December 24, 2004

• I don't give a shit if it does hit. Fuckit. Good thing if it does.
• Exactly as Dolores Cannon predicted in her conversations with Nostrildamus. I mean, Nostradamus. If not Dolores, then some other millenarian nutjob will emerge from the compost pile to explain it all.
• If she spoke with Nostrildamus we'd be expecting a giant flying sock to engulf the planet.
• I for one welcome our new asteroid overlords.
• Sixty-to-one sure would pay nicely. It'd be a shame if there was no one from whom to collect, especially if you factored it into a trifecta.
• I have to recommend the asteroid damage calculator (thanks to whoever posted it in the slashdot thread).
• April 13th 2029 is a Friday.
• Problem solved
• Good. Then we will have the whole weekend to enjoy the fallout.
• The Mayans predicted the world would end on December 12th, 2012. If they were right, this 400-meter bad boy will be about 17 years too late.
• It certainly wouldn't take much of a nudge to nicely push it out of the way if we did it now and it had 24 years to gradually move away from it's earth-intersection orbit. Send up a small atom bomb to crash and blow up on the most favorable side. Then again, with NASA's track record, they'd probably push it into a worse orbit and those 60-1 odds would reverse...
• No worries here. By the time 2029 rolls around, so much mass from China will have been shipped out across the globe that Earth's orbit will be slightly different. Do your part and shop Wal-Mart today.
• Being a Christmas catastrophist, I'm gonna pour another round of elf cum and bourbon. Thanks.
• 2029? No prob. Bush has everything under control.
• The Mayans didn't predict the end of the world in 2012, IIRC, that was just when their long count calendar 'ended', I think - pending revision. At that point the priests & astrologers would get together & work out the new count, presumably. Sadly Cortez got in the way of that. I'm not aware of any Mesoamerican end of world myths, although I'm sure there must be some, but I don't think they're tied to any specific date. The new age movement co-opted this date as some kind of far-out-man thing, but there doesn't seem to be much to it. Another chestnut is that Nostradamus predicted the end of the world in 1999 - actually he predicted 7,000 years of continuing civilization after that date, or something. I don't believe in an end of the world scenario. I'm just hoping for a little human extinction here and there.
• JPL's Sentry software has upgraded the likelihood to a 2.4% (1 in 42) chance. Automatic updates are done daily on this page.
• well I am going to party like its 2029!
• ...a little human extinction here and there... Still clinging, clinging...o wot is wrong with me? :)
• *posts reminder to self to quit worrying about credit card debt in 2028
• Nostrildamus: It wasn't when their calendar ended. It was a transition into a new epoch. The mayans cosmological beleifs about the world are fairly similar to the hindu. Every once and a while, everything is destroyed and rebuilt. The time scale is just a bit smaller for the mayans. The last time there was one such "reconstruction" was approximately when cortez arrived. It was among the reasons the aztecs, who had appropriated parts of the mayan calendrical system, thought he was quetzleqotle (spelling????) If you think about it, the arrival of cortez really did fuck things up for the indegenous peoples of the new world. As would this giant hunk of rock. Some part of me hopes that we do in fact discover that it is going to land right in the fricken atlantic. We've got enough time, we would be forced to figure out what to do about it. It would be like the apollo mission but a millionfold. I think humanity needs a challenge, a frontier, to really shine. Heck the reason we have computers that fit on my desk right now is because we decided, come hell or high water, we were going to get on the moon. If this bad boy is going to hit our home, I'm sure we would figure out some way to band together and save our sorry asses. I think it would be a blessing in disguise. Only if we do in fact manage to deflect it.
• Nostrildamus - as Freen said somewhat, the end of the Mayan calendar did signify their 'end of the world'. The Mayan creation myth clearly states that the world goes through cycles of creation and destruction, with the last creation that took place bringing humans into existence,and in 2012 bringing their destruction. The Great Deluge, featured in almost all of the world's religions - both ancient and modern, was one of the past 'end of the world scenarios' to the Mayans, as was a 'great fire' and etc. To the Mayans, mathematics, astronomy and religion were the same thing, so such a significant event as the end of one cycle of their calendar would have more than just intellectual significance, it would mark the literal 'end of the world'. This is the reason why humans were so often sacrificed after the great Mesoamerican ball game by the Aztecs and Mayans - they believed that if the gods were 'fed' humans, then the end of the world could be postponed because the gods would be content with the world and allow the current cycle to continue. That's your little Mayan mythology lesson for the night, folks.
• Ah, thank you for that clarification. I know little of Mayan mythology, as is obvious. Most interesting.
• Meanwhile, it appears my wishes for a little human extinction have been answered. A little too close for comfort.
• So, what exactly will happen? Is it going to be nicer than the point where the majority of the world's water supply becomes unusable or being cooked alive by greenhouse gases?
• Now the risk of impact is estimated at approximately 1 in 37, or 2.7% Yikes.
• Good shit. Bring it on.
• Um, Nostrildamus, It's being brought. At close to 12-13 km/sec. I personally say: Bring it Elsewhere!
• Wait, It has been brought elsewhere!!!
• I think it should also be noted, now that the threat has been determined to be negligible, that 1 in 37 is just about the odds of rolling snake eyes.
• Damn Kohoutek! When will you leave us alone?
• How does it go from 1 in 300 to 1 in 60 to 1 in 37 to no chance at all? Seems sketchy to me...
• waitingtoderail: There is a good description of this at Slashdot.org Basically, as the number of observations of the object increases, the set of all possible trajectories decreases. The specific trajectory that would collided with the earth remained in the set of possible trajectories, as the set grew smaller, up until the point at which we had enough observations to reduce the set of all possible trajectories down to a point at which the collision trajectory was not included in the set of all possible trajectories. Think of a dart thrown at a dart-board. At first there is an equal likelihood that the dart could hit anywhere. As the dart gets closer to the board, the likelihood that it is a bulls-eye, increases up until the point when you know it isn't going to be a bulls-eye and it lands just outside the bulls-eye. The probability of the throw being a bulls-eye increases steadily until a point and then you know that it isn't going to be a bulls-eye. Does that make any sense at all?
• I think that's a great explanation. It helped me, anyway. Thanks Freen.
• Another way to think of it is to imagine a point in a box. The box is all of the locations (or trajectories) which would cause a certain percentage chance of impact. The more closely you check your observations, the smaller that box gets (which makes it seem like the asteroid is getting more and more likely), until after a while your "point" where the asteroid actually is, is no longer inside the box.