Andromeda

As regular readers know, Mount Palomar (Observatory 644) offered three newly discovered observations of 2004 VD17 in the March 12, 2006 Daily Update -- three new observations from February 16, 2002. Well, they found two more from February 16, 2002 and three others from March 14 and 15, 2002 which appeared in the March 13, 2006 Daily Update. And, over the weekend, the Horizons System (telnet) included those observations and completely changed the Close Approach calculations.

But today -- JPL finally updated their Impact Risk page for 2004 VD17, and did not include the 2002 observations from Palomar! Moreover, those observations have been deleted from the Horizons System calculations:

Soln.date: 2006-Mar-13_09:00:08 # obs: 709 (2004-2006)

Oh, snap! Palomar kicked to the curb! The NEODyS object home page also gives a 2004 date of first observation.

Will Palomar take this lying down? Or will JPL have to give them a serious smackdown this time? Stayed tuned, readers, as Andromeda will provide full and detailed coverage of every hair-pull, every nail-scratch, and every tooth-bite in the epic struggle to determine whether an asteroid is coming straight for us. In 96 years. Possibly. And not "straight" exactly. Except in the sense that an orbit is a straight line in the curved spacetime of a gravitational field. But even then it does quite a few orbits before 2102. But in a sense that repeated elliptical path is still a straight line. And then there's precession. But the point is, Andromeda blog continues to lead in the coverage of astronomical doomsday scandals.

You will see the latest Daily Update has "new" observations for 2004 VD17, the asteroid previously scheduled to (possibly) hit Earth on May 4, 2102. The new observations are actually old -- from two years before 2004 VD17 was discovered. Somebody at Mount Palomar was digging through some old photos. ("And this one is my mom and dad at Hoover Dam -- hey, hold on a second, what's that asteroid doing back there?") By adding these three newly discovered February 16, 2002 observations to the hundreds from 2004 to 2006, the calculated orbit completely changes.

Close-approach results:

        Date (CT)       Body   CA Dist  MinDist  MaxDist   Vrel  TCA3Sg  Nsigs  P_i/p
----------------------  -----  -------  -------  -------  ------ ------ ------ -------
A.D. 2004 Nov 02.23669  Earth  .089506  .089505  .089506  15.549   0.05 5.90E5 .000000
A.D. 2032 May 01.93478  Earth  .021131  .021033  .021230  18.859   7.96 22961. .000000
A.D. 2041 Nov 07.65027  Earth  .012405  .011943  .012867  17.863  36.85 61563. .000000
A.D. 2067 May 04.88905  Earth  .018354  .001934  .035250  17.700 1390.6 14697. .000000
A.D. 2076 Nov 04.03585  Earth  .071671  .003518  .188363  16.094 9108.9 88649. .000000
A.D. 2111 Nov 09.62088  Earth  .013059  .004200  .400893  17.870 19837. 1.07E5 .000000

These are the new calculations from JPL. (Impact risk calculations have not been updated yet.) No close approach in 2102 at all, and all showing zero probability of impact. How sure are we 2004 VD17 was what the Palomar folks found on their old photos? Good question.

But an even better question is: Why was this information hidden from us until now -- and what else are they hiding?

The Rolling Stone argues Democrats are going to suffer a repeat of 2002, as Rove, et al., use national security as a wedge issue, by kicking off a crisis with Iran. Andromeda has obtained an advance copy of the simple force resolution which will be used:

Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that.

The Democrats will be forced, then, by their weak-kneed, limp-wristed base, to vote against our troops, thereby guaranteeing that Rove won't have to use Plan B (The Diebold Option)...again.

But what can be done to prevent this? Only one thing: thermonuclear war.

It's true the Democrats do not currently possess much of a nuclear arsenal, but how hard could it be to get one? The Bush Administration has completely ignored North Korea and practically encouraged Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, so the Democrats should be able to pick up a few megatons in no time. The most difficult thing will be finding one of those giant screens for showing the missiles headed toward Tehran. And some sort of countdown clock in the corner. A rotating "emergency light" or two, and they're ready to go.

Being against war means not being elected. The choice is clear.

Yes, the latest observations show the probability of 2004 VD17 impacting Earth skyrocketing further -- from 0.075% to 0.076%. But that's not for 96 years, and we've got an even more imminent disaster from space looming.

In a very short time, possibly enough time to get your affairs in order, the sun will explode -- yes, explode -- in another cycle of solar activity. This round could be 30-50% greater than the last cycle. What could this mean?

1. Continent-wide power outages such as happened in Quebec.


2. Astronauts spontaneously combusting.


3. Passengers on short commuter flights receiving dosages of radiation equivalent to three weeks in a microwave.


4. The heating and thermal expansion of the upper atmosphere, causing satellite orbits to deteriorate, raining satellite parts down upon 80% of the Earth's surface.

Of course, 30-50% increase over the last cycle may not mean so much if the last cycle was unusually weak. Hmm, that's exactly what NCAR's little graph shows. It also shows the predicted horror is actually not even the most active solar cycle in the last fifty years. And then there's the fact that this is a new method of predicting highly unpredictable solar cycles, and it has a very large margin of error.

But look at all the things that could happen!

Well, more observations are in and the probability of deadly impact decades after you die are steadily increasing. On Friday, JPL said the probability of a miss was only 99.929%, but now those odds have dropped even further, plummeting all the way down to 99.925%!

This seemingly unending string of attacks against Andromeda Galaxy by your puny human scientists can only be a Karl Rove-inspired hatchet job. First, it was adding stars to the Milky Way's total, and then it was adding dark matter to claim the Milky Way is more massive than Andromeda.

Now, your tiny human brains have conceived the notion that Andromeda's stellar halo is metal-poor. Yes, it's true the Milky Way's stellar halo has long been known to be metal-poor, but why must you drag the bling-blingiest galaxy down to your level? The principal author attempts to get back on our good side by populating his web pages with admissions that the Andromeda Galaxy is "magnificent," but we cannot ignore his attempts to deny Andromeda's metal-richness by velocity-windowing out the metal-rich components, and then explaining away metal-rich halo fields which remain ("This substructure is likely to be associated with the giant southern stream").

All this effort is only necessary in order to support the Cold Dark Matter paradigm. So once again "dark matter" makes its invisible appearance.

The conspiracy to not update the JPL or NEODyS public Impact Risk calculations continues. Although the latest Daily Orbit Update has three new observations for 2004 VD17, which were published about 10 hours ago, neither site has updated their information. But we at Andromeda expose their secrets: according to Horizons (telnet) the May 5, 2102 approach has a minimum distance of 0.000015, down from 0.000016, resulting in a brand new Palermo scale rating of -- gasp! -- about the same. Why, oh, why do the government leaders keep this information from us?

By the way, the current calculations show a nominal close-approach distance of just 281,393 kilometers (174,850 miles). The Moon is 384,403 kilometers (238,857 miles) from Earth. Assuming in 96 years, humans have finally established regular traffic to the Moon, you can expect significant rubber-necking delays on your way in to work that morning.

Well, that didn't take long. JPL has finally updated their Impact Risk page. The Palermo Scale rating has increased from -0.33 to -0.28! Duck!

Obviously, Andromeda Blog is the go-to blog for top JPL scientists. And no doubt, as dawn comes to Italy, the NEODyS folks will drop their morning copy of Andromeda Blog and run to their computers to finally admit the horrifying truth that the (possible, future) danger to Earth has increased dramatically (although not "significantly" ... or "meaningfully").

Step closer to the blog, little readers, we've got some news that must remain just between us. 2004 VD17 is going to crash into the Earth! Possibly! In 96 years! Maybe! But the gubmint doesn't want you to know that. That is why neither the NEODyS folks nor the JPL people are updating their impact calculations. Yes, that's right, new observations from yesterday and today have not been used for impact calculations even as of right now (17:30 UT). Compare the 740 observations in the NEODyS Object Home Page to the 735 observations in the NEODyS Impact Risk page. The Daily Updates come out at 7:30 UT -- plenty of time for the calculations to have been redone for both NEODyS and JPL.

JPL has also updated their calculations -- other than their public "Impact Risk" calculations -- showing a minimum distance of 0.000020 AU yesterday, and 0.000016 AU today with the new observations. Telnet to telnet://horizons.jpl.nasa.gov:6775/ and see for yourself.