Stopping Killer Asteroids 627
Drog writes "Earth has had a few near misses with asteroids recently (although "near hits" would be more accurate). It's just a matter of time, though, before we detect one with our name on it. In this New York Times article, experts discuss the various ways that we might go about saving our planet. Remarkably, nuclear detonations are not a good option, as they would break the asteroid into many pieces and merely increase our odds of being hit. And a detonation some distance away may simply be absorbed by the asteroid with virtually no effect. Instead, say scientists who study asteroid hazards, a gentle sustained push is what's needed (slow and steady wins the race). Some of the approaches have been discussed in science fiction for years--a mass driver, an electromagnetic machine which hurls dirt from the surface, an orbiting parabolic mirror to heat up the surface and create a plume of vaporized material. All of these methods require one thing, however. Time. At least several decades warning."
As long as Bruce WIllis is with us (Score:2, Funny)
Re:As long as Bruce WIllis is with us (Score:2, Funny)
Where's Voltron?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Where's Voltron?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As long as Bruce WIllis is with us (Score:5, Funny)
That should take care of the problems with Asteroids...
S
Re:As long as Bruce WIllis is with us (Score:5, Funny)
What about the new national security solution by Pres. Bush...
Unfortunately, unless the asteroid has ties to Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, Bush won't be interested.
Solution Already Exists: Nuclear Rocket (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind that even if the asteroid was only a month away from impact and it was heading our way at 7 miles per second, that means that the asteroid would be 18.1 Millions miles away, which means that the angle of its trajectory would only have to be diverted by less than 1/1000th of a degree. A moderately size nuclear rocket could easily divert an asteroid of 1-2 miles in diameter in plenty of time to divert the disaster.
Planet P [planetp.cc] - Liberation Through Technology.
Re:Solution Already Exists: Nuclear Rocket (Score:5, Insightful)
Planet P [planetp.cc] - Liberationg Through Technology.
Re:Solution Already Exists: Nuclear Rocket (Score:5, Informative)
Soviets and US had some experiance at using nuclear devices for moving Earth and simulating an earthquake.
http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Usa/Tests/
"Up to a point, the more deeply buried an explosive charge is, the larger the crater it will make. Beyond this point much of the material is thrown with insufficient force to clear the crater and falls back in, reducing the final size. At the optimal crater depth though quite a lot of material actually ends up back in the crater bottom. This is an advantage for a Plowshare-type crater experiment since much of the radioactivity gets returned to the crater and buried. The radiation release (as measured in terms of I-131, the most important from human health risks) was 880,000 curies, about equivalent to a 3-4 kt atmospheric fission test.
Sedan was detonated at what was estimated to be the optimal crater depth in alluvial soil. 12 million tons of soil and rock were lifted into the air, 8 million tons of it falling outside the crater. The final crater was 1280 feet wide and 320 feet deep. The force of the detonation released seismic energy equivalent to an earthquake magnitude of 4.75 on the Richter Scale. The device used was similar to that used in Dominic Bluestone and Swanee and was thus a variant of the W-56 high yield missile warhead. The device had a fusion yield of 70%. The Sedan device had a diameter of 17.1 inches, a length of 38 inches, and a weight of 467.9 lb."
http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Russia/Sov
5 to 7 KT does this
"The site for the Chagan shot was the dry bed of the Chagan River on the edge of the Semipalatinsk Test Site (STS) in Kazakhstan. The shot location was chosen so that the crater lip would form a dam in the river during its period of high flow in the spring. The crater formed by the Chagan explosion had a diameter of 408 m and a depth of 100 m. A major lake (10,000,000 m 3 ) was quickly formed behind the 20-35 m high upraised lip. Shortly after the explosion, earthmoving equipment was used to cut a channel through the lip so that water from the river could enter the crater.
Spring melt soon filled the crater with 6.4 million m^3 of water, and the reservoir behind the crater was filled with 10 million m^3 of water. These reservoirs are known informally as Lake Chagan or Lake Balapan. Subsidence of the crater slopes subsequently reduced the crater storage capacity by about 25%. A few years later, a water-control structure was built on the left bank of the river to control water levels in the reservoirs. Both reservoirs exist today in substantially the same form and are still used to provide water for cattle in the area. Efrim P. Slavskiy, Minister of the Medium Machine Building Ministry (the ministry responsible for the entire Soviet nuclear weapons program)was reported to have been the first person to have taken a swim in the crater lake."
This doesn't correspond to detonations on Earth (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason for this is when an nuclear device is detonated, the primary effect is a burst of Gamma radiation. Air absorbs the gamma, and re-radiates X-rays a little cooler until eventualy the radiation drops in color to infra-red. The distance from the center to when the black-body color temp drops to infra-red is called the fireball.
Dirt or astroid is much more opaque so the results are less. In space there is no air to speak of so what you'd have to do is detonate a ways off the surface so an area is irradiated with gamma, heats up and vaporizes a way giving a push from the mass of the vapors expelled by the astroid. This method might be best if the astroid is heading at us and has a high closing velocity, because time would be short.
If the astroid was coming from "behind" and closing slower, a reactor powering an engine place on the surface would be much more do able. It would be cool in such a case to place it in a parking orbit, hollow it out and make one whooper of a space-station out of it.
I've had a fantasy of catching an iron-nickle astroid, heating it up with a parabolic reflector and sunlight and inflating it like a glass-blower would.
Re:As long as Bruce WIllis is with us (Score:3, Funny)
It may not alter the tragectory of the asteroid, but it would probably make the asteroid less noticable, in the "if a tree falls in the woods, but nobody hears it, does it make a sound" sense.
Chalk one up for the nuclear age!
Next problem, please.
So what do we do today?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pray. And give money and support funding to any program that maps the sky for asteroids. Cause if any are on their way (I'd say 30 years or less), well... we're just f*cked.
Huge Asteroids: (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Carlin quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Or better yet, what's a Far Hit?
I think of a near miss as a miss that was close enough to be scary. A far miss is like passing by at a safe distance.
It sounds like you are/he is treating "Near" as "Nearly" or "Almost". I think of "Near" as close distance.
More pieces is bad...why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is my science wrong?
Re:More pieces is bad...why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More pieces is bad...why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Jon
Re:More pieces is bad...why? (Score:2)
Even better might be cracking the asteroid in several pieces so most of the mass misses the Earth.
It seems to me that if we're going to go for the nukes, we're going to want to bring enough to do the job right. I don't want some Texas sized asteroid broken into Kansas sized chunks. I want the asteroid broken into pieces small enough that we can survive a few hit. It seems to me that you could fit quite a bit of fissionable material in the space shuttle.
Re:More pieces is bad...why? (Score:5, Informative)
-B
Almost but not quite (Score:2)
Re:Almost but not quite (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always wondered something about this line of reasoning. Everytime I see an argument against the nuclear option, there seems to be an assumption of using only one device. I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to use several devices to disperse an asteroid around our planet? For example, the first device is launched, then after a bit of a lag, say a few days, a second is launched, wash, rinse, repeate.
My thought is that we could start by fragmenting the object. Then, using a string of devices, both slow and deflect the resultant cloud of matter. In the article they stated that using a nuclear blast near an object, but not on it, to try and push the object off course would probably fail, since the object would absorb the energy. But would this hold true if the object was fragmented? Each piece would be eaiser to move, and most likely, the "cloud", if you will, would have more surface area to be hit by the blast, assuming the same distance from the center of the explosion, more energy would be transfered to the "cloud" than would have been to the object.
Ideally, if you have a year or so of warning, and you launch with a 1 day delay between devices, you could probably put 100 or so devices on the object before it reached the Earth. and basically set up a poor man's orion drive for the object, or resultant "cloud". What are the possible failings of this idea?
Re:Almost but not quite (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree, this could be a problem. Though you will have a vague idea of where the bits are going to go. You would be able to expect that they would all follow the trajectory of the original object, though modified slightly due to the explosion.
The object of the follow-up devices wouldn't be to hit pieces individually, but mearly to explode near the remaining pieces and push them into a safer trajectory. As such, I think you could simply explode them at a "best guess" location, maybe also have a bit of fuel on them for manuvering to make last minute corrections.
Also, this doesn't need to be an exact science really. if it misses us by 1000 miles, or a million miles it won't make a huge difference, as long as it misses.
Also, we could withstand the impact of a dozen or so Tunguska sized impacts, they would suck, no doubt, but if we could just get the vast majority of the mass of the object to miss us it would save lots of lives. Though I still would agree with the article, it would be nice, if we had enough warning, to use a non-nuclear approch. I'm thinking more of the short term warning.
More pieces is bad (Score:5, Informative)
That aside unless you break up the pieces into very small bits they're gonna impact and n-medium sized craters is worse then ~1 big crater. Or, absolutely devastating some large radius is better then pretty-much devastating a number of somewhat smaller radiuses.
By the way - the worst? Ocean impact. Then you're not just talking an air blast and punching a hole into the surface with some ejecta spraying but doing all of that while vaporizing some megatons of water - much worse on a global scale.
Re:More pieces is bad...why? (Score:2)
Pound it into dust completely? The stuff will wind up suspended in the upper atmosphere: I don't think anybody will be thinking global warming is a problem :). If the fine stuff doesn't wind up in the atmosphere, it might wind up in orbit: "Ooh, look, Earth now has pretty rings! Um... where did the sun go?"
Mind you, I think global winter would be less of a problem than a big one hitting: gives us more time to pick up the pieces.
Re:More pieces is bad...why? (Score:2)
Bring it on (Score:2, Funny)
Stargate? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm reminded of an episode of Stargate SG1 (Failsafe) when Anubis sent an asteroid towards Earth.
"O'Neill: I've seen this movie, it hits Paris."
Re:warning: you may be a retard (Score:2)
Fo r a nuclear detonation to be effective... (Score:2)
Re:Fo r a nuclear detonation to be effective... (Score:2)
Re:Fo r a nuclear detonation to be effective... (Score:5, Funny)
-B
Solve the problem (Score:2)
It is important not that Earth will be hit by an asteroid, but that civilization, our species, as we have come to enjoy (and/or lament) will be annihilated.
Remember the eggs in one's basket proverb?
Yeah, but that's not the first solution we can do (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but that's not the first solution we can (Score:4, Insightful)
And of course, when you do get a self-sufficient colony going somewhere else, they're going to have their own agenda. Sort of like Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, or longer term, Asimov's Foundation.
But... I offer two cliches that are none the less true:
Re:Yeah, but that's not the first solution we can (Score:5, Insightful)
The attitude that "it doesn't benefit us now" is the same attitude that keeps people from buying insurance. One may never need insurance, but you can rest assured that if your house burns down, it is well worth it.
But extending that attitude to the existence of the human race, is obtuse to the point of being offensive. We have one chance, one single point of failure, one instance of probability defining the satisfaction of our continuation as a species. If we fail that dice roll, we all die. Forgive my presumption, but that warrants investigation. This dice does not have enough faces.
Your assumptions about large population, economical self sufficiency, and capitalism are not validated. Your assertion that people will not go is not qualified (it is evident from the colonization of the Americas that people desire to go into the unknown, as refected in the popularity of Star Trek and other similar exploration entertainment). If you don't want to go, that is ok. I assure you that other people may; it is not your place to belittle their opportunities. It may be your will to undermine the will of the continuation of the species through this means, but I suggest giving it more thought first.
You have not demonstrated that colonization is any less viable than the multi-generational solutions proposed by the NY Times, none of which solve the problem that Earth is a single point of failure.
For some reason, I am reminded of telephone sanitation workers
Well put, but not everything you said works (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, no. We have only one planet, true, but a planet is a BIG place, it can take a *lot* of damage before it becomes uninhabitable by people. Even if a dinosaur-killer sized asteroid actually hit the planet and ruined the environment and sent us into a new and terrible ice age, we would still have huge amounts of water (later, water ice), oxygen, trace elements, metals, fissile materials (power source) available. In other words, even a post-apocalyptic Earth would have more resources and be more survivable than, say, a domed Mars colony with only very limited supplies of the above items - and it's also worth pointing out that building an airtight shelter than can filter the crap out of the surrounding air is a hell of a lot easier than building an airtight shelter than needs its own self-sufficient air supply, AND has to deal with radiation hazards from the thin Martian atmosphere (I'm assuming mars would be the first choice for a colony), AND deal with the fact that in the event of a breach, you won't have contaminants slowly leaking in - you'll have your air rushing out fast.
The Earth is vulnerable to an extent, yes. But it's so well-suited to human life that even a terrible cataclymic asteroid impact would leave it more habitable, and a better choice for the future residence of the human race, than anyplace else in the solar system.
"it is evident from the colonization of the Americas that people desire to go into the unknown, as refected in the popularity of Star Trek and other similar exploration entertainment"
Well, no. People did not colonize or even explore the Americas for the joy of it - they were looking for gold, or trade routs, or native to indoctrinate and/or enslave. Their mission wasn't "to boldly go where no man has gone before", it was "To boldly go, get rich (or at least get a better life, or religious freedom), and bring glory to the Crown and god". People do NOT abandon their homes for a whimsical love of the unknown, they leave because "the grass is greener...". And their ain't no freaking grass anywhere but Earth.
"it is not your place to belittle their opportunities. It may be your will to undermine the will of the continuation of the species through this means."
Excuse me? I didn't mean to belittle any "opportunities" - if the opportunity should someday arise, and people decide against all logic to colonize other worlds, good for them. I wish them nothing but good. I do, however, doubt very much that this will happen, for reasons already discussed.
"You have not demonstrated that colonization is any less viable than the multi-generational solutions proposed by the NY Times"
I'm sorry, I should have made the point more clear - but I DID mention that the nytimes ideas use technology we either have now, or could reasonably be expected to have fairly soon. Yes, these are multigenerational solutions, but the issue with colonization isn't time. It's social issues, and to a lesser extent, technology. Building a ship that can sustain life for hundreds or thousands of passengers for months would be *hard* - and please, do not talk to me about suspended animation until it actually exists.
Shouldn't we try some of this ideas first? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, will a near nuclear blast really be absorved by the meteor without it changing its course? How much of a force will it be needed to push an asteroid with rockets or the like?
So let's test now so that when the real thing comes and we launch our savior to space, we don't find out in the last minute that it fails.
On a side note, this shouldn't be a NASA-only effort, I think the European Space Agency and many other countries should ship in as well, as this concerns all of mankind.
Can't test a nuke in space (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can't test a nuke in space (Score:2)
After all, the reason treaties banning nuclear space weapons were signed was to protect mankind, and in this particular case it so happens that protecting mankind is the reason to send a test nuclear weapon to an asteroid.
Re:Can't test a nuke in space (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can't test a nuke in space (Score:3, Informative)
I think it is more accurate to say there were treaties in place that prevented nuclear charges in space. Hasn't George Bush announced his intention to abrogate those treaties in the last year or so?
Google to the rescue. According to this article [transnational.org] after dropping a lot of hints he made his intention to take the US out of the ABM treaty on December 31st 2001.
Reagan's SDI proponents were asked whether their nuclear pumped X-ray lasers weren't a violation of the nukes in space portion of the ABM treaty. In an example of "spin doctoring" at its most blatant, they used to respond, "that would only be true if you take a strict interpretation of the treaty".
Of course a bilateral treaty is not like a marraige contract. There is no higher authority to whom you can appeal if you think the other side is cheating. With a bilateral treaty, if the other party doesn't trust you, doesn't trust that you are complying with the interpretation of the treaty you both agreed to when you signed it, if they don't trust your new re-interpretation of the treaty, the treaty is over.
And it doesn't really matter if there were a no nukes in space clause in the non-proliferation treaty. Other clauses in the non-proliferation treaty have been routinely violated. The non-proliferation treaty prohibited both "horizontal proliferation" and "vertical proliferation" . Horizontal proliferation was defined as nations which had no nuclear weapons at the time the treaty was signed acquiring their first weapons. Vertical proliferation was defined as the nations which already had nuclear weapons increasing the size of their nuclear arsenals. Of course The USA, the USSR and China all significantly increased the size of their nuclear arsenals in complete abrogation of the treaty.
I believe the treaty also obliged the nuclear nations to give the non-nuclear nations the benefits from the peaceful applications of nuclear energy.
Re:Can't test a nuke in space (Score:3, Insightful)
thats the real reason that we are still storing our nuclear waste on earth when it would be much better to launch it into the orbit. its same thing with weapons. think about the rage among other countries it would provoke if usa sent nukes/waste into the orbit and rocket exploded on its way up and contaminated most of the earth surface...
idiot, yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
I still argue that one or two a-bombs launched from a remote location with limited tonnage directed towards some properly sized space-rocks is a very acceptable risk if we are to assess technology that could potentially save the entire planet. There isn't much chance that the bombs would go off accidentally while in the atmosphere, and there isn't much chance we will experience an extintion level event.
The devil is in the details. There isn't much radioactive material in a modern a-bomb - a few kg IIRC. Even less if it's an H-bomb. That is the reason why a nuclear meltdown at a nuclear reactor is such a major disaster - since there potentially is more radioactive material to be dispersed at such a site than there is inside of a bomb.
Re:Shouldn't we try some of this ideas first? (Score:3, Insightful)
However its not like asteroids are particularly convenient to get to or anything. Right now there are a few spacecraft out there photographing asteroid & asteroid-like objects with plans to impact into one to see what happens, another to dig into one and further plans to bring back some material.
All of this is very basic science and none of it is particularly focused on how to deflect or break up an asteroid. That would come much later, decades considering the slow rate of progress in this area. The programs cost lots of money, the transit times are long, there's not much particular urgency and budgets are (relatively) small.
As many have noted the first step is just to get an idea of what we are dealing with, take a look around, figure out what the heck these things are even made of and exactly what history our planet has with these. Once we've got some ideas of what we're dealing with comes the stage of deciding how to do so.
Re:Shouldn't we try some of this ideas first? (Score:3, Insightful)
We're barely exploring these objects. The current missions can be counted on one hand. The proposed missions can be counted on the other. All of them are stretched out over decades.
We're nowhere near making useful plans of the sort you're proposing. Heck, we're not even completely sure what a "typical" asteroidal object is like and just how much they diverge. Never mind not having anything that can get anywhere out there without several years of preparation and the possible targets limited to what gravity assists offer.
I'm all for research on this stuff, but before you plan on jumping in your rocketship you might want to become acquainted with what the current state of the art is and what can be realistically be anticipated in the near to mid term.
First lets figure out WHAT these are like and HOW to GET there BEFORE even starting working on diverting or demolishing 'em.
Good Idea! (Score:3, Funny)
Good point (Score:3, Funny)
Small fragments better than one large (Score:2)
As an example, take two identical cars. On one car, drop a bowling bowl on the roof. On the other car, drop pebble with the combined weight of the bowling bowl. Now compare the damage.
Besides, more material would burn up in the atmosphere if there was a hail of smaller rocks rather than one large rock. The surface would be greater - as simple as that.
Any physics geeks care to give me some numbers?
Re:Small fragments better than one large (Score:2, Informative)
Relatively, 1000 1-meter rocks are better than 1 1-km rock.
Actually, however, a single 1-meter rock getting through will still do a boatload of damage - it won't be a planet killer, but the damage will still be more than say, those 2 aircraft that flew into the world trade center towers.
In order for any explosive asteroid deterrant system to work well, you still have to make sure that the asteroid will be sufficiently vaporized to be eaten up in the atmosphere. You have to guarantee that the asteroid will become something more like sand. A nuclear blast will probably not do that (especially not in space, where there's no atmosphere to propagate the blast).
That's why so many systems rely more on controllable methods like redirection - we can guarantee those better.
Re:Small fragments better than one large (Score:2)
maybe with right sized object tho..
i'm no physics geek though.
Trick math (Score:2)
Now, that would depend on a huge number of variables: composition of the asteroid matter, its velocity, the number of pieces you manage to divert enterely, the points of impact and, naturally, the asteroid size. This last factor may well make any breaking effort useless (a large enough asteroid will generate pieces large enough to kill us all anyway).
As it is, I don't know if it is possible to predict the outcome of the experiment without sending Bruce Willis up there to make sure the end will be happy.
Armageddon as REFERENCE? (Score:2)
Let's say you've got a 100 metric tons worth of asteroid heading for the planet. If we broke it up into 1000 pieces at 100kg each, are you really arguing that the individual pieces would do as much damage as the single one? Sure, they would do local damage, but 100 tons worth of space rock would certainly do damage on a global scale. Think about it - only half the globe would be hit by the debris, but the whole globe would be affected by the massive aftermath of an extintion level event - there would be a massive tidal wave, shock waves, volcano eruptions and a massive cloud of dust leading to climate change killing life.
How much more or less dust would result from the "pebbles" scenario is probably what I'm asking. And how for how long would it stick around?
Earth has made it this long w/out our intervention (Score:3, Interesting)
But then again; don't we have a few major telescopes in orbit; and thousands more both professional and personal (like mine) on the surface? Shouldn't we be able to note anything on an obvious trajectory here and consider our options at that point? Maybe not; I have no experience in that sort of 'ballistics' thinking and perhaps there are far too many objects in our sky to track any that might cause us serious damage.
Re:Earth has made it this long w/out our intervent (Score:5, Insightful)
-aiabx
Re:If it comes it comes... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the world is not worth saving why don't you just kill yourself? Seriously, this is not a troll or flamebait. I really want to know the answer. Why not?
Sports heros are paid millions of dollars a year... each... and most teachers are living hand to mouth.
Why don't you stop comparing apples to oranges? Due to union contracts, some teachers are extremely overpaid compared to others who get screwed. Why don't you fix that problem first? Teachers teach our children that once High School is over, your life is going to suck. Work is going to suck. The only thing you'll have to look forward to after the prom and the homecoming football game is the weekend on the couch with a beer and sports on TV. Nobody teaches children that a job can be fun. You wonder why people choose to give their money to athletes instead of teachers? Please, spare me. This is not a wealth redistribution problem like you imply. It's a social engineering problem, and any solution will take generations to work. If you treat it as some moral injustice you'll just perpetuate the cycle or move the problem elsewhere.
Doctors are taught never to identify with the person behind the disease they're treating.
I fail to see how this is bad. Would the world be a better place if all of our doctors were clinically depressed and in institutions after a few years of service? Due to human nature our society depends on objectivity to survive. Sometimes you have to make hard decisions. Sometimes an individual has to be sacraficed for the good of the many. Sometimes you just can't save sombody. It sucks, but that's life. You have to distance yourself at a personal level from the reality if you want to maintain your sanity and continue to make good decisions.
Racism is rampant, keeping certain people from getting ahead just because of where their family comes from. In Ireland, people are killed over how to worship the same god.
Hard work can solve this problem? I doubt it. We've worked at it hard for centuries. These problems will not go away until people are willing to throw away their culture. Ironically, the same people who are interested in seeing problems like this solved are the same types of people who go out of their way to preserve cultures that are dying. Racial and religious barriers that have been overcome have been overcome at the expense of the culture of both sides. I think it's a great tradeoff, but do you? Does everybody?
In China, female children are thrown in the river because of a phallocentric ideology.
Here's another one where you have to make a choice between forgetting a culture to save lives, or preserving our history. No, you can't do both. Does the answer seem so obvious anymore? How many lives would be lost to get people who are so bound to cultural expectations that they would drown their own child to abandon that culture?
Now that I've been antagonizing you, here's the real point. Even with all those problems, do we still need to give up on stopping big rocks from killing us? Aren't there enough people on this planet such that plenty of people can work on all the problems? Can we a s a society persue multiple goals at the same time? If not, why not tackle the problems we know we can find an answer to (moving big rocks) while we're still coming to terms with the realities of the problems that don't have answers everybody will agree with (see above).
Bear with me (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many things that could put an end to life here on Earth as we know it. Some of these would end life for all 6 billion of us, or for just one or two. Life is precious; never take anything for granted, as the next moment of trechery may suddenly take it away.
I urge you all to love, listen, smile, ask questions, donate time, donate money, learn new things, and teach others new and fascinating pieces of knowledge through the beauty of education. If you do these things, you will experience great happiness and will come to realize that preventing "killer asteroids" should be at the very bottom of your To Do list.
Peace.
Re:Bear with me (Score:5, Funny)
You're not alone (Score:2)
I may be alone on this one, but please hear me out.
You're not alone but you realize, of course, that you are inviting all sorts of cruel replies because of the "love your fellow man" tone of your post. But I think you are exactly right. There are all sorts of threats to humanity: biological/nuclear warfare, overpopulation, destruction of environment, etc. but when it comes down to it, it's really because people tend to do what benefits themselves the most and they don't care about how it will effect others. Biological and nuclear weapons are harmless until they are actually used by one country attempting to gain control over another. Overpopulation is at the root of many problems but that's largely due to increased competition (for resources, fame, etc.). Laws designed to protect the environment are skirted by corporations looking to increase their profit margin by a percent or two. If people would take the bigger picture into account everytime they do something, the risks to our species would go down measurably. I realize that it's a hopeless goal to get everyone to "play nice" but if we could get a large number of people to "do the right thing", it would be interesting to see how strongly that changes things. Perhaps significantly, perhaps insignificantly. There is a mentality that the fate of our species will ultimately be determined by the worst elements of our society. If that is true, then we are all doomed because there are some really evil people out there. But even if we are doomed to extinction, being a decent person can reap personal rewards as well, making your time on planet Earth more enjoyable.
It's really too bad that we can't, as a society, somehow make being a decent, caring, loving human being "cool". Ah well...
GMD
Uh - what about the southern hemisphere? (Score:5, Interesting)
On another note, who wants to bet that in the event we had, say, 50 years warning, the politicians would be utterly unwilling to do anything about it for at least 48 years?
Re:Uh - what about the southern hemisphere? (Score:2)
Re:Uh - what about the southern hemisphere? (Score:3, Insightful)
The big problem is, no-one on this planet can see anything coming from the sun. We could easily get hit on our blind side.
My solution is to get some freaking people on a nother planet. NOW.
M@
Killer rocks. (Score:2, Insightful)
In thinking of this Osama is a small potatos compared to a 1 mile wide rock wiping out most if not all of Humanity. The world will end and the bug that poses for the latest IE vunerability topic image will then run
I love this hysteria (Score:2, Informative)
The other thing is that this money would be better spent dealing with a collision.
Let's talk about something useful. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean to appear as flame bait.. but.. this topic has been discussed here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], here, here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], and here [slashdot.org].
There are some useful scenarios we could be discussing. This is approximately none of them.
Please don't stop them (Score:2)
Yet Again.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Solution (Score:2, Funny)
You can tie couple of them to a powerful rocket, point the rocket to the asteroid and press the button.
Newsflash! (Score:2, Funny)
Frenchman Jaques Fernoi states, "As long as I can make my cheese and drink wine freely, I welcome our new leaders in this asteroid."
More updates as they present.
Surprised that 1950 DA isn't mentioned... (Score:2, Insightful)
30 years? 1950 DA is supposed to swing by real close (or hit) in about 878 years, and I'm seriously frightened that we won't be able to get consensus in time to blast (or nudge) it out of it's orbit.
Go to http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/04/04/lost.aste roid/ [cnn.com] for more info.
Does anyone actually know what a nuke would do? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does anyone actually know what a nuke would do? (Score:3, Informative)
If you look at the films of high-altitude nuclear tests, they are rather boring in comparison to atmospheric tests. You can see an expanding shell-like cloud composed of the remnants of the nuclear device.
Nuclear war seems more likely (Score:2)
Lets deal with the threat that is more probable, and manageable, and leave worrying about asteroids to Chicken Little
I am relieved (Score:5, Funny)
matter of time (Score:2)
Yeah, we'll probably get one within the next 100 million years. That should be enough time to prepare, don't you think?
Help us!! (Score:2)
"Yes they did Robin, you know what that means."
"Links to goatse! Oh the horror!"
"Yes, and we haven't much time to lose. To the Batmobile!"
right (Score:2)
"near misses" (Score:2)
Useless to worry about the possibility..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy solution. (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, the pointdexter astrophysicists who offered this opinion have never seen Armageddon.
The truth is.. (Score:2)
If tomorrow's headline was "Football field size asteroid set to hit Earth in 3 days", you know that we would be hurling ever nuke we have at it.
My Plan.. (Score:2, Funny)
Making Comparisons (Score:5, Interesting)
It all depends on the situation. If something the size of the moon were to suddenly aim itself at the earth, no amount of nukes would help. But a 1km piece of rock travelling at 25km/sec (which would probably poke a nice hole in the Earth's crust and kill us all) could be blown into 1000 pieces, 10% of which would hit the earth and take out a city block if it hit a city, I'll still vote for the nukes.
Then again, maybe it's like choosing between being shot with a big rifle or a shotgun. There's only one way to know for sure...and I'll take a pass, thank you very much.
Some silly suggestions in the article (Score:5, Insightful)
You park your space ship against the rock, and set off small nuclear explosions against a plate mounted on the other side. The explosions are as small as you want, so the acceleration is as small as you want (to keep the rock from breaking up), but you can hold enough fuel (nuclear bombs) to make it last for quite some time.
The methods suggested in the article might work if far longer time frames are available (millenia). But this is the best bet if you have to move it out of the way a little quicker than that.
More useful nuclear tid-bits. (Score:3, Insightful)
All of these methods require one thing, however. Time. At least several decades warning.
Time is balanced with power. We need the power to get whatever solution where it needs to be in time to make a difference. More power yields less time. It also reduces the radius at which you must operate. With more power, you can make a trajectory difference closer to the sun.
Nuclear power in space is the best solution. Asside from proven rocket designs with higher specific impulses than chemical designs, nuclear can be used to power more exotic propulsion technologies. Where else are you going to get your mega watts? The whole effort should be co-ordinated with a push to colinize and exploit extra-terrestrial resources, and that is best accomplished with the portable power nuclear provides. More is better.
Faked asteroid hit spoof.... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh the laughter from the IT dept...
While we're talking odds here... (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA's Near Earth Object Program (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, only one of them is meriting significant attention. I guess we're safe for a little while then.
KISS (Score:3, Interesting)
Those who claim that the smaller pieces will be just as destructive as the whole are stopping the scenario short. You don't just shoot and hit with one or more at the same time. Over some amount of time you continously hit it with nukes, breaking the smaller pieces into still smaller until the pieces are either too small to do massive damage or blow out of our path.
In my opinion, all of these exotic solutions are a waste of time and money. Hell, at this point even the nuke solution isn't very feasible and considering the chances of being hit not a very good way to spend money.
Bad people do bad things... (Score:3, Funny)
I've recently applied for patents on various technologies to eliminate or deviate asteroids on an intercept course with Earth.
If anyone should attempt to use those devices to save the Earth, I will promptly send a horde of evil barbarian lawyers with a cease and desist order.
You can't save your punny planet now... I've used your own vices against you!
My minions at the patent office have served me well on this day.
cylix,
The Lord of Evil and Terror
Painting the asteriod (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference in energy absorbtion/radiation on the two sides of the 'roid could be enough to produce a bit of a push and take it out of harms way.
Now, what they failed to mention in the article, which I think pretty much sends this idea to the dumpster is: what if the asteriod is rotating? That would cancel out any pushing (unless you paint one of the "poles", I suppose, but who says that's the side you "want" to paint?). Or, at the least, it would push it in unpredictable ways, which isn't a good idea.
The Yarkovsky effect (Score:3, Interesting)
How this small net force affects the asteroid's orbit depends on the orientation and direction of the asteroid's spin axis. From this month's Astronomy magazine: [astronomy.com] If the spin goes one way, Yarkovsky thrust adds to the orbital speed and the asteroid moves outward, away from the sun. If the asteroid rotates the other way, Yarkovsky thrust slows the asteroid's orbital velocity, and it draws closer to the sun.
"Painting" the asteroid with a material to alter its absorption and re-radiation of solar energy is very likely to be the most cost-effective method for altering an asteroid's orbit. It may even be the most practical method, assuming that we have enough time to allow the small change in thrust to alter the orbit enough to cause a miss.
There is an asteroid that is a very likely candidate for this treatment. 1950 DA was discovered and lost over 50 years ago, but was recovered on Dec 31, 2000, and was recognized as the long lost asteroid soon afterwards. With a 50-year basline to work with, its orbit was found to be in 11 to 5 resonance with Earth, which has the effect of making predictions reliable out to several hundred years. In the year 2641, the resonance will begin to decompose, sending the asteroid into a more chaotic phase of its orbital evolution. But the reliability holds long enough for scientists to recognize that there is a 1 in 300 chance of 1950 DA striking the Earth in the year 2880. This is the highest chance of collision ever estimated for any asteroid, and due to the resonance effects, it is considered very reliable.
So sometime during the next 900 years or so, we will probably have to decide that an attempt to alter its orbit is necessary. The sooner we act, the more likely we will succeed. 1950 DA is about 1.1 km in diameter, which would directly destroy an area the size of Wisconsin upon impact, and cause widespread devastation over a continent-wide area. But as little as a few tons of white chalk spread over one hemisphere could alter the Yarkovsky effect enough to change its orbit sufficiently over the next few centuries to complete avert any chance of impact.
Arthur C. Clarke... (Score:3, Informative)
The Easy Solution (Score:3, Funny)
If an additional course corrections are required, announce one of the following:
1) A security hole has been found in IE
2) Ellen Fiess will make another Apple commercial
3) Microsoft buys the rights to Ogg Forbis
The resulting explusion of hot air should be sufficent.
A different idea (Score:3, Interesting)
More on the nuclear option - 1979 technology (Score:3, Funny)
1979 technology [klov.com] that has been safely used to defend against both asteroids and alien vessels for 23 years.
Get off this Planet (Score:3, Insightful)
What we CAN do is get a self sustaining colony on another planet. I wish we could come up with a way to convince more people of this, and impress the implications of not doing it.
I would like to see all religious activity funneled into the work needed to make this off-earth colony happen. It's not that I think religion is bad, I just think it is so much more important to preserve our species than to worship a possible creator/creators of it.
Instead of "thou shall not work on the Sabbath" we should have "thou shall work on off-earth colonization on the Sabbath." If the whole of humanity dedicated it's resources to making this happen, it would happen.
M@
I believe we solved this problem in the 80's (Score:3, Funny)
It's very simple. We need a ship. A ship the shape of a triangle. This ship should be of simple control. Forward movement and rotation only! A single gun capable of halving (on occasion trifurcating) any size asteroid will be mounted on the front. When it has halved the pieces to a significantly small size, they will disappear upon further assault. This ship will also be fitted with a shielding system. Pulling down on the joystick or using a separate button system should activate a circular shield capable of withstanding a certain period of collision with objects, regardless of frequency. In future revisions of this vehicle, we will include a hyperwarp feature to jump out of harms way (unfortunately, technology will not allow us to determine the point of reentry, making this a daunting choice for the pilot).
Finally, be sure to look out for ellusive UFOs with hostile aliens ready to destroy our ship (regardless of its peaceful intentions of saving our planet).
I distinctly remember training many hours on the simulator for this solution not twenty years ago. I don't know why we're worried about this problem seeing as we already have the solution.
Could Give NASA A Reason To Stop Going in Circles (Score:3, Informative)
But, building the capability to send people to investigate and deal with an asteriod or comet that has Earth in its sights would give NASA a place to go. If we don't have the courage to develop an interplanetary capability to ward off armageddon, maybe we don't deserve to survive.
Re:nukes ARE best. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also obvious that you've never seen the video of the exploding whale [google.com].
Here's a hint... if you start off with an 8 ton whale, and you blow it up, you end up with 8 tons of whale parts! Asteroids also follow this simple rule.