This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 02 Mar 2006, by Alberto Adrián Schiano.
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13 Apr 11
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When interpreting the Sentry Impact Risk Page, where information on known potential NEA impacts is posted, one must bear in mind that an Earth collision by a sizable NEA is a very low probability event. Objects normally appear on the Risk Page because their orbits can bring them close to the Earth's orbit and the limited number of available observations do not yet allow their trajectories to be well-enough defined. In such cases, there may be a wide range of possible future paths that can be fit to the existing observations, sometimes including a few that can intersect the Earth.
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Most visitors to this web site will be primarily interested in the table presented on the Impact Risk Page. The rightmost two columns quantify the risk posed by the tabulated objects, using both the
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Torino Scale
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which was designed primarily for public communication of impact risk, and the Palermo Technical Scale, which was designed for technical comparisons of impact risk. A Palermo Scale value less than zero and, in most cases, a Torino Scale value of zero, indicate a risk below the so-called background level (more info here), which is the average risk from the entire NEO population. To date, the risks posed by the potential impacts identified by Sentry have all been well below the background level, and hence, these events have been of academic or professional interest only, and not deserving of great public concern.
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01 Jan 07
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