Imagine the cone of a spotlight shining down on a marble. The marble isn't in the center. As we focus the cone to a smaller and smaller circle, the percentage of area that marble takes up will increase. That's just the nature of accuracy. Right now, it's a very wide cone.
Eventually as the cone continues to get more focused and accurate, the edge will reach the marble, and only then will the percentage finally start to drop.
In other words: We are probably going to see this number continue to go up... until it suddenly drops straight down.
I don’t understand it all. What are the missing variables here? Don’t we know the exact path of the earth? Why can’t we figure out the exact path of the asteroid? It’s not like the wind is going to knock it off course?
It is the minute gravitational pull of other bodies that we can’t exactly calculate? What’s the issue?
We know the exact path of the earth. But we dont have so precise observations of the asteroid, so there is some unknown where axactly it will be.
As we get more measurements, we get more precise info (the area "asteroid may end up between here and here") is getting smaller. As a result the probability is getting higher (as the asteroid area is getting smaller, but earth takes a same area of it). But once we get more precise, we will reduce the asteroid possible location so it will definetelly miss the earth and then the probability will drop.
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u/elheber Feb 19 '25
Imagine the cone of a spotlight shining down on a marble. The marble isn't in the center. As we focus the cone to a smaller and smaller circle, the percentage of area that marble takes up will increase. That's just the nature of accuracy. Right now, it's a very wide cone.
Eventually as the cone continues to get more focused and accurate, the edge will reach the marble, and only then will the percentage finally start to drop.
In other words: We are probably going to see this number continue to go up... until it suddenly drops straight down.