The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
The team adds, “The probabilities accumulate to a total impact probability of
approximately 10E-3, with a pair of closely related routes to impact in
2182 comprising more than half of the total. The analysis of impact
possibilities so far in the future is strongly dependent on the action
of the Yarkovsky effect, which raises new challenges in the careful
assessment of longer term impact hazards.”
The Yarkovsky effect (which produces a Yarkovsky acceleration) is a force that acts
on a rotating body in space (such as meteoroids and asteroids) that is
caused by the momentum carried by photons of electromagnetic radiation
(light).
The abstract continues, “Even for asteroids with very precisely
determined orbits, a future close approach to Earth can scatter the
possible trajectories to the point that the problem becomes like that
of a newly discovered asteroid with a weakly determined orbit.”
“If the scattering takes place late enough so that the target plane
uncertainty is dominated by Yarkovsky accelerations then the thermal
properties of the asteroid, which are typically unknown, play a major
role in the impact assessment. In contrast, if the strong planetary
interaction takes place sooner, while the Yarkovsky dispersion is still
relatively small compared to that derived from the measurements, then
precise modeling of the nongravitational acceleration may be
unnecessary.”
This latter statement says that the probability of impact between the
asteroid and Earth is based on only roughly estimated physical
properties of the asteroid, along with only an estimated amount of
known change in the forward movement of the asteroid caused by these
Yarkovsky photons.
Consequently, to more accurately assess the probability of impact of
the asteroid with Earth, a more detailed model of the asteroid is
necessary.
The authors say that to accomplish such a detailed map many
more years of observations will be needed.
If Asteroid 1999 RQ36 were to hit the Earth, its impact in the ocean
(which is likely since Earth is covered mostly by water) would cause a
gigantic tsunami, a large ocean wave, that would likely wreck havoc to
nearby landmasses.
We have plenty of time to make further observations of this asteroid.
Of course, it is never wise to wait until the last minute if indeed
this asteroid should make contact with Earth over the next 160 to 190
years.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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