There's lots to report in the Puckett media today. First, I'm in the Anchorage Daily News today, and it's a great story! I was interviewed yesterday on the phone. This morning, Becca pointed out that my picture was on the main adn.com website, but now I've been bumped for more recent stories on polar bears, a snowmachine race, and a closed dairy plant. But here's the story:
UAA researcher gives Mars bad news
Also in the Alaskan media, I'm going to be on the Alaska Public Radio Network this weekend! The program is called
AK, and it's about "everyday Alaskans and the ordinary and extraordinary things they do." I went into their studio yesterday, which was very cool, and made for a pretty media-filled day. The interview lasted about 30 minutes, but the host is going to have to cut it down to 5 as part of the 1-hour show. I have no idea if I'll be on early or late, so we'll just have to stay tuned. The full Alaskan broadcast schedule is
here. Fortunately, both of the Anchorage stations stream through iTunes, so you can listen this Saturday at 10am (right before CarTalk!) or Tuesday at 11am AK-time via
KSKA, or Saturday at 12pm via
KNBA. If you have trouble with either (want to use Windows Media?), try kska.org or knba.org. And if you just miss it entirely, they also podcast the show, so you can
click here to bring it up in iTunes. The episode will be called "Chasing the Sun/ Son."
Finally, in the non-Alaskan media, JPL
has dropped the odds of 2007 WD5's impact with Mars to about 2.5% (1-in-40), based on new data from January 6th as well as some "refinements" to my SDSS submissions. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that my initial submission was not quite correct. Some enlightening conversation with one of my colleagues in Chicago made clear to me that I have
never treated the times of SDSS observations correctly. SDSS timestamps use International Atomic Time (TAI), which is about 30 seconds ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) due to several leap-seconds added to the latter since about 1960. Stupid slowing rotation of the Earth! When I realized this, I dutifully submitted a correction, again not knowing whether my data would increase or decrease the odds.
Chances are pretty poor right now that the impact will actually happen, which is what JPL has been saying all along. The nominal predicted distance at closest approach has remained steady at about 30,000 km since the last refinement. The most likely scenario now has this distance remaining roughly the same as larger and larger telescopes watch the object getting closer and closer to Mars. Meanwhile, the cluster of 50,000 or more simulated asteroid "clones" that represent the uncertainty in that extrapolated orbit will get tighter and tighter around that best-fit orbit, as we no longer have to extrapolate as far into the future from the date of the last observation. Eventually,
none of those clones will hit Mars, and the folks at JPL will say the odds have been reduced to less than 1-in-50,000 (0.002%). Or, essentially zero.
Here are the most recent JPL graphic (1-in-40), as well as the prior one (1-in-28):
