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Space Science

Stop Worrying About Asteroids 28

Posted by timothy from the oh-my-god-we're-going-to-eventually-die! dept.
alnapp writes: "It appears that international efforts to track asteroids are missing the main worry, according to Bill Napier of the Armagh Observatory speaking to New Scientist. Comets, it would seem are more likely to cause us grief. I know that as kids we were told that space dust was bad for you (is that a too "UK" centric reference) but this seems like just another panic waiting to happen."
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Stop Worrying About Asteroids More

Stop Worrying About Asteroids

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  • Sure, it may not happen, but without investigation we're sitting ducks. You may enjoy your ignorance, but I don't intend to do my deer-in-headlights impression when the apocolypse comes.

    If everyone stopped buying Britney Spears CDs and put their money into research instead the scientists wouldn't have to beg at the steps of government...

    --

  • Notice how astronomers allways say that we need to spend money investigating the sky because there is a 1 in 10000000000000000000000000 chance that it could fall and kill us all in the next 100000000 years. Biologist always say that we need to spend money investigating viruses because there is a 1 in 10000000000000000000000000 chance that an formerly unknown one could pop up and kill us all in the next 100000000 years. Geologist always say that we need to spend money investigating earthquakes because there is a 1 in 10000000000000000000000000 chance that one could hit a population center and kill us all in the next 100000000 years.

    Meanwhile, life goes on.

    Geesh, guys. Get a new tune. Isn't there any other way to campaign for an increased budget? And you wonder why people get desensitized and just ignore you after a while. Most people realize that the chances of humanity being able to stop any of these scenarios is about 1 in 10000000000000000000000000.

  • Hell, they landed on a comet long before Bruce
    Willis even knew about the asteroid. Ever see
    Life Force? :)

    I'd say the real danger is sexy naked vampire
    people.
  • Most asteroids hit in the first 500 mil years, or 4 bil years ago. There is a slight risk...

    The risk is far more than "slight".

    Consider please the 1908 Tunguska event. Best guess it that is was a small comet fragement exploding just above the ground. It had the destructive power of several hundred nuclear bombs and destroyed 500,000 acres of forest.

    Now imagine that puppy coming down over New York.

    Keep watching the skies.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    Oh why post something like this anonymously, this is the best laugh I have had all day. :)

    Kudos to whoever hybridized these headlines. Thanks for the smile. :)

  • The bad guy is a comet too ... :/

  • Anyone remember the outgassing, the cometary debris??? The bad guy in "Armageddon" was a hodgepodge of bad theory, moving very rapidly towards a bunch of testosterone-charged morons who lucked out in that their script writers did not have a grasp of basic physics, but I digress. See http://www.badastronomy.com for more about bad science in the media.

    As for its composition, physics says it doesn't matter what the object is made out of, it could be an asteroid the size of Manhattan, a gigaton mass of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia, or a mile wide dust bunny, if you throw it at the Earth at 70 thousand kph it's going to make a BOOM and significantly impact the surface, not "evaporate" in the atmosphere.

    The speed of the object coupled with its size is such that it would traverse the distance from space to surface (our onion skin of an atmosphere) in a matter of seconds, it would not have time to "evaporate" or even break up. More than 95% of the object's energy will remain when it slams into water, or land.

    I think it is correct to state that comets probably pose a greater threat than near Earth objects simply because we have been interacting with NEO's for four point five billion years. Earth has had more than enough time to make peace with its orbital partners.

    On the other hand comets like Hale-Bopp and other objects with long orbital periods get tossed at us from the Oort cloud and leave us only a few months warning. It certainly makes sense to have a sensible policy for dealing with this when, not if it happens. This may not make anyone sleep easier, but something out there IS on a collision course with us, we just may be a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand years away from noticing it.

    Personally, I think the longer the warning, the better. :)

  • Who's Rupert?

  • Do we get a burritos or something?
    --
  • paste it to a file named test.CPP and see whut happens...

  • I would not saying a total misreading, the author of the paper clearly states that he thinks this is a big deal. For those who don't follow-up the New Scientist link, this is in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the british journal for astronomy papers, so the paper has been reviewed and approved by anonymous referee.

    Nonetheless, this strikes me as rather speculative. For some reason the British get really hung up about stuff from space causing problems for earth. My favorite being mad cow disease coming from space [bbc.co.uk]

    Maybe the brits don't have enough real things to worry about, like the NASDAQ crashing.

  • If everyone stopped buying Britney Spears CDs we wouldn't need research because everyone would be instantly intelligent.
  • Thanks for pointing that out. I was wondering if anyone would... And might I comment on the cleverness of your signature...I figured I'd paste it and compile it. (Nothing better to do...history paper in the works). Good one, Rupert. =)
  • Now we have another natural disaster to make a blockbuster movie after

    How is Bruce Willis going to land on a comet though? Ahh yes, Hollywood will take care of that.

    I love pretending everything is so simple.

    "We came, we saw, we KICKED ITS ASS"
    --Ghostbusters

  • This post for me wondering... what scenario of the following is more likely to happen:

    - A giant comet / asteroid / mini-black hole / whatever crashing into the Earth
    - A new disease caused by new virii / prions that's almost 100% transmissible and always deathly
    - The sudden flipping of the magnetic poles (north becomes south and viceversa
    - Microsoft Corporation admitting that, indeed, Bill Gates IS the Antichrist
    - CowboyNeal

    Hmmm... Slashdot poll material, maybe?
    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
  • Gandalf could kick all their asses.
  • for any of you who actually read at this low a level, this is a goatsex link
  • Woot! I got a first post!

    --

  • Total misreading of the article (Score:3)

    by Anoriymous Coward ( 257749 ) on Thursday March 22, 2001 @12:55PM (#346338) Journal
    The article clearly states that the danger from comets is about the same as the the danger from NEOs. For those too lazy to follow the link, or if it gets /.ed, the danger is that a comet could evaporate, leaving lots of dust in Earth's orbit, which would be picked up as we move through it, blocking out the sun and causing an ice age.

    --
  • This seems to be the National Enquirer of science.

  • blocking out the sun and causing an ice age.

    Which we're due for anyway. Considering that we've already raped all the easily accessible fossil and mineral resources and we just can't seem to get the hang of re-use or recycling, I can't be alone in thinking that if we don't get off this planet before the next ice age hits (Coming To a Generation Near You!), then our little monkey race is going back to the trees.

  • It's only a hang up 'cos us Brits occaisionally get bored of talking about the weather and drinking tea old boy.
  • What would you rather have: people putting money into detecting and defending threats from outside the species or even the planet, or people worrying instead about what the people on the other side of the hill are doing and working up ever-more-dangerous weapons to keep them from attacking - while they do the same?

    Say what you want, but focussing on an outside threat that's both real and helps to foster the growth of science and useful technology is a lot better than starting an arms race with the neighbors.
    --
    spam spam spam spam spam spam
    No one expects the Spammish Repetition!

  • I wrote an article about this in my local Astronomy newsletter 6 or so years ago. This asteroid stuff is just beaten up in an attempt to get funds. The medicos use this sort of blackmail, but I think in science we should have higher ethics. Science should enlighten and this is fear merchant stuff. Most asteroids hit in the first 500 mil years, or 4 bil years ago. There is a slight risk, best solution is to promote mining of the asteroids belt, and let capitalism pay for astronomers to do their stuff without the blackmail for public money.
  • Hitting W. Va. could be a good thing. Think of the tourist attractions.....

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