Your Name: Fragment of the Tiamat comet strike Itomori on October 4, 2013

[gillan1220]

On October 4, 2013, the town of Itomori is wiped from the map after a fragment of the Tiamat comet strikes it. It would be the second time in 2013 that a comet hits Earth; the first time being the Chelyabinsk meteor in February. 

How would this affect Japan and the world? What would become of air defense systems? How would NASA and international space agencies cooperate to track the possibility of comets fragmenting? Would this comet strike butterfly Typhoon Haiyan from making landfall in the Philippines a month later?

Leave your thoughts below.

[kyuzoaoi]

I don't think Haiyan would be stopped.

[gillan1220]

May 15, 2021 17:03:12 GMT kyuzoaoi said:

I don't think Haiyan would be stopped.

I was wondering if the comet would change the weather patterns. So we could have Haiyan stopped or just weakened that the death toll won't reach 6,000+.

[stevep]

May 16, 2021 3:03:01 GMT gillan1220 said:

May 15, 2021 17:03:12 GMT kyuzoaoi said:

I don't think Haiyan would be stopped.

I was wondering if the comet would change the weather patterns. So we could have Haiyan stopped or just weakened that the death toll won't reach 6,000+.

  Weather is notoriously chaotic so it could affect the Typhoon.  Of course it could make it worse as likely possibly as making it better.

[gillan1220]

May 16, 2021 11:32:37 GMT stevep said:

May 16, 2021 3:03:01 GMT gillan1220 said:

I was wondering if the comet would change the weather patterns. So we could have Haiyan stopped or just weakened that the death toll won't reach 6,000+.

  Weather is notoriously chaotic so it could affect the Typhoon.  Of course it could make it worse as likely possibly as making it better.

You are correct. This may mean Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria is butterflied away but it does not mean hurricanes will be weaker for the southern United States and Puerto Rico just because a comet hit a town in Japan.

On the other hand, this might see anti-meteor weapons deployed in the future.

[gillan1220]

Here's some graphics that show how dense Japan's air defense is along with how the Aegis destroyers of the JMSDF work.

[stevep]

May 16, 2021 11:47:50 GMT gillan1220 said:

May 16, 2021 11:32:37 GMT stevep said:

  Weather is notoriously chaotic so it could affect the Typhoon.  Of course it could make it worse as likely possibly as making it better.

You are correct. This may mean Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria is butterflied away but it does not mean hurricanes will be weaker for the southern United States and Puerto Rico just because a comet hit a town in Japan.

On the other hand, this might see anti-meteor weapons deployed in the future.

  Depends on the size and how much warning we have.  Plus continued willingness to maintain such a commitment and possible political issues as to where the object is landing.

  If its something larger than a pretty small one then you really need something based outside the atmosphere to intercept and divert it earlier which would be a lot more expensive and technologically challenging.  Mind you there we're thinking more of very rare but extremely destructive events, such as a Tunguska event object, which is far more likely nowadays to hit somewhere with a lot of people in it.  Or worse.

[gillan1220]

May 16, 2021 14:00:29 GMT stevep said:

May 16, 2021 11:47:50 GMT gillan1220 said:

You are correct. This may mean Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria is butterflied away but it does not mean hurricanes will be weaker for the southern United States and Puerto Rico just because a comet hit a town in Japan.

On the other hand, this might see anti-meteor weapons deployed in the future.

  Depends on the size and how much warning we have.  Plus continued willingness to maintain such a commitment and possible political issues as to where the object is landing.

  If its something larger than a pretty small one then you really need something based outside the atmosphere to intercept and divert it earlier which would be a lot more expensive and technologically challenging.  Mind you there we're thinking more of very rare but extremely destructive events, such as a Tunguska event object, which is far more likely nowadays to hit somewhere with a lot of people in it.  Or worse.

Yeah you are correct. Even Russia's vast air defense network composed of S-300s and S-400s were not able to intercept the Chelyabinsk meteor.

I was told on the other forum that Patriots and SM-3s do not really completely obliterate their targets. Instead, the missiles turn them into scrap metal whether it is an aircraft or another missile. So firing a missile on a comet would just break it down to smaller pieces that would still continue to fall to the ground. One can only hope it does not hit some unlucky chap.

And here's the scene the comet splits. Be warned as SPOILERS AHEAD if you haven't seen the movie.

[stevep]

May 16, 2021 14:06:57 GMT gillan1220 said:

May 16, 2021 14:00:29 GMT stevep said:

  Depends on the size and how much warning we have.  Plus continued willingness to maintain such a commitment and possible political issues as to where the object is landing.

  If its something larger than a pretty small one then you really need something based outside the atmosphere to intercept and divert it earlier which would be a lot more expensive and technologically challenging.  Mind you there we're thinking more of very rare but extremely destructive events, such as a Tunguska event object, which is far more likely nowadays to hit somewhere with a lot of people in it.  Or worse.

Yeah you are correct. Even Russia's vast air defense network composed of S-300s and S-400s were not able to intercept the Chelyabinsk meteor.

I was told on the other forum that Patriots and SM-3s do not really completely obliterate their targets. Instead, the missiles turn them into scrap metal whether it is an aircraft or another missile. So firing a missile on a comet would just break it down to smaller pieces that would still continue to fall to the ground. One can only hope it does not hit some unlucky chap.

And here's the scene the comet splits. Be warned as SPOILERS AHEAD if you haven't seen the movie.

  I was wondering what the "Your Name" meant as I didn't realise it related to a film.  If your actually got a comet, as opposed to possibly only a small fragment with the bulk of the comet missing Earth totally, then it could be a mass extinction event as they can be quite large, albeit sometimes very thinly spread.  Would depend on the density of the head but I think most/all are largely volatile gases and such materials.  As such could have a lot more problems than its possible effect on the weather.

[gillan1220]

May 17, 2021 15:22:43 GMT stevep said:

May 16, 2021 14:06:57 GMT gillan1220 said:

Yeah you are correct. Even Russia's vast air defense network composed of S-300s and S-400s were not able to intercept the Chelyabinsk meteor.

I was told on the other forum that Patriots and SM-3s do not really completely obliterate their targets. Instead, the missiles turn them into scrap metal whether it is an aircraft or another missile. So firing a missile on a comet would just break it down to smaller pieces that would still continue to fall to the ground. One can only hope it does not hit some unlucky chap.

And here's the scene the comet splits. Be warned as SPOILERS AHEAD if you haven't seen the movie.

  I was wondering what the "Your Name" meant as I didn't realise it related to a film.  If your actually got a comet, as opposed to possibly only a small fragment with the bulk of the comet missing Earth totally, then it could be a mass extinction event as they can be quite large, albeit sometimes very thinly spread.  Would depend on the density of the head but I think most/all are largely volatile gases and such materials.  As such could have a lot more problems than its possible effect on the weather.

The Tiamat comet wasn't so close to Earth. The fragment that split from the main comet was the problem in which both Japanese and international space agencies failed to predict. Even the small fragment hitting that small town would cause butterflies in the weather and even in geopolitics. Expect to see cooperation between the U.S. EU, Japan, Russia, and China when it comes to planetary defense against space rocks.

[gillan1220]

Eight years ago.

〈insert pop-up content here〉

[gillan1220]

Impact point is somewhere in central Honshu, well within the crosshairs of U.S. and Japanese ABM defenses.

〈insert pop-up content here〉

[gillan1220]

Russian Meteor 15-02-2013 (Best Shots) [HD]



It's been 10 years since the Chelyabinsk meteor struck Russia.

Another one would hit earth 8 months later.

So IITL of Your Name, there are two meteor strikes in this alternate universe. Two meteor strikes in the same year would serve as a wake-up call for planetary defense.

Further reading:
10 Years Ago Today, the Chelyabinsk Meteor Exploded Over Russia

The Chelyabinsk meteor was the biggest space rock to hit Earth this century. Its shockwave shattered windows and injured hundreds of people.

A decade ago today, the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia unexpectedly found itself under assault from space, as a roughly 60-foot-wide asteroid exploded over the region. It was a shocking reminder that our planet can be struck at any time—and future impacts could be a lot more serious.

The asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere on February 15, 2013, and the fireball was captured by security cameras, vehicle dashcams, and the smartphones of eyewitnesses around Chelyabinsk. Soon after came a deafening shockwave and sonic boom, which damaged buildings, set off car alarms, and injured around 1,600 people.

The event was a dramatic wakeup call about the importance of planetary defense. This rock wasn’t a major threat to humanity, but the next one might be. In the 10 years since, our ability to detect small asteroids has improved. NASA has even experimented with ways to deflect incoming asteroids that might pose a threat, with the recent DART mission to smash into a small space rock. DART successfully moved its target asteroid, demonstrating a potential solution in defending Earth.

Click through for videos and images of the Chelyabinsk meteor strike.

Chelyabinsk meteor explosion over Russia 10 years ago was a planetary defense wakeup call

10 years ago today, the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion showed why we need better methods of detecting and tracking near-Earth asteroids.

On Feb. 15, 2013, Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, was preparing for a NASA TV segment on the flyby of a near-Earth asteroid, 2012 DA14, which was expected to zoom within 17,200 miles (27,680 kilometers) of Earth.

During this prep work, Chodas was sent a YouTube clip of a large fireball exploding in the skies over Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural region of Russia.

Chodas was skeptical at first. "Initially, there was a lot of confusion. People thinking, 'Oh, we got our prediction wrong.' And I assured them no, we knew exactly where that asteroid was, and it was passing through the GEO [geostationary] belt. But this Chelyabinsk asteroid was just an entirely independent event coming from a different direction," Chodas told Space.com.

As it turned out, the videos Chodas was sent showed a 59-foot (18 meters) near-Earth asteroid exploding in the atmosphere after surprising scientists by coming from the direction of the sun, a blind spot for telescopes and other sensors on the ground. The resulting explosion caused millions of dollars of damage throughout Chelyabinsk and injured thousands of residents across an area hundreds of miles wide. Most injuries were caused by broken glass, although hundreds of Chelyabinsk residents suffered eye damage from the blast that briefly lit up the skies more brightly than the sun. A few dozen reported burns from the intense ultraviolet radiation caused by the blast.

Ten years later, the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion and the damage it caused underscore the need for asteroid-tracking telescopes such as NASA's NEO Surveyor, planetary defense missions such as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, and research organizations like the CNEOS(opens in new tab). While there are currently no known asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth, unexpected objects routinely crash into the atmosphere with only a few hours notice. And in the case of Chelyabinsk, sometimes asteroids can arrive undetected through blind spots in our detection capabilities.

Nevertheless, there is no need to lose sleep because of the asteroid threat. "There are no known large asteroids which have any significant chance of hitting the Earth," Chodas assured us.

After the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded, infrasound sensors designed to detect nuclear detonations helped scientists determine that the blast was indeed incredibly powerful. "This was a big event, the largest one we've ever actually measured," Chodas said. "On our fireballs page, which measures all the major impact events, this was by far the largest. So that was just an amazing experience, I have to say."

Initially, the explosion was estimated to be between 300 and 400 kilotons, but more recent estimates put the size at 500 kilotons. By comparison, the Fat Man nuclear warhead dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II had a yield of 21 kilotons.

Chodas added that it's fortunate that the event was initially recognized for what it was and not misconstrued as some sort of military event. Chelyabinsk Oblast, the administrative region of which the city of Chelyabinsk is the seat, is home to the All-Russian Institute of Technical Physics(opens in new tab), one of two facilities in Russia that manufacture nuclear weapons.

"But of course, it was way bigger than you would expect from any sort of attack on the city. So I think I'm happy that that was the initial reaction, and that the correct initial reaction was that it was a natural event," Chodas said.

While Chelyabinsk was indeed a natural event, the sheer size of the meteor makes it stand out among the many smaller impacts that occur routinely in the atmosphere. While smaller meteor impacts and fireballs are somewhat common, impacts such as Chelyabinsk or the Tunguska event 100 years prior are far rarer due to the fact that larger objects are exponentially less common throughout the solar system than smaller ones.

"It all depends on what size you're talking about," Chodas said. "I mean, small objects hit us every day. You can go out and see meteor showers, and those are little pebble-sized objects, which are extremely numerous. That's why those impacts are common. And that's a hard thing to understand. As you go up to larger and larger sizes, the impacts become less and less frequent. And that's an exponential drop off, by the way. So that's important to understand."

Chodas added that, despite the frequent headlines that sensationalize any "close" pass by an asteroid, the distances that fall under the definition of near-Earth can be misleading. For example, an asteroid called 2005 YY128 will pass by Earth on Feb. 15 at a distance of 2.8 million miles (4.5 million km), an encounter that has generated a fair amount of media buzz but presents no danger to us at all.

"That's only astronomically close," Chodas said. "So the important thing, hopefully, for the public to understand is that a lot of these close approaches are quite distant. And we know the trajectories very precisely." Chodas added that 2005 YY128 has been tracked by CNEOS for 17 years and its orbit has been accurately predicted to within 100 miles (160 km). "So there's just no chance that it could pose a hazard," Chodas added.

One reason for these constant headlines is the fact that NASA and other space agencies are detecting asteroids and other space rocks at a much more frequent pace thanks to several initiatives the agency has undertaken in recent years.

The asteroid "discovery rate has dramatically increased," Chodas said.

Projects like NASA's upcoming NEO Surveyor asteroid-hunting telescope will help identify and track these objects with greater sensitivity than before. Using infrared sensors, the space telescope will be able to search for multiple near-Earth objects at once. "I like to make the analogy that searching for asteroids is like fishing in the ocean," Chodas said. "And really, if you want to catch more fish, you need a bigger net."

Current NEO detection and tracking capabilities aren't quite sensitive enough to spot distant objects, but NEO Surveyor should help remedy that, enabling NASA to detect and catalog asteroids at much farther distances than current technologies enable. "And that's a really important goal, because our biggest, strongest defense against an asteroid impact is to discover the asteroid early. And to do that, you need a next-generation capability," Chodas explained.

NEO Surveyor is scheduled to launch in June 2028. For more information on near-Earth objects and efforts to study and catalog them, visit the CNEOS website(opens in new tab).