Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 Reaches Highest Score To Date On Hazard Scale

[Alydar]

Yeah, there's nothing to worry about here.

The human race will die out one way or another. Worrying about an asteroid with a miniscule chance to hit us in 25 years? I think there are a lot of other things that scare me more than such a silly thing as that!

[Aristotle]

I'm not saying I'd be screaming in the streets, but a 1 in 64 chance of civilization coming to an end is a lot more than "miniscule."

Fortunately, according to that NASA link, the updated conclusion is: "our current risk analysis for 2004 MN4 indicates that no subsequent Earth encounters in the 21st century are of any concern."

Of course, that could just be the new party line since the old info happened to catch on over the internet. Maybe they want to prevent a panic.

[Ashavell]

Originally posted by Alydar
Yeah, there's nothing to worry about here.

The human race will die out one way or another. Worrying about an asteroid with a miniscule chance to hit us in 25 years? I think there are a lot of other things that scare me more than such a silly thing as that!

I'm reasonably confident that you wouldn't think it such a silly thing if it actually does obliterate you in 25 years time.

Originally posted by Grantref
We could also deliver an automated factory that would build a mass driver to deflect the asteroid.

What the heck are those? Automated factories and mass drivers?

Originally posted by Bramond
England has the answer for this. We intend sending up Prince Harry and a case of Stella.....who needs Willis.

And he would do what? On the plus side though, we would get rid of Prince Harry, and a few hundred journalists who would have followed him.

Hmm...this sort of thing though, although it's always frightening to hear about it, sort of reinforces that idea that the people are kept in line by fear. Like Manson was ranting about on Bowling For Columbine. Because there's probably been a report like this every year for as long as I can remember. We hear we're gonna get annihilated, then the chances of it happening always drop rapidly till they become practically nil. If any of that was unclear, I'm blaming it on my hangover.

[Xar]

I think the automated factory and mass driver references are from a game called Masters of Orion hehe. I guess that's what gets done when an asteroid is about to hit a planet. I just hope we allocate enough millions of people to 'Research' so we have a solution in time!

[Shadarach]

Xar is old school.

Just bung lots of citizens on science and we'll soon have the Solar Laxative technology researched and then promptly stolen by the Xarloks.. err Darloks.