[meteorite-list] Portales Valley / Bum rap for astronomers

From: Matson, Robert <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue May 17 14:59:36 2005
Message-ID: <BE076B8CCE4CFE4D9598230D888B2ADF07C6BE_at_0005-its-exs01.mail.saic.com>

Hi Tom and List,

> If this proposed reclassification happens, what does this say
> about the original classification? Was it wrong?

No.

> Was it a rush to judgment?

No.

> Did they not want to take the time out to study it enough to
> properly classify it (lazy)?

No. It was studied. Everything about it fit into the H classification
system, and still does.

> How could it go from an H6 ordinary chondrite to a "Portalesite,
> H7, metallic-melt breccia (primitive achondrite)" Did it experience
> a metamorphous <sic> between studies.

You're jumping the gun. The reclassification is only at the proposal
stage.

> I did not call anyone "working" on it lazy, I asked why the original
> group did not make up a new classification for this unique meteorite.

Because it didn't need one. It fit into the existing classification
system just fine -- and still does.

> Astronomers are always being reprimanded for telling us a killer asteroid
> is going to strike the Earth next year. They come out and say it before
> they get all the information and when they finally do get all the
> information, they look bad for jumping the gun.

This is the trouble with both the media and the general public these
days. Communicating science matters with either of them is next to
impossible because both are so poorly educated in math and science.
Astronomers aren't the ones saying the sky is falling -- the MEDIA
is. Asteroid impact predictions our worded in unambiguous language
to fellow asteroid trajectory researchers, and anyone else who invests
15 minutes of their time to understand how near-earth objects (NEOs)
are discovered and their orbits determined.

Let me give you an analogy. You're on the beach at night in Santa
Barbara, CA, and you see a missile launch out of Vandenberg AFB. You
take a half dozen digital pictures over the course of 30 seconds as
the rocket and its plume rise in the western sky...

There's a cruise ship in the western Pacific at that moment on its way
from Fiji to Hawaii. What are the odds that the missile is going to
accidentally hit it (or close enough to it that it presents a hazard)
based on the your six time-tagged photographs?

Let's suppose you quickly compute a trajectory based on those six
positions, and you're surprised to discover that the missile is
definitely going to impact within 100 miles of the cruise ship in 30
minutes, and that the odds are 1 in 50 that it's going to impact within
2 miles. Should the cruise ship be warned? (If *you* were on that
cruise ship, would you want to know?) Suppose further that you have
the ability to get a fix on the missile's position 15 minutes into its
flight (say from the tracking station on Maui), and that once you have
you'll be able to refine the impact point prediction to within 2 miles
with 95% probability. Do you wait those 15 precious minutes to see if
the danger goes away, or do you let the ship's captain know about the
potential hazard right away (even though the chance of disaster is
less than 2%)? To further complicate your dilemma, suppose the captain
could easily maneuver the ship to a safe location if given 20 minutes'
warning, but that if you wait for the Maui data you can only give him
10 minutes' warning -- and that this isn't enough time for him to get
to a safe distance.

This is what astronomers are up against -- balancing the public's right
to be aware of something potentially disastrous in a timely fashion,
versus keeping them in the dark on the grounds that in all likelihood
the hazard will go away as more information is obtained. I guarantee
that if they did more of the latter, everyone would be screaming
"conspiracy". But too much of the former desensitizes the public to
the warning and causes them to unfairly accuse the astronomers of being
a bunch of Chicken Littles.

The Torino Scale was an attempt to translate the scientific language of
impact probabilities and consequences into a system that the general
public could understand:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/torino_scale.html

The wording was recently revised -- partly as a result of 2004 MN4's
temporary status at Torino Scale 4 last year -- but much is still lost
in translation.

--Rob
Received on Tue 17 May 2005 02:58:58 PM PDT