Question and Calculation

[Gamefreak89]

Ok here is a question for everyone in the next decade or two if one of NASA's satellites spots an asteroid traveling at 14,000 mph and is exactly 2 light years away from earth how long will asteroid take to get here?

(Note): When I mean in the next decade I mean that NASA could spot an incoming object 2 or more light years away within 120 seconds, and another 5 seconds of sending the data of the incoming object back to earth.

[Frog march]

95,657years if the asteroid is traveling at 14,000mph directly, and relatively, in the direction of Earth

[grant hutchison]

Your object is moving at about 1/50,000th of lightspeed, so it'll take about 100,000 years to travel two light years.

Grant Hutchison

PS: Overlapped with Frogmarch. Fortunately we get the same result.

[Gamefreak89]

Hey Frog march its me astroboy89 I'm just using a different screen name because my old aol email account got deleted by aol itself so I'm stuck using this screen name and a google account

>Thanks for the calculation though.

[Frog march]

you could just log in to your old account and then change the email in your profile here

http://www.bautforum.com/profile.php?do=editpassword

[Gamefreak89]

Problem with that can't remember my old password since gustave89@aol.com gotten deleted by aol along with my email that has my old password.

[Frog march]

well, maybe you could get a Mod to change your email; I think they can do that, but they can't change your password.

then you should be able to reset your password.

[Frog march]

I assume that you're other account is atroboy07 not89.

http://www.bautforum.com/members/astroboy07.html

[Gamefreak89]

yes that would be it.

[Jens]

(Note): When I mean in the next decade I mean that NASA could spot an incoming object 2 or more light years away within 120 seconds, and another 5 seconds of sending the data of the incoming object back to earth.

I realize the thread is a couple of years old, but I don't think anybody mentioned this: if the object were 2 light years away, the data could not come back to earth in 5 seconds. The data would require 2 years to arrive back at earth. So there would be only 99,998 years till impact.

[Frog march]

distance traveled by meteor in those 2 years= 2*365*24*14,000=245,280,000miles

original distance to meteor=2*365*24*60*60*186,000=11,731,392,000,000 miles

distance of meteor when detected=11,731,392,000,000-245,280,000=11,731,146,720,000miles

time till impact=11,731,146,720,000/14000=837939051hours=95,655years


ETA: I suppose it would have been easier to just lop of the 2 years, as Jens did.

[EDG]

If NASA had a way to spot an asteroid from two lightyears away, I'd suggest they use that technique to spot every single object that could hit us that's within a few hundred million km first!

[neilzero]

Even 10 billion kilometers away, travel time is a million hours at 10,000 kilometers per hour, maybe 1/2 million hours as the asteroid would increase speed as it fell toward the Sun. 1/2 million hours is 20,833 days = 57 years.