Vera C. Rubin Observatory has Discovered 11,000 New Asteroids | Hacker News Reader

Vera C. Rubin Observatory has Discovered 11,000 New Asteroids

universetoday.com

67 pointstcp_handshaker12 comments

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Something related and fun is parsing a simple CSV file of exoplanets.

https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/np...

Download Table -> All Columns, All Rows.

Tried a few new, open, local AI models by giving them the CSV file and asking them to write a simple python script:

1. Parse all rows and build statistical distribution of mass, radius etc.

2. Use those distributions to generate fictional exoplanets.

Playing with this for a space game idea where star systems are populated with fictional exoplanets, but all their params are from the real statistical distributions of all known exoplanets.

A way to get some harder sci-fi using real world data :)

Thank you for the data source. I'll eventually add it to the project that I'm working on

I've got a little orbital dynamics simulator written in C that I've been tinkering with for the past little while. I've got the solar system planets and some asteroids going, I was going to work on moons and artificial satellites / probes next.

My goal was to tinker with simulating a solar system based economy that used Aldrin cyclers for lunar / asteroid mining.

The author of this software posts on HN quite frequently, but I can't remember their username: https://caltech-ipac.github.io/kete/

Thanks for the link! Looks like pretty useful tools.

I'm playing with a space game idea of physics simulation somewhere between the fidelity of KSP and Eve Online. More robust ships and easier gameplay than KSP, but much more in-depth physics than Eve.

A bit too early (and too much AI slop code!) to share but can push to github if useful - wrote some scripts to parse the gaia DR3 release: https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/

Parses all rows of the gdr3/Astrophysical_parameters/ files and filters out all objects within X ly of our solar system.

Same idea there as with the exoplanets; build a statistical distribution from real-world data and use it to generate fictional solar systems.

Keep in mind that our current instruments are not really sensitive to most exoplanets that would be interesting for a sci-fi setting.

Current instruments are mostly good at finding large planets around small stars, we are basically blind to earth-like planets around sun-like stars.

See e.g. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/queloz/lectur...

That's a very good point! And an opportunity for game worlds; extrapolate those blind spots by assuming small planets and planets further out from their stars are more common than what's been confirmed so far.

Any collisions that Earth has to worry about?

(Once heard the observation that the dinosaurs didn't go extinct because of an impact: they went extinct because they didn't have a space program.)

None yet. Any discoveries made with a possible impact risk would end up on the NEO Confirmation Page for follow up. As soon as an observation arc is long enough and gets a provisional designation, impact risks would be calculated and displayed at both NEOCC and JPL Sentry. We also do impact probability calculations and visualizations at Asteroid Institute.

I have this mental image of an asteroid scientist sitting in his little research room, being incredibly jaded... "Asteroids are so INTERESTING. Their history, their chemical composition... but no, nobody cares about that, the first question everyone has is 'Will it impact Earth...'"

Man, I hope not, cuz Bruce Willis is in no condition to save us right now! (Or is he?)

I am really not sure how a "space program" would have saved the dinosaurs. It would not save humankind today to launch any sort of rocket or missile that we have on hand.

The business of deflecting or disintegrating planet-killer asteroids is still the stuff of science-fiction and speculation. The reality of physics is that a sufficient mass with sufficient velocity is not something we would be able to send off-course (enough to make a difference) nor could we detonate it into little harmless splinters.

"enough to make a difference" depends a lot on timescale in question

Earth travels its radius in 3-4 minutes. Delay asteroid by that in its orbit and you did it

If you learn of impact 100 years in advance, your task is only 2 seconds per orbit - less than 1mm/s

> The dataset also includes roughly 380 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), two of which have extremely large, elongated orbits (provisionally named 2025 LS2 and 2025 MX348)

Orbit uncertainty 7 and 9, aka almost- and totally-useless

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