Talk:4179 Toutatis

message: This asteroid is listed on Apollo asteroid, but the article itself says it's an Alinda asteroid. Is there crossover between these groups, or is this an indication of a contradiction? Bryan 09:55, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it qualifies under both categories, but I'm not an expert.  Perhaps you could try asking User:Desertsky (talk), he's a retired professional astronomer who discovered some asteroids. -- Curps 17:39, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: I find it very amusing that this asteroid would be named Toutatis... the one thing the strip character Asterix and peers fear is that "the sky would fall on their heads" — and Toutatis is a Gallic sky god! {Ανάριον} 15:46, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asterix 

message: Golbez's positioning of the image (upper left) was pretty good, but I have changed it again.  I have put the image at the upper right, and moved the Minor Planet box down.  If anyone has a better idea, go for it. --Doradus 12:58, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)
:Much improved format. Those boxes are useful but ugly. Wetman 22:58, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Image positioning

message: Note: I didn't make these myself, but they sound valid and they shouldn't have been on the article page itself. Mackensen
Please clarify how the laws of gravity, the ones that let us put spaceships into orbit around planets, are chaotic and unpredictable.  The equation is something simple, like Δx/r2.
: Sorry, that would be something like GmM/r2 where m and M are the respective masses of the interacting gravitational objects and G is another famous constant.  Where is the chaos?
:: (Doradus 13:48, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)) Chaos can arise from extremely simple formulae, as it does in this case.  The classic example is the logistic equation, which exhibits chaotic behaviour despite its simplicity: the formula is just x_{n+1} = rx_n(1 - x_n).  Another classic example is the double pendulum, which has some things in common with three-body gravitational motion.  Here are some external links if you are interested to learn more:
::*http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=60054
::*http://www-chaos.umd.edu/misc/poincare.html
Thanks, Mack.  I was just browsing and noticed a scientific article that began to sound "new age" and wondered how chaos theory intersected with Newtonian physics.  -Dave
::I was about to remove that odd comment myself and place it here, but it seems someone did it between my reading it and the person posting this. I also removed the, "but this analogy breaks down due to the somewhat unpredicable laws of gravity" comment too.  Gravity isn't unpredictable.  Orbits can be perturbed (and I left that in the article) but they're otherwise very predictable.--Mylon 06:43, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments moved from article 

message: If you take the number of days between the last orbital crossing of 4179 Toutatis and the next one which will occur in 2008, it amounts to 1502 or 1503 days +/- 12 hours.  If you calculate the next time it will pass Earth's orbit based on that number of days alone (obviously not 100% accurate but close), you end up with a date of ~ December 21, 2012 +/- 12 hours.  Two of the three most likely end dates of the "Long Count" for the Mayan calendar are December 21, 2012 and December 23, 2012 according to this website http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-mayan.html.
The website I used to calculate the days between two dates is http://www.easysurf.cc/ndate2.htm although this next one allows you to specify whether the inclusion of the end date is calculated or not http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html
Forgive me if I made any goofs - this is my first wikipedia post. --65.57.245.11 01:27, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Horizons on 2012-Dec-12 at 06:40 UTC Toutatis will pass 0.0463AU from the Earth. -- Kheider (talk) 02:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Significant/Interesting Date Corrolations 

message: listed orbital parametrs are substantially at variance with those given by 
. is this an error? or has the orbit been perturbed since that observation? -- 99.233.186.4 (talk) 04:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: JPL easily trumps data from 1 APR 2001. But the differences are still minor. The exact numbers will vary due to perturbation and the epoch chosen.-- Kheider (talk) 15:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, that's making sense now. thx -- 99.233.186.4 (talk) 06:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: orbital parameters

message: The article doesn't say what the composition of the asteroid is, however the surface has been studied spectrographically. "average pyroxene composition of Wo5-10 En50-35 Fs45-55." these look decipherable as wollastonite 5-10%, enstatite 50-35%, ferrosilite 45-55%; and absorption band also indicates presence of olivine. -- 99.233.186.4 (talk) 06:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: composition

message: Not particularly fond of the "fear-mongering conspiracy crowd" myself, but doesn't that wording detract somewhat from the objectivity of this article? Wanted to see what others thought before changing it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.17.159.156 (talk) 10:04, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It is interesting to note that both of you have only contributed 1 edit to Wikipedia. I have changed the wording to hopefully make it come across as less harsh. But I see no reason to completely remove a true statement from a reliable source. -- Kheider (talk) 16:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

text: Given that the next close approach is on December 12, 2012, the worse promoters of doomsday crowd probably have earned that comment. What changes are you suggesting? Keep in mind that many woo-woos are predicting the end of the world as we know it around December 21, 2012. -- Kheider (talk) 13:24, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

text: TomTerrahawk, you seem to assume quite a bit about me for someone new to Wikipedia. Since you have no established edit history, I can not even begin to judge if your intention to remove a sourced statement is sincere. But thank you for the compliment, "you've obviously done some really good work on this subject area". *If* you can suggest a better wording to address the December 21, 2012 crowd given the December 12, 2012 close approach, I am all ears. Are you also biased against using David Morrison (astrophysicist) as a reliable source? -- Kheider (talk) 13:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

text: So basically you are knocking the reference without fully reading it. Some how, I am not too surprised. Load the reference and do a text search for "doom", "rumor", "The Big One", "impact winter" or even the harsher term "zealot". The "anonymity of the Internet" (as you call it) allows anyone to say anything they want. There is a big difference between a potential edit war based on semantics and outright intentional vandalism. If people did not repeatedly make-up stories on the internet about the biggest and brightest near-Earth asteroids, referenced statements to previous failed doomsday predictions of the same object would not be necessary. I think it is important that younger readers are informed that there were false claims made in 2004. Sadly, history has a tendency to repeat itself. -- Kheider (talk) 07:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Objectivity

message: The past dates and months are still in future tense. (e.g. object will make another close approach on July of 2012) Shouldn't those be fixed and updated with up-to date sources? "SimonOrJ"(U/T/C) 02:35, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: A transit of the Earth across the Sun as seen from Toutatis occurred on 27 July 2012 when Toutatis was 0.66AU from Earth. The notable close approach is 2012-Dec-12, at a distance of 0.046AU. Thank you for the heads-up for a reminder/update. Give the concern some of the public has about NEOs, it is good to mention in the article that Toutatis has been under observation since May of this year. -- Kheider (talk) 04:44, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  The chinese just did a close flyby and got some wonderful hi res pics,  this article should reference the public pics and 
discuss the chinese contribution.  It's a good article for about 2 years ago, but I have to say it totally feels outdated.
--Patbahn (talk) 20:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outdated? 

message: It would be cool to plot the orbit in a graphic. -- Beland (talk) 23:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orbit diagram 

message: One of the images of the asteroid can be found on the China Daily website, but I don't really know how to read Chinese all that well and can't determine the copyright status of these images.  If there is an image taken by the Chinese Space Agency that is compatible with Commons licensing terms, it would be appreciated if somebody could help dig it up.  Generally China is not really paranoid about copyright issues, but it can be a minefield none the less.  --Robert Horning (talk) 21:50, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You can upload it here at English Wikipedia, under a fair use claim, while determining whether it needs to be or not. Since the Change2 images are not replaceable, we should be able to use it as fair use -- 70.24.247.127 (talk) 10:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  I appreciate the reply, but I'd like to find somebody who knows how to read Chinese and/or can determine if it may be possible to use this image with a free content license?  Fair use claims are fine in extreme circumstances, but this is not really illustrating anything beyond what we already got, as there are free images which do depict this object.  --Robert Horning (talk) 02:34, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not really, since there are no direct imaging photos of identifiable landscape from anything other than Change2. Others are computer simulations, artist's impressions, and radar images. -- 70.24.247.127 (talk) 05:59, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to agree with the anon, an actual photograph is different from noisy radar images or a computer model. It is added value. --JorisvS (talk) 17:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright status of images of 4179 Toutatis 

message: Would it be appropriate putting a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planets seeing as that page mentions this asteroid? Saariaho (a composer) wrote an addition to Holst's "The Planets" about it.
18.236.7.115 (talk) 18:40, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classical Music 

message: I came here after reading a chapter in Exploring Chaos, looking for information about 1989 AC.   The article gave me a lot of information, for which I am grateful.  However, the two alternative names are simply listed.  It would be nice to have a small section explaining all three names.  Other Wik. articles have etymological sections or discussions of the naming history (e.g., Pluto. 211.225.33.104 (talk) 01:06, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Names

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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