26 December 2004

Scientists were going to be working through the Christmas holiday weekend to secure more observations of 2004 MN4 with the aim of pinning down its orbit better and classifying at as a Torino 0 object which they are sure will happen. They have nearly tripled the number of observations but the effect has been opposite of what was expected. The chance of impact has increased from 1:300 on Thursday to 1:45 today.

I found a web page today that indicated the likely crater from an impact would be about 58 km (about 36 miles). My own calculations, based on a formula I found on the web placed it at 59.6 meters, so it looks like I need to see where I need to multiply by 1000 due to a change in units.

The same web source also said the likely impact area would be the Atlantic Ocean. That would seem to be a good thing until you remember what the tsunami caused by the big Indonesian earthquake did yesterday. Another Web site put the impact between time zones +3 and +10 or eastern Europe through Asia.

The current statistics show its closest approach as being 1.4 times the distance to the moon so it is probably more likely to tag the moon than earth.

Who will get a massive funding boost from Congress to mitigate this one?