Asteroid hazard: algorithms for computation of actual cases

Details Asteroid hazard: algorithms for computation of actual cases Asteroid hazard: algorithms for computation of actual cases

May 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000dda....31.0601m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA Meeting #31, #06.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.862

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Computation

Scientific paper

We report on the recent breakthrough in the methods to detect computationally the possibility of an asteroid impact, even at low probability levels. The problem is to propagate the uncertainty cloud of the asteroid initial conditions for a time span of decades, to detect intersections with the orbit of the Earth, and to estimate the corresponding probability. The linear approximation algorithm is often enough for the next encounter, but the most dangerous close approach result from resonant returns, in which a gravity assist from the Earth inserts in a mean motion resonance, and non resonant returns, a similar mechanism recently identified. The cascade of successive returns to close approach generates a complicate, fractal-like structure which can so far be explored only numerically. All the algorithms successfully used are based on the selection of a finite number of Virtual Asteroids sampling the uncertainty cloud; rather than the random sampling of the Montecarlo methods, we show the advantages of assembling the Virtual Asteroids in a string, along which the existence of Virtual Impactors may be proven by geometric arguments. The full understanding of these violently chaotic dynamical phenomena, by means of explicit, analytic theories, is in progress, but numerical methods are already in use for daily monitoring. Research sponsored by Univ. of Pisa, CNR, NSF/NATO, Spaceguard Foundation

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