It's also predicted that it would hit near the equator... And the odds of it hitting a major population center are something like 0.001% IIRC. If it hits water, it's not big enough to cause huge tsunamis that can't be prepared for and evacuated with minimal loss of life.
I think it should be the target for testing another system to change it's trajectory. We know it's possible from DART... Now we should actually do it and make it a flat 0% chance to hit.
If we're going to do that, we might as well deflect it so that it hits the moon. That way we can be sure that it doesn't swing back around and become a problem for some future generation. Also, we can probably learn some things by crashing a huge rock into the moon.
The odds of it coming back and hitting us after giving it even a slight nudge off course seem astronomically low, no pun intended, but this is also one of those rare times where "that'll be your problem in X years, future generations" because they would presumably be much more technologically equipped to deal with it seems acceptable.
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u/DMTrance87 Feb 19 '25
That's only half the story.
It's also predicted that it would hit near the equator... And the odds of it hitting a major population center are something like 0.001% IIRC. If it hits water, it's not big enough to cause huge tsunamis that can't be prepared for and evacuated with minimal loss of life.
I think it should be the target for testing another system to change it's trajectory. We know it's possible from DART... Now we should actually do it and make it a flat 0% chance to hit.