Oliver]

If it hits then we'll all die (exept for those who aren't in a big cave in the USA!!!). Because the climate will change. Ofcourse if this thing is bigger than a suitcase. That's what I think.

[Haddas]

Bah, this'll soon blow over when the asteroid mysteriously disappears after the janitor cleans the lens