Arp Galaxies 1 to 50
Arp Galaxies 1 to 50
Will There Be a Deep Impact?
We've all been to the cinema and lots of people have seen movies like "Deep Impact" where a huge meteor slams into the Earth and devastates civilization. How seriously should we take this threat to our very existence, and is it really likely that one of these monsters will strike the Earth in our lifetimes or in the lifetimes of our children? Well that's a really difficult question to answer, but we can certainly give you our point of view, which is based on information carefully gleaned from scientists and latest information, combined with what we hope is a modicum of common sense.
Do they really hit?
The first question we can address is, "Do objects really hit the Earth? The short answer to that is a resounding "Yes". Things are hitting us all the time, and the meteor showers which people sit in their gardens or in fields in the countryside to watch are swarms of particles entering the atmosphere and burning up as the friction which their passage generates heats them to incandescence. These objects are all very small, from grains of sand to pea sized objects, usually left behind in space after the passage of a comet or other object across the Earth's orbit. Every time we reach that point in our orbit the Earth ploughs through the debris field and we have a meteor shower. There are also numerous man-made objects constantly re-entering the atmosphere, and the bigger objects don't always burn up. Largish chunks can survive all the way to the surface, where they can cause significant damage if they strike something vulnerable, like a city or perhaps a nuclear power station? And it is these larger objects which should cause us the most concern. Although small to medium sized objects can survive intact their encounter with the atmosphere, the damage they can cause on impact is limited to the object and immediate area which they hit. But the larger objects have the capability to create a planet-wide catastrophe, through a mixture of huge tidal waves if they strike in the sea, or nuclear winter with the whole planet shrouded in thick clouds if they strike on land. For this reason there is an increasing effort to detect Earth crossing objects and to predict whether they are likely to present a danger to Earth at any time in the future. Some years ago the number of astronomers dedicated to this search effort was frighteningly small - about the same as the staff of a large McDonald's restaurant. These days there are many more, but amateur astronomers still play a major role in asteroid discoveries and subsequent orbital calculations.
​
How big do they have to be?
A diameter of perhaps a kilometer is sufficiently large to cause us real concern, and so far about 400 of these have been found in space around us. It is estimated that perhaps 90% of them have already been found and the risk of our annihilation has been quantified. History certainly has shown that they can and do hit our planet. It is now known with a moderate degree of certainty that the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was caused by the impact in the Yucatan area in northern south America of an asteroid perhaps 15 kilometers wide. It is also suspected that another major extinction event 251 million years ago was probably caused by a large meteor impact. This was the worst extinction event ever recorded, and it left the planet almost bereft of plants and animals. It is thought that this event actually enabled the rise of the dinosaurs, only to have their existence terminated by a similar event 186 million years later. These major extinction events, in all likelihood caused by major impacts, seem to happen about every 100 million years on average.
​
Are there any to worry us right now?
Well, not exactly. But most people know that there have been, and continues to be, a string of discoveries of alarming objects out there. In some cases the discovery of these objects has been accompanied by a scientist's announcement that a "close encounter" with Earth is likely at some point in the future, and in all cases these initial warnings have been retracted. We will leave it to you to judge how much of the retraction was based on increased knowledge of the orbit following further examination and measurement, and how much based on a need to avoid raising panic in the general public. Certainly both factors must be in play. Some examples of objects which are "out there" are:
​
Object 1997XF11
This is a 1 to 2 mile wide asteroid, discovered in 1997 and announced on 10th March, 1998 as likely to pass within 30,000 miles in October 2028. Only a day later NASA assured us that it will actually miss us by 500,000 to 600,000 miles, and it is important to note that this big difference is caused by minutely small differences in the orbital calculations. Just the tiniest bit away from this course and things can change dramatically. And of course there are so many things out in space which can cause just such tiny perturbations in a carefully calculated orbit, things like gravitational pull from planets and other bodies and encounters with uncharted objects. We'd better hope that any slight orbital change is in our favour!
Object 2000SG344
This object is a good deal smaller - only between 30 and 70 meters - but it was initially given the very high probability of 1 in 500 that it will impact Earth on 21st September, 2030. This estimate has since been significantly changed, but it seems the orbit is really not very well known and so again, a small error can make a big difference. This rock is small enough that it would only cause major problems if it actually hit something critical on impact.
​
Object 1999AN10
This one is a little more worrying. Because of the nature of its orbit, this Earth crossing asteroid will undergo numerous encounters with the Earth for the next 600 years. Although initial concerns that it could actually hit us have been discounted, it is scheduled to pass perhaps within 37,000 Km of us on 7th August, 2027. However, there is a sting in the tail of this one, because there is a danger that if the object passes us in a particular way on the 2027 pass, then it could be deviated in its course by gravitational interaction with Earth itself. There is an outside chance, if this happens, of an Earth impact in either 2034 or 2039. See the diagram to see what we mean, and pay attention to the "most likely" comment. No-one can really know for sure until it actually passes us and we can measure what has happened to its path.
Object 2004 MN4 (Apophis)
This object is even more scary, mostly because it is the size of two and a half football fields - two-thirds the size of Devils Tower in Wyoming and packing the energy of 65,000 Hiroshima bombs. It was first discovered in June 2004 and there was a bit of panic on Christmas Eve when calculations of its orbit at that time suggested that there was a one in 60 chance of it colliding with the Earth. Well, as of 20th October, 2009 NASA released updated orbital information which showed that the refined path indicated a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036. Updated computational techniques and the newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036 has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million. A majority of the data that enabled the updated orbit of Apophis came from observations Dave Tholen and collaborators at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy in Manoa have made. Tholen pored over hundreds of previously unreleased images of the night sky made with the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter (88-inch) telescope, located near the summit of Mauna Kea and incorporated measurements from the Steward Observatory's 2.3 meter (90-inch) Bok telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona and the Arecibo Observatory on the island of Puerto Rico. The information provided a more accurate forecast for Apophis' orbit well into the latter part of this century. Among the findings is another close encounter by the asteroid with Earth in 2068, with chance of impact currently at approximately three-in-a-million. As with earlier orbital estimates, where Earth impacts in 2029 and 2036 could not initially be ruled out due to the need for additional data, it is expected that the 2068 encounter will diminish in probability as more information about Apophis is acquired.
So, although initially Apophis was thought to have a 2.7 percent chance of impacting Earth in 2029, any possibility of an impact in 2029 have now been ruled out, but the object will still come within 29,450 kilometers (18,300 miles) of us on Friday, April 13 of that year. In astronomical terms, that's a really close shave! For a couple of hours after dusk, people in Europe, Africa and western Asia will see what looks like a medium-bright star creeping westward through the constellation of Cancer, making Apophis the first asteroid in human history to be clearly visible to the naked eye. And then it should be gone, having vanished into the dark vastness of space. We will have dodged a cosmic bullet and will be safe - or will we?
LATEST NEWS!!
In March 2021 the results from a new radar observation campaign combined with precise orbit analysis have helped astronomers conclude that there is no risk of Apophis impacting our planet for at least a century. When the asteroid made a distant flyby of Earth on 5th March, 2021 astronomers took the opportunity to use powerful radar observations to refine the estimate of its orbit around the Sun with extreme precision, enabling them to confidently rule out any impact risk in 2068 and long after. The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California was used in a collaboration with the 100-meter (330-foot) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to precisely track Apophis’ motion. Goldstone was transmitting while Green Bank was receiving – a “bistatic” experiment that doubled the strength of the received signal. It has been determined that on April 13, 2029, the asteroid will indeed pass less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from our planet’s surface – closer than the distance of geosynchronous satellites. During that 2029 close approach Apophis will be visible to observers on the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere without the aid of a telescope or binoculars. It’s also an unprecedented opportunity for astronomers to get a close-up view of a solar system relic that is now thankfully just a scientific curiosity and not an immediate hazard to our planet.
AND FOR THE FARTHEST FUTURE. Although we can't force Apophis to miss the Earth after 2068, we have the technology to nudge it slightly off course using a simple 1-ton "kinetic energy impactor" spacecraft at 5000 mph. We already have a template for such a mission: NASA's Deep Impact space probe - named after another 1998 cosmic-collision movie - slammed into the comet Tempel 1 in 2005 to gather data about the composition of its surface. Alternatively, an ion-drive-powered "gravity tractor" spacecraft could hover above Apophis and use its own tiny gravity to gently pull the asteroid off course. So it looks like we might have to be wiped out by something else.