Good news: There's a slightly increased chance of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth. Bad news: It's still really slight Bennu, already considered the second most dangerous asteroid in the Solar System, has a slightly increased chance of hitting Earth in the coming centuries, NASA said this week. There is, according to the latest calculations, a 1-in-2,700 chance (0.037 per cent) that the half-kilometre-wide space rock will collide with Earth on …
"1 in 2,700 and falling ..." noted Trillian. Zaphod didn't see the big rock hurtling towards him as his view had unexpectedly turned a delightful shade of dark indigo.
By the way, the "weight of three grapes" is not exactly helpful, it's not even derived from an El Reg approved unit*.
Is it the weight of three grapes on the surface of the asteroid or the weight of three grapes at sea level on the Earth? And are they the little squitty grapes at the bottom of the tray in Morrisons or big fresh ones from Waitrose? And does it include any diamegnetic repulsion (yes, you can repel grapes with a magnet, look up the grape dumbell experiment, works with lots of other 'non magnetic' things too at least to the size of oranges ... apart from the ones that confuse the issue by being paramagnetic ... :-) )? So many questions ...
*Surely the gravitational force experienced by one Bulgarian Fun Bag when the encapsulant is standing on the tarmac at Schipol Airport would be the El Reg unit of force?
Fun DNA experiment:
Extract all the nuclear DNA (ignore the mitochondrial stuff) from somebody (someone you don't like, there's zero survivability) then unravel it and stretch it all out and lay it end to end and then measure it.
You'll need a very long tape measure: it's about 13AU per adult person.
Hm, went back and checked my maths. 13.37 AU is the length of the DNA in 1 trillion cells.
The number of cells in the human body is contentious with figures ranging from 20 trillion to over 100 trillion so pick your favourite number (of cells in trillions) and multiply that by 13.37.
The number closest to a consensus is 37 trillion which works out to 495 AU of DNA, for comparison Voyager 1 is ~142 AU away.
Not only because "precision" is not the same as "accuracy".
When I last attended an archery shoot, I was pretty precise. I could hit pretty much the same spot on the target over and over. It wasn't anywhere near where I was aiming though.
Half a kilometre of ice and pumice is hardly Earth-shattering (though still capable of wrecking a small nation).
https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi, I went with 535m diameter, 1190 density and typical cometary velocity and theta.
By 2182 we may be looking at ways to hard-land it in an unpopulated area. Fresh water! Reverse global warming!
Now if NASA or any other agency really wants to push the CPU boat out, how about calculating the "billiards" scenario whereby one of these near-misses slingshots around either the Earth or the Moon?
Great website, but I'm not sure my feeling of "oh, that's not so bad" is entirely warranted. 500km away and impact only as loud as heavy traffic? 70 microns layer of ejecta on everything? Pish, I can take that - I used to spend my friday nights at Turnmills nightclub. Bring it on!
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