Risk of large asteroid striking Earth falls to 1.5%
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Well, that's disappointing..
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Reminder that the asteroid is only large enough to destroy a city and, even given the rare chance of it hitting Earth, in all likelihood would land in the ocean and cause no damage. It's not a doomsday asteroid
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imagine if it falls and perfectly annihilates the trump administration though
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It's probably made up of dense materials like iron. Let's pile all the earth's magnets at the White House!
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Well we'd lose the tides, which would devastate ocean life. We'd lose moonlight, which would devastate nocturnal animals. The axial tilt would change, so seasons would become more even, devastating plants that rely on seasonal cycles, or become more extreme, devastating everything.
The book Seveneves explores this scenario, but is mostly about how humanity moves to space to survive.
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Why wait? The best time would have been the dawn of civilization. The second best time is now.
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Just give us the confidence interval and stop updating. We will know better in January 2029 once it has passed by and been tugged by our gravity and the moons.
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There's always a chance that we can hit by a gamma-ray burst.
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Relevant username
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Yeah, but mummies can be friendly.. asteroids are a sure thing. Just ask the dinosaurs.
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Dontgivemehope.meme
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Unfortunately, Washington is outside of the possible impact zone. (Well, Washington in Brazil is inside, but it's not about that one.)
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Could it even completely obliterate the moon? Just not being tidally locked would be awful, but completely changing its trajectory/orbit and probably fuck up our atmosphere with debris seems more likely
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It's probably not big enough to shatter the moon, but enough to at least alter its orbit. I'm not enough of an astrophysicist to say how much. I haven't looked up the forces involved, so I can't even give a ballpark estimate.
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Boourns!
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As someone who's played MMOs, 1.5% chance is actually pretty high.
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Here's the upside: new species will evolve that can take better advantage of the new environment.
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I'm a Powerball man...
Those are great odds!
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Much much much much larger objects have hit the moon in the past
