[meteorite-list] New Asteroid Threat Seen (Asteroid 2003 QQ47)

From: Spaceguard <mail_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:29:49 2004
Message-ID: <001701c3718e$78239b40$9600a8c0_at_Home>

Thankfully you will notice that we had managed to squash most of the
hysteria in the press by lunchtime!

Jay Tate
The Spaceguard Centre
http://www.spaceguarduk.com



----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Baalke" <baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 9:35 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New Asteroid Threat Seen (Asteroid 2003 QQ47)


> >
> > It has been an absolutely CRAZY day here in the UK since this story
broke
> > early this morning. I swear every radio and TV news programme has
featured a
> > "Doomsday Approacheth!" piece, accompanied by comments from "an
astronomer" or
> > "space expert", who without fail tried desperately to reassure the
viewers or
> > listeners that the scare was just that, a scare, and that in a few days
time it
> > would be shown to have been a false alarm... only for the presenter to
wade
> > back in with a closing comment about the end of the world, and
civilisation,
> > being nigh...
>
> The asteroid was just a 1 on the Torino scale. The Torino scale was
modeled after the
> Richter scale. Should magnitude 1 earthquakes make headlines? No. Neither
> should Torino 1 objects. It seems that anytime an object gets to be a
Torino 1,
> it gets hyped up in the press. There is no cause for alarm for such
objects that
> rank low on the scale, or for any object currently listed on our Risk
page:
>
> http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk
>
> Asteroid 2003 QQ47 is newly discovered, and like all
> of the similar cases before it, it will stay on our risk page until we
> get enough observations for a decent orbit determination. It will then
drop
> off the risk page entirely (ie: no chance of Earth impact).
>
> At least this time around, the press used the odds-of-impact number off
our website
> (1 in 909,000), which of course, is a low probability.
>
> Ron Baalke
>
>
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Received on Tue 02 Sep 2003 04:11:55 PM PDT