The document discusses asteroids, their classifications, and historical impacts, highlighting significant asteroid-related events and their implications for humanity. It also addresses global catastrophic risks, particularly 'black swan' events, which are rare and unpredictable occurrences with potentially high impact. The document concludes with strategies for detecting and mitigating asteroid threats to ensure the survival of civilization.

1. Asteroids, Black Swans, Global Catastrophic Risks, and How to Save Civilization (cloudy night version) JCCC Science Center Evening with the Stars Saturday 24 October 2009

2. Agenda Asteroids Basics – What/Where/How Many Impacts You’ve Heard Of Craters You Can Visit Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of Black Swans Global Catastrophic Risks

3. Agenda (cont’d) How to Save Civilization Think Globally Act Locally 2008 TC3 Astronomical Society of Kansas City

4. What Are Asteroids? Small solar system bodies that aren’t comets or meteoroids. The formerly largest asteroid, 1 Ceres, is now classified as a dwarf planet . Discovered 1 January 1801 by Giuseppi Piazzi in Palermo, Sicily IAU members gathered at the 2006 General Assembly agreed that a “planet” is defined as a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. (source: http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/release/iau0603/)

5. Where Are Asteroids? (source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/InnerSolarSystem-en.png)

6. But Where Are They Right Now? (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=1&orb=1#top)

7. Special Classifications for NEOs – Amors (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=1221&orb=1#top ; see also http ://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Amors.html )

8. Special Classifications for NEOs – Apollos (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=1862&orb=1#top ; see also http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Apollos.html )

9. Special Classifications for NEOs – Atens (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2062&orb=1#top ; see also http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Atens.html )

10. How Many Asteroids Are There? (source: http://www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/a101_asteroids.html, corrected) 5.2 × 10 5 1,000,000 1 7.9 × 10 5 96,000 2.5 1.2 × 10 6 18,000 5 1.7 × 10 6 3,200 10 4.1 × 10 6 500 25 8.5 × 10 6 130 50 2.6 × 10 7 50 100 5.5 × 10 7 13 200 3.4 × 10 7 1 400 4.5 × 10 8 1 950 tot vol km 3 # dia (km)

11. Power-Law Distribution (source: http://www.sdss.org/news/releases/20010605.edr.img9.html) n ~ D -2.3 * http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ 10 tonnes TNT 8,000,000 1 m 23 kT 40,000 10 m 8.3 MT 200 100 m 5.4 × 10 4 MT 1 1 km impact energy* # diameter

12. Historical Impacts You’ve Heard Of Barringer 49 ± 3 ka Chicxulub 64.98 ± 0.05 Ma

13. Historical Impacts You’ve Heard Of Tunguska 6/30/1908

14. Craters You Can Visit (source: www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/NorthAmerica.html) Decaturville, MO 9 miles south of Camdenton on MO-5 6 km dia < 300 Ma Odessa, TX I-20 at exit 108 160 m dia < 50 k a Sierra Madera, TX 18 miles south of Ft Stockton on US-385 13 km dia < 100 Ma

15. Weaubleau–Osceola Structure (source: Dr Kevin Evans, Missouri State University [former SMSU]) N 37°59’, W 93°38’ (possibly one of series of impacts along 38 th parallel, including Decaturville) 19 km dia (4 th largest in US and one of 50 largest on Earth) 340 Ma (middle Mississippian Period) impactor diameter ~370 m ASKC SME is David Neuenschwander

16. Historical Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of “ Clovis Comet” 12.9 ka (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0706977104v1) Tunguska-like event, but much larger, over northeastern North America partially destabilized Laurentide Ice Sheet, triggering Younger Dryas cooling; shockwave, thermal pulse, “extensive biomass burning” at least 17 species of megafauna went extinct Clovis culture disappeared; possible death of 2/3 of North American population

17. Tasman Sea, ~1500 AD (http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040306/bob8.asp) tsunami left deposits 130 m above sea level in eastern Australia, 150-220 m above sea level on Stewart Island/Rakiura, NZ 20 km dia, 150 m deep seafloor crater SW of NZ 1-km-wide asteroid impact Historical Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of

18. Great Chicago Fire, 10/8/1871 (http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMPDC04_865/PV2004_1419.pdf) fragments of Comet 3D/Biela also Peshtigo Fire (4,850 km², 1,200-2,500 deaths) and Port Huron Fire (similar size, 50 deaths) Historical Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of http://www.cedu.niu.edu/~henning/ChicagoFireWebQuest/fire2.jpg http://www.angelfire.com/mi2/gfmeteor/images/peshtigo1871.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/CometBiela.jpg

19. Historical Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of Kusaie (Kosrae) , 1 Feb 1994 (“Satellites Detect Record Meteor,” Sky & Telescope , June 1994) rocky body 15 meters in diameter traveling 15 km sec -1 110-kT explosion at 20 km altitude; visual magnitude -25 pinpointed by 6 early-warning satellites to 164.1°E, 2.7°N; also seen by two fishermen events this size occur about once per decade somewhere on Earth Most NEOs produce airbursts volatile cometary material evaporates asteroids/meteoroids are often “rubble piles” Apollo asteroid 25143 Itokawa (from Hayabusa probe) (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/australia/oceania_ref_2007.pdf)

20. Chicago, 26 March 2003 (source: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/040414.parkforest.shtml) estimated mass 900 kg; velocity 18 km sec -1 fireball visible from Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri hundreds of fragments recovered from Chicago’s south suburbs K E = ½ mv 2 indicates 36,000 kg TNT equivalent Historical Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of

21. Historical Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of BBC headline,19 December 2004: “ Jakarta shaken by ‘meteor blast’” occurred during a terror alert and heightened security (“Operation Candle”) audible 60 km away (source: Townsville [Australia] Bulletin/Sun , URL not available) (source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4108697.stm)

22. Historical Impacts You Haven’t Heard Of http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/52624256.html Photograph by Miguel Carrasco/La Razon/Reuters Carangas, Peru, 16 September 2007 (source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070921-meteor-peru.html) crater 13 meters across, 3 meters deep ejecta thrown 250 meters

23. This Month’s Near-Miss (source: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/) asteroid 2009 TU flew by at 0.002 AU = 0.8 LD shortly before 7 PM CDT on Thu 8 Oct H = +27.3; M v = +13.8; D ≈ 9.1–20m; v = 15.25 km sec -1 airburst energy would have been ~300 kT (source: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/)

24. This Month’s Near-Miss (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2009%20TU;orb=1)

25. Effects on Human History mass extinctions North American charismatic megafauna North American native culture/population Younger Dryas origin of diabetes?

26. The Black Swan definition the Fourth Quadrant complexity of failure geopolitical risk

27. The Black Swan Definition: “… a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations.” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory) Short version: low-probability, high-effect events

28. The Fourth Quadrant (adapted from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html) thick-tailed (power law) probability structure thin-tailed (Gaussian) probability structure application domain Quadrant 2 quite robust to Black Swans Quadrant 1 extremely robust to Black Swans simple (yes/no) payoffs Quadrant 4 LIMITS OF STATISTICS ; extreme fragility to Black Swans Quadrant 3 quite robust to Black Swans complex (magnitude of effect) payoffs

29. The Complexity of Failure http://www.santafe.edu/research/publications/workingpapers/00-12-062.pdf http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html

30. The Fourth Quadrant in Action (source: http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/86785/) http://tipstrategies.com/archive/geography-of-jobs/

31. Geopolitical Risk , or The Meaning of It All (with posthumous apologies to Richard Feynman) Asteroid size distribution and composition combine with terrestrial realities such that: rare larger impacts mean frequent smaller impacts smaller impact ranges are in the tens of kilotons and are usually airbursts, but … so are nuclear weapons, and the explosions look exactly the same, in a world of … “ hostile capabilit[ies] among various actors with whom we have conflicting interests” (source: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/04/iran_war_drums_beating/)

32. Global Catastrophic Risk: Taxonomy/Organization Nature Unintended Consequences Hostile Acts

33. Global Catastrophic Risk: Observation Selection Effects (modified from Global Catastrophic Risks , Table 6.1, page 125) Beware of anthropic overconfidence bias! Distribution of near-Earth objects and Earth-crossing comets A Priori Distribution Distribution of impact craters, shock glasses, and so on Empirical ( A Posteriori ) Distribution

34. Global Catastrophic Risk: Observation Selection Effects Human history affected : North American survivors, diabetics, etc Distribution of impact craters, shock glasses, and so on Empirical ( A Posteriori ) Distribution Human history ended ? Distribution of near-Earth objects and Earth-crossing comets A Priori Distribution

35. How to Save Civilization Think Globally detection prediction mitigation Act Locally Powell Observatory asteroid imaging orbit refinement asteroid discovery

36. How to Save Civilization: what not to do “ We should act incrementally as prudent risk minimizers and pursue any effective no-regrets options. We do not have to wait for the formulation and acceptance of grand strategies, for the emergence of global consensual understanding, or for the universal adoption of more rational approaches.”

37. Detection Automated searches - telescopes in 0.5-1 m size range w/CCD cameras: Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) telescope at Socorro, NM Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) telescope at Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii Spacewatch telescope at Kitt Peak Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (LONEOS) telescope at Flagstaff Catalina Sky Survey 3 telescopes (2 in Tucson, 1 in Australia) Japanese Spaceguard Association (JSGA) telescope in Japan Asiago DLR Asteroid Survey (ADAS) telescope in Italy

38. Mitigation – Torino Scale (source: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/torino_scale.html) 8 – 10 red zone certain collisions 5 – 7 orange zone threatening 2 – 4 yellow zone meriting attention by astronomers 1 green zone normal 0 white zone no hazard

39. Powell Observatory Lewis-Young Park, Louisburg, KS

40. Powell Observatory 30” Ruisinger Telescope Newtonian Reflector diameter of aluminized area of mirror = 737 mm focal length = 3760 mm (f/5.1) magnifications 68x – 538x depending on eyepiece details 500’ across on Moon Light grasp = 11,000 × human eye limiting visual magnitude = +17 20 times fainter than Pluto > 100,000,000 stars; thousands of galaxies Sun at 8,000 light-years activates cone cells in retina – color vision

41. ASKC Astro Imaging Center Powell Observatory, Louisburg, KS; 38°38'46&quot; N, 94°41'59&quot;

42. Asteroid Imaging Camera

43. Asteroid 2004 QT24 PHA (Potentially Hazardous Asteroid); NEO (Near Earth Object) H = +18.27, diameter ~760 m, period 440 days Earth MOID = .0074617 AU = 1,116,300 km = 2.9 LD impact energy 23,400 MT (if solid rock at 17 km sec -1 ) (source: Dick Trentman, ASKC) (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2004%20QT24;orb=1)

44. Asteroid 2004 QT24 tracking images taken from Powell Observatory AIC, 4/22/2005 (source: Dick Trentman, ASKC)

45. Asteroid 2004 QT24 tracking images taken from Powell Observatory AIC, 4/22/2005 (source: Dick Trentman, ASKC)

46. Asteroid 2004 QT24 tracking images taken from Powell Observatory AIC, 4/22/2005 (source: Dick Trentman, ASKC)

47. Asteroid 2004 QT24 tracking images taken from Powell Observatory AIC, 4/22/2005 (source: Dick Trentman, ASKC)

48. Saving Civilization the ASKC Way get nightly list of objects of high interest from MPC take 10-100 images of that area of sky digitally combine images into 3 groups, “blink” them if something jumps, compare with known direction/speed astrometric software does position and speed analysis send data only (no images) back to MPC they do computation to extend known segment of orbit then rate object on Torino scale (0-10) (source: Mitch Glaze, ASKC)

49. How is this saving civilization? With our data, the Minor Planet Center … Updates its library of all known NEOs’ orbital and physical data. Correlates new discoveries with “lost” asteroids. Provides accurate predictions of future NEO orbital motion. Identifies PHAs (potentially hazardous asteroids). Monitors changes to NEO orbits due to various influences. Major accomplishments … Starting in 2001, Powell became the second most productive observatory in the world (official designation IAUC/MPC #649) for NEO confirmation and tracking. In 2004, Powell was specifically requested by the MPC to image “killer asteroid” 2004 MN4, later known as 99942 Apophis, because of the large aperture (30”) Ruisinger telescope and the quality of its previous work. Currently, Powell has over 9,300 NEO observations, second only to the federally-funded Lowell Observatory. (source: AJ Eaton, ASKC)

50. Also, We’ve Discovered A Few

51. … and here it is H = +13.3; M v = +16.9; diameter ~7.5 km; period 4 yrs 8 mos blackbody surface temperature 235 °K, –38 °C, –36 °F surface gravity ≈ 0.00035 g; 100 lb on Earth = 9/16 oz (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2000%20VG38;orb=1;cov=0;log=0#orb)

52. Monday, October 6, 2008 Humanity’s first successful prediction of an asteroid impact! Asteroid 2008 TC3 discovered ~20 hours before impact by Catalina Sky Survey 1.5m telescope on Mt Lemmon, AZ 1-5 meters in diameter traveling 12.8 km sec -1 ; entered atmosphere at 19° angle 1-2 kT explosion at 20 km altitude; visual magnitude -13; observed by KLM aircraft crew 1,400 km away; detected by infrasound array in Kenya see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_TC3 and http://orbit.psi.edu/?q=node/22

53. Impact Images (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ELG_webcam_record_of_2008_TC3_frame_0005.png) 30 seconds before during 20 seconds after

54. Impact Animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxa2PUluqVU

55. 2008 TC3’s Final Orbit (source: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2008%20TC3;orb=1 )

56. 2008 TC3’s Fragments Found! (source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7237/full/nature07920.html ) exploded at 37 km altitude; no macroscopic fragments were expected to survive but 47 meteorites found; total mass 3.95 kg parent body named Almahata Sitta (“Station Six,” train station with eyewitnesses) achondrite, a polymict ureilite, ultra-fine-grained and porous, with large carbonaceous grains asteroid was F class, made of material so fragile it was not previously represented in meteorite collections (source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=asteroid-meteorite-sudan-fireball )

57. 2008 TC3’s Fragments Found! (source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090328.html )

58. Harry Turtledove, Call Your Office (source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/reference_maps/pdf/physical_world.pdf ) actual path what if? what if? what if?

59. Join the ASKC! What We Do Monthly meetings with great speakers and knowledgeable club members Operate Powell Observatory – training is always available Operate Warkoczewski Observatory at UMKC (Friday nights) Heart of America Star Party every year at dark-sky site near Butler, MO What You Get to Do Members can use the “Louisburg Community Telescope” (actually 2 telescopes, 16” and 12½” reflectors) any time Become a “keyholder” at Powell Observatory – training is always available Get access to members-only “dark-sky site” Help refine asteroid orbits – save civilization! http://www.askc.org/