Philippines at Risk from Asteroids?

[chua_riwap]

Ano masasabi niyo? Huwag naman sana........

Kakatakot naman ito.



RP at Risk From Asteroids

PhilStar

ANGELES CITY – Researchers in Britain have identified the Philippines as among 10 countries in the world “most at risk” from being hit by small asteroids less than one kilometer in diameter, but the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said Filipinos need not be alarmed.

The website sciencedaily.com said yesterday researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a “software package for modeling asteroid impacts that enables them to assess the potential human and economic consequences across the globe” and that the software identified 10 countries, including the Philippines, as being most at risk.

In an interview with The STAR, Dr. Cynthia Celebre, chief of the astronomy research and development section of Pagasa, said the study should not cause alarm among Filipinos. She said that as far as she can remember, neither the International Astronomical Union (IAU) based in Paris nor the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) at Cape Canaveral in the US has ever issued any warning on asteroids threatening any part of the world.

“The software, called NEOimpactor, has been specifically developed for measuring the impact of ‘small’ asteroids under one kilometer in diameter, and early results indicate that the ten countries most at risk are China, Indonesia, India, Japan, the United States, the Philippines, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Nigeria,” the website said.

Celebre said that the chances of such asteroid hitting land is very small, as she noted that 75 percent of the earth’s surface is water. “But the risk of an asteroid hitting bodies of water would be tsunami,” she said. She also said that the study was the first to identify the Philippines as being at risk from asteroids. Similar studies in the past never specified the Philippines, she noted.

The website quoted Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton’s School of Engineering Sciences who developed the software with university colleague Dr. Graham Swinerd and Dr. Richard Crowther of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, as saying that “the threat of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is increasingly being accepted as the single greatest natural disaster hazard faced by humanity.” Bailey noted, “Since 1998 the international Spaceguard survey has been cataloguing all near earth asteroids (NEA) larger than one kilometer in diameter. However, small asteroids, less than one kilometer in diameter, remain predominantly undetected. While the direct consequences might not be quite as extreme, these small objects exist in far greater numbers and therefore will impact more frequently. It is on these sub-kilometer asteroid impacts that we have been focusing to assess the consequences for both humans and for infrastructure across the globe.”

Initial investigations have examined how the consequences of an impact change with increasing impact energy.

“Taking a spherical stony asteroid traveling at 12,000 miles per second and varying the diameter to increase kinetic energy, the results indicate that a hundred meter diameter asteroid will predominantly cause localized casualties and damage across a few countries when impacting on either land or ocean. However, the consequences of a 200-meter diameter asteroid hitting the ocean increase significantly, with the generated tsunamis reaching a global scale. At 500 meters in diameter, almost any ocean impact will generate significant casualties and economic cost across the world,” the website said.

It said that the researchers “used the raw data from the multiple impact simulations to rank each country based on the number of times and how severely they would be affected by each impact.”

“Early results show that in terms of population lost, China, Indonesia, India, Japan and the United States face the greatest overall threat; while the United States, China, Sweden, Canada and Japan face the most severe economic effects due to the infrastructure destroyed,” it said, adding that “in both rankings, the United Kingdom appears eighth in the list of countries most affected. Of the top twenty for each ranking, over half the countries appear in both lists.”

The website also quoted Bailey as saying that “the consequences for human populations and infrastructure as a result of an impact are enormous.” Bailey noted that “nearly one hundred years ago a remote region near the Tunguska River witnessed the largest asteroid impact event in living memory when a relatively small object (approximately 50 meters in diameter) exploded in mid-air. While it only flattened unpopulated forest, had it exploded over London it could have devastated everything within (a 25-mile radius).”

“Our results highlight those countries that face the greatest risk from this most global of natural hazards and thus indicate which nations need to be involved in mitigating the threat,” Bailey was also quoted as saying.

[lolo pepe]

wala naman tayong magagawa kung tatama sa atin...

we cannot avoid natural disasters and calamities (just like mt. pinatubo and the super typhoons and great earthquakes that hit our country for the last 20 years). magpasalamat na lang tayo na buhay tayo...

OT: kaya live a decent life, love your family, fellowmen and country. we only have a brief spark to light during our lifetime so make the most of it.

[fukengruven]

sana gaholen lang.. tas tamaan sana kotongerong pulis sa kanto :D

[Jun aka Pekto]

The world has a greater chance of being hit by an asteroid than say, someone dying from a plane crash. It doesn't matter where it hits. The repercussions will be global.

This crater was made 50,000 years ago and is almost a mile across. The (very dense) asteroid that made it was believed to be only 150 ft across. This one's 5 hours away from our house.


Also there's the Tunguska Event of 1908 (in Siberia) where it was believed a small 60m (not very dense) asteroid caused an air burst equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb.

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/tunguska.html

[FedEx]

For me di naman tlga naprepredict ang ganun ;)

[badsekktor]

lagi naman may tumatamang meteors sa earth and kung malalaking asteroid ang tatama, hindi na mahalaga yun since sigurado global ang epekto nun

[Jun aka Pekto]

For me di naman tlga naprepredict ang ganun ;)

Ahh. In the old days perhaps. But now, there are powerful enough tools available. In fact, someone predicted a comet will collide with Jupiter in 1994. I think that scientist was the one who discovered that comet.

Here's a video. Note that each impact is as big as the Earth:


Add: Here's more images from that event

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/top20.html

A nice pic of that event using infrared wavelength:
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/gif/calar7.gif