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Challenge Team Interim Report

Team Number: 079 School Name: Ramah High School Area of Science: Probability Project Title: Armageddon Bytes

Our project is called "Armageddon Bytes". As you can tell by the name of our project, it is about Armageddon, the last great battle between good and evil. We wanted to know how big an asteroid or meteorite would have to be to destroy all existence on earth, and what the chances were of that happening. We have found that there are a lot of asteroids headed toward the earth but none of them are very likely to hit.

One particular asteroid we found, 4190 Toutatis, is very oddly shaped and more than 2 miles long--very similar to the one featured in Deep Impact. As we looked further into this asteroid, we found that it has a very strange rotation and that it will cross into the earth's rotation in about 69 years. If 4190 Toutatis were to hit the earth, we would like to know how much damage it would do. We need to find out if it is big enough to make a crater or worse.

We have been finding a ot of information at the NASA internet site. We have written to a few people at NASA, including Dr. Scott Hudson, the scientist who discovered 4190 Toutatis. We hope to recieve some answers from them soon and we intend to explore the site further in the near future.

It would be interesting to determine how likely it would be for an meteorit to hit here in Ramah as well and perhaps we will be able to do that with the Super Computer's help. As we further our project, we hope to learn more about asteroids and meteorites. Hopefully, as we find out how big a meteorite would have to be to destroy the earth, we will not find one on a collision course with earth.

Team Members

Team Mail

• Laura Bond
• Benito Baeza
• Caitlin Heath
• Emma Morris
• Jace Blea

Sponsoring Teachers

• Mike Hyatt

Project Advisor(s)