Schoolboy's asteroid-strike sums are wrong Widespread media reports claim that a German schoolboy has recalculated the likelihood of a deadly planet-smasher asteroid hitting the Earth, and found the catastrophe is enormously more likely than NASA thought. The boy's sums were said to have been checked by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and found to be …
Still no tips on the horses then.
As to the topic, shame on the reg for bullying a 13yr old. A yank bashing 13yr old at that, he should be encouraged. The EU should propose allowing him [to] verify all of NASA's calculations as partial credit towards his university entrance exam. Y'know as a helpful international gesture.
>"no one else seems worried that a minor miscalculation, a dropped significant digit, or inaccurate measurements might result in a much higher chance of a hit..."
That's why the calculations have been done over and over, and progressively refined over the past several years with ever-more accurate measurements of the asteroid's trajectory. The fact that the increasingly accurate results converge acts as a cross-check.
>"are you all stupid or something?"
No: /you/ are ignorant, whereas /we/ know something you don't: other people *are*, in fact, worried about the possibility of error and have been taking the correct steps to address that risk.
>"but hey what the hell do i know..."
Apparently very little, yet you still feel entitled to an opinion.
>"the very real possibility that the asteroid could be deflected in its path by an impact with"
an object weighing less than a ten-millionth of its weight? Where did you get your definition of "real" from?
The 520/420 is more accurately described as an expected value rather than a probability. What it's saying is that is the probability of winning one game is 1/420 and you've played 520 times then your expected number of wins is 520/420 or 1.24. Which means, you're doing pretty well having won 3 times but it's not way out there.
Paris, because she always gives 124%
hmm well, first off.. I'm a different David Morris than the one above who wants the bunker... anyhow the calculation of probability for getting 3 or more successful attempts at 520 lottery attempts with a probability of success of 1/420 on any given attempt is (approximately)...
1-(.29+.36+.02) = .33 ... so about 1 in 3 chance of winning 3 or more times. still not bad chances, really. Anyhow, you were not applying the addition rule (for statistics) correctly, and it is much easier to do this as a binomial distribution anyhow.
"I heard the chances of getting 4 number in the lottery are 1 in 420"
'and how many lines over the years did you play in the lottery. The lottery has been going over ten years so lets say in that time you brought about 520 lines. therfore you have a 520 in 420 chance of winning. three times in ten years is 520 in 1260 or approximately 2/5'
Um, no, that's NOT how the statistics of winning lottery numbers (or any other statistical calculation) work I'm afraid.
The calculation relates to your chance of getting any winning 4 numbers in any given draw with any given selection of 6 numbers.
While your version might seem logical, it ignores the reality of the laws of statistical probability.
"Who thinks that throwing a sugarcube at a speeding Range Rover would change its direction?" if it is in a zero g environment then it WOULD affect the trajectory according to Newtons laws. Surely if it passes INSIDE the Geo-stationary orbit it has to pass THROUGH it which means the possibility of a hit but would that hit cause a 90% increase of the probability of a deflection towards earth then surely it could cause a defelection away from the planet.
"Who thinks that throwing a sugarcube at a speeding Range Rover would change its direction?" if it is in a zero g environment then it WOULD affect the trajectory according to Newtons laws. Surely if it passes INSIDE the Geo-stationary orbit it has to pass THROUGH it which means the possibility of a hit but would that hit cause a 90% increase of the probability of a deflection towards earth then surely it could cause a defelection away from the planet.
The most recent date quoted is 2011.
Just in case I think I'll start the hoarding now and then trade my stocks of potable water, food and other necessities at highly inflated values.
C'mon man, your hawt wife/daughter for some water, porn and food... heck throw in both and I'll add medicine to the batch.
Paris, because she's used to being bartered for.
"if it is in a zero g environment then it WOULD affect the trajectory according to Newtons laws."
Sure. However, what he meant is that it won't affect the trajectory in any significant way. When you're dealing with tens of thousands and error bars of hundreds of kilometres, a few kilometres either way really don't matter.
"Surely if it passes INSIDE the Geo-stationary orbit it has to pass THROUGH it which means the possibility of a hit"
No. At its closest approach, it will be closer to the Earth than a geostationary orbit. However, at its closest approach it will be near the poles, where there aren't any geostationary sattelites. By the time it reaches the equatorial plane, it will be further away than any sattelites and therefore has zero chance of hitting anything. There is always the possibility of some random junk floating around in its path, but since any junk will be far smaller than a sattelite, the effect will be even less worth considering.
I'm not sure that shooting it down or blowing it up (or whichever direction you shoot and/or blow stuff in zero gravity) is as easy as all that. Has anyone worked out what happens if you set off a large explosion near to a target (but not touching it) in a vacuum? Might be a fun finite-element modelling exercise. Could probably get research council funding for it, providing you demonstrate it has applications to climatology :)
did you just call me ignorant... well then let's look at a little bit of the science here...
a satelite in geo sync orbit moves approximately 3.07 km/s and as noted above somewhere, a heavy one is around 6500kg...
it may be a sugar cube, but it's moving 10 times faster than a bullet, so it has a certain amount of momentum to impart, say 19,955,000N worth of it.
that force would result in an acceleration of .00095 m/s*2, applied over say a second of impact...
hey what do you know, it would change the velocity of the damn thing by a minute amount.
hmm... let's see it has from 2029-2036 to move less than 40000 km...
could that happen..
gee such a slight tap could move it upto 209,910 km...
couple that with the fact that even the scientists of the nasa jet propulsion labs say they don't know what effect the first close pass will have on it and you start to see why i think some of the more flippant comments warrant the words "are you all stupid"
and lastly dork... if you intend to quote someone... then keep the context intact, what you did is usually called "contextomy" but you're such a bright guy i'm sure you knew that....
The Land Rover might well be 3 million times the mass, and a sugarcube might well just bounce off the bonnet...
But you just try putting that same 1g sugarcube into the petrol tank, and you see how much change there is to the Land Rovers speed and direction.....
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