Russians offer to track asteroid threat
RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS think a space probe should plant a radio beacon on the asteroid Apophis to determine whether it's going to impact Earth, a conference report said Friday.
The report also conjectured that the Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft presently scheduled to be launched in 2009 could accomplish that mission with only slight payload changes, but that its launch would have to be delayed until 2012 to make a rendezvous with Apophis.
Asteroid 2004 MN4 or 99942 Apophis, midsized as asteroids go at 350 meters in diameter, is considered the greatest known threat to collide with Earth, the report said.
Astronomers estimate that there are about 1,000 larger asteroids 1 kilometre in diameter or larger that are in Apollo, or earth-crossing orbits. So far they have found about 700 of them and they hope to find the rest by 2010.
In Egyptian mythology Apophis, or Apep the Destroyer, is the god of evil and destruction imagined as a snake living in eternal darkness. In 2029 its namesake asteroid will graze Earth's orbit at a mere 36,000 km (22,400 miles) from the planetary surface, closer than geostationary satellites. Earth's gravity or a collision with one or more orbiting satellites could alter the orbit of Apophis such that it might hit Earth on its next approach in 2036.*
The impact of such a large asteroid as Apophis would be hundreds or thousands of times more destructive than the Tunguska Event of exactly one hundred years ago on Monday.
That meteor impact, thought to be that of a small asteroid or cometary fragment about 10 to 30 meters in diameter, was seen thousands of miles away and heard for hundreds of miles. The Tunguska blast incinerated and flattened approximately 830 square miles of Siberian forest as it released vast energies equivalent to about 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.
Such an Apophis impact "could lead to an area equal to France turning into a desert," said Alexander Simonov, one of the authors of the Russian report, in an understatement of the level of global destruction that would be unleashed by a meteor strike of that magnitude.
So large an asteroid or cometary fragment impact would likely start conflagrations over thousands of square miles and blast millions of tonnes of soil and pulverized bedrock into Earth's atmosphere, with smoke and particulates possibly starting a years long "nuclear winter" scenario that might create abrupt climate change, leading to worldwide famines and pandemic social disorders and wars, and human deaths in the tens or even hundreds of millions... and might start another Ice Age.
The report said that even the largest of ground-based radio telescopes cannot discern the orbit of Apophis with the required precision, so one potential solution would be to plant a radio beacon on the asteroid that could permit radio astronomers to determine its orbit within an accuracy of "tens of meters. " That would reveal whether Apophis will hit Earth.
"We propose the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft... as a platform for this mission," the report said. Phobos-Grunt is a planned Russian sample return mission to the Martian moon Phobos. Designed starting in 2001, Phobos-Grunt is currently scheduled for launch in 2009. If the spacecraft's mission is amended to rendezvous with Apophis, the report said its launch should be delayed to May 13, 2012, and the flight is expected to take 330 days. ยต
*Scientists have said that Apophis won't approach Earth at an attitude that risks colliding with any satellites, but we don't believe them and suspect that they're just saying that in a government ordered public relations effort to avert potential fears among the populace.
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France did you say? Roll on 2029!
It should be painfully clear by now that (the Deity of your choice) has grown tired of mankind's little squabbles with itself, and has devised a test.
If humanity can't learn to work and live together to solve this common problem, then by (insert Deity of your choice), we shall perish together, and soon.
All bets are off.
When it happens, Washington politicians will still be making speeches and the Middle East crackpots will still be indulging in whack-thy-neighbor.
What's left, cockroaches and a few plants, will no longer be living on a planet quarantined as the insane asylum of the universe.
Ooh, another space rock scare.
So we can get accuracy to the tens of meters. And ? So we know a week or month in advance that Apophis WILL hit the Earth.
I know that all those who are happy that France will be liquidated are joking, because it's the Earth that will get hit, not just a country.
So what do we do when we KNOW we're going to get hit ?
Are we going to launch all our ICBMs in a hope that some of those blasts will push the killer off-course ? I doubt that will be useful - a nuke blast in the void of interstellar space does nothing but create a wave of radiation - there is no atmosphere to push against. Maybe a few hundred radiation baths could do something, though.
Or will we send Bruce Willis on a suicide mission to drill a hole and plant a nuke in the asteroids core to blow it apart, thus creating two or more major impactors instead of one big one ? The blast will have to be powerful enough to not only seperate the pieces, but also prevent local gravitational attraction from keeping them together. I doubt even a 10 megaton weapon can do that - billions of tons of rock is so much harder to blow apart than to simply push away.
Or will we just descend into a mindless survivalistic craze, murdering our neighbor in search of one more can of food, one more candle, one last Spears CD ?
So, what are our options ? Is that it ?

I'll be on the deck of the Titanic with a glass of champagne. Cheers !
you should have posted the article about the nvidia gtx gx2 instead.
A desert the size of France? How about if it hits the Sahara, what then? Will that turn into a tropical forest the size of France? What about if it hits the ocean, of which the majority of the Earth's surface consists? I'm worried here.
"Apophis, midsized as asteroids go at 350 meters in diameter"

Is that electricity meters or gas meters, one is over twice the size of the other. We should be told.

Unless of course you mean 'metres'???
Well, this might be a drastic solution for the runaway global warming
Hit the desert? Hit the OCEAN? Pfft, have you not seen the movies? These things only hit small, densely populated areas! Time to invest in a tinfoil hat!
Umm Umaguma, LaLa ,Dah Dah Day No Hit Ultie_Tom. Ummm Umaguma, YaYA.....Is It Say Your Prays Time?

Ultie ?Th8nks NOT. First if you take city block(about 700 feet) & Fill it with ICE(NOT Hardest Substance) to height of 100 story building, thats apep. BIG yet, after Burning thru Atmosphere, Turning Slushy? Maybe FEW Tons of Sushi Could be Recovered. Few Sq. Miles at Most would be affected. Maybe ALL of London, Minster & What Not, Yet Shirley NOT Ultie_Tom(Too Hard Headed).NEXT:
NVIDIA's 1.4 Billion Transistor GPU: GT200 Arrives as the GeForce GTX 280 & 260.19June. I read somewhere near Hear 1 billion, well correction 1.4 Billion & there all active, NOT huge L caches. Remeber: Before Being Blast Off Planet:GTX 280 X2 will be 2.8 Billion transistors. Much More than 9800GTX X2 at 1.5 Billies. Although Seen in wild for above Suggested List Price, 9800GTX is $199 RETAIL item. Nvidia Surprise US SomeMore.

Now I Ask You, Which Is Bigger? Dumb Giant SnoCone or Billions of Transistors. Choice Three:Drasher.
drashek 
Technically, it appears that the ice age is initiated by melting ice caps and polar shift as the record of the rocks on the spreading sea floor and other datum suggests. 

This would be an extended period of reduced light of some degree but I'm not sure it's accurate to suggest the cyclic ice ages might be initiated by asteroids.

Thanks all!
Oh quieten up you twat, your just the average yank who is having a sore arse when it comes to the french.

How about the pentagon Eh? would get the world rid of some war mongering neo-cons.
Can the area the size of France that gets turned into desert actually be France? Would make for a very nice European car-park.
Has no-one thought that it might well not be on an earth colliding orbit, but the process of landing a radio beacon on it, will change the orbit itself and could very well put it on an orbit that will result in a collision!
The mass of a geosynch satellite (hell, I'm willing to guess all of them at once) is so small compared to the mass of the asteroid that even if it weren't coming by at the wrong angle to hit any of them the momentum would be so trivial so as not to bother the asteroid orbit at all.

And yes doomed, that would apply to the mass of a beacon as well...
CWR
Just call in Bruce Willis and the boys...