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Article: Torino scale has impact.
- Article from:
- Design News
- Article date:
- September 20, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cambridge, MA--No, it's not a device for measuring old Ford muscle cars. The Torino Scale is a risk-assessment measure, similar to the Richter Scale, that assigns values to celestial objects moving near the Earth (see Design News, 9/21/98, p. 35). Developed by MIT professor Richard Binzel, it is officially the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, named for the Italian city in which the International Astronomical Union adopted it this past June.
Here's how the scale combines size, speed, and probability of collision with Earth:
- Events having no likely consequences
0. Collision probability is zero (well below random) or for small objects unlikely to ...