How We Knew AL00667 Would Miss Earth 290
jefu writes "In January there seems to have been an incident in which it was thought that an object (asteroid) in space might have hit the earth within a couple of days of being spotted. It did miss, though. This story (from NASA/Ames) talks about the discovery of the object and the process that astronomers went through to determine if the asteroid was or was not a threat."
Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad they already made the (17 versions of) the movie about this. It's a nice story.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Besides everyone knows the world ends in 2017 due to old UNIX Y2K17 bug & embedded NT licence key expiry causing cascade failure of ICBM guidance systems. ;-) lol I will need Lead underpants soon... ha ha ha
Relax, Statically speaking you will probably win the lotto 12 times, get struck by lighting 302 times, and die from stress or cancer 240 million times... likely to happen long before then... ;-)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
In the latter case, your statistics do not give me confidence
Re:Wow - but at very low probability (Score:5, Interesting)
The large uncertainty meant that at any one moment before the conceivable (but very unlikely) arrival of the body at or anywhere near the earth, there was a very large area of uncertainty, in which the asteroid's actual point of arrival would be one tiny and uncertain spot, and the possible trajectories leading to earth would be represented by another tiny blob (tiny relative to the whole area of uncertainty), most probably located very far away from the spot containing the real asteroid.
Calculations on real computers often represent an area of uncertainty like this by a nominal position that is very roughly at the centre of the area of uncertainty, accompanied by a measure of the size of the area of uncertainty.
The fact that one can physically read from the printed result and see that nominal position separately from its accompanying measure of uncertainty, because of the way the figures are presented on screen or paper, that does not give the nominal position any reality.
It happened that the nominal position first calculated in the case of AL00667 would have been (if of zero error) a trajectory heading for earth. But it wasn't of zero error, nor even close.
The whole scare looks like an artifact of the way in which uncertain results involving a continuum are presented using discrete digits.
-wb-
Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget the tin foil hat to gaurd against the aliens that will likely take advantage of the situation, and an accurate firearm to shoot the ensuing radioactive zombies in the head.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
timing... (Score:5, Funny)
Miss Earth what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Miss Earth what? (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a totally futile to even discuss what should be done if we are going to get hit, since there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. If the death of 80% of the worlds population and the fall of all governments is nigh, it hardly matters how people die or how the governmenst fall. It only confuses the real issue: how the hell are we going to fund a global defense system instead of funding luxury for 10% of the planet.
At least we'll have the Internet (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdotters can continue to sleep comfortably with the knowledge that TCP/IP is designed to withstand such an event; lets just hope there's a backup of the /. backend in case its server(s) get struck, shorted by the tsunami, or looted by the local villagers.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Funny)
Someone's been playing an awfull lot of Civilization. Parhaps if we found another type of luxury on one of our contries squares. =)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Mod me up or face the consequences!
Fort Wal (Score:2)
Re:Fort Wal (Score:3, Insightful)
...ask under what authority the "declaration" was made.
Re:Fort Wal (Score:5, Funny)
So in the event of a meteroid strike, I for one will welcome our new Walmart line level employee overlords... As opposed to the Walmart corporate type overlords we have now.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
If the object is travelling at 10km/s (which is first gear for interstellar speed), then the missile would have to be able detonate with somewhere around 3/1000th of a seconds accuracy for the blast to hit. Not to mention it would have to position itself in the exactly right spot.
You also have to consider that anything we can put up there is nothing compared to the blast that the object goes through by sim
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
A collision is a near-miss.
*boom* Look. They nearly missed
Appologies to George Carlin
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
being critical of the term "near miss" being mutually exclusive is infact a mis-understanding of the term.
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Funny)
Right. "We had a near miss event last night." In theory, as you indicate, you could assume that "near" and "miss" both modify "event," but it is common in American English to modify modifiers, so that near modifies miss, and "near miss" as a phrase modifies "event."
Either way it is, at best, a near misleading phrase with a near threatening probability of being near misinterpretted. You should stay far away from such a near confusing phrase and stick to straightforward language.
Good enlgish makes for bad headlines, though.
-Adam
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
Using utilitarian calculations, you can actually compute whether or not the expected consequences of informing are preferable to the expected consequences of secrecy. It would go something like:
Inform if EU(i) > EU(s)
where
EU(i) = p(h) * (1 - p(prev)) * U(knowing)
EU(s) = (1 - p(h)) * U(nondisr)
where
EU(i), EU(s) are the expected utility functions of informing and keeping secret, respectively
p(h) is the probability of a hit
p(prev) is the probability that a hit could be prevented if known to the public
U(knowing) is the value people would place on knowing in advance if they were going to be dead tomorrow
U(nondisr) is the value people would place on the avoided distruption of a global panic (the economic + emotional "costs" saved)
Thus, whether to inform depends on:
- How certain are you that the asteroid will hit?
- How big do you think the disruption will be if word of potential impact spreads?
- Is there anything you can do, given that it is going to hit?
I think the first one is really important. It has repeatedly been shown in research that people do not react rationally to probabilistic information. Thus, telling the public that "there is a chance that an asteroid could hit us", even when qualified by a quantification of the probability to the best of our knowledge, could actually lead to a greater mis-assessment of the risk than if nothing were said of it.
This is, of course, not a question of probabilistic and utilitarian calculations. There is a "right to information" aspect to it, as well. A good formulation would be "where is the borderline between 'creating unneccesary panic' and 'respecting people's right to know'". I would say that if the expert is worried to the point of personally taking significant action based on the information, such as buying emergency supplies etc., then he should inform the general public.
Ob Simpsons quotes (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like the doomsday whistle! Ain't been blown for nigh onto three years.
Cheers,
IT
Re:Ob Simpsons quotes (Score:2)
Re:Ob Simpsons quotes (Score:3, Funny)
"Quick, lets burn down the observatory so that this never happens again!"
MADMEN (Score:2, Funny)
Well, we were lucky this once... (Score:3, Funny)
Else we'd be meeting all the time travelers from the future
Re:Not so.. (Score:2)
How would you know you'd invented it? It wouldn't work unless you waited a couple of years....
Re:Not so.. (Score:2)
Within a couple of days!? (Score:2, Insightful)
No problem! ... Bruce Willis will bust us out! ... Our super-geniuses will come up with a 5min to deadline plan and blast this bugger to pieces! ... It won't hit us anyway, because it did not hit us up to today.
Tell me Mr.Politician, what is more important: Survival of mankind or playing the powermonger game with your politician-buddys?
I say, if politicians (which are by the way trusted with OUR FATE!) behave like they do today they are gambling with the chance of survival for the entire human race. Thi
Re:Within a couple of days!? (Score:5, Funny)
If the asteroid were a political party, you'd find a great deal of people supporting any effort at crushing it.
I think it's time to label asteroids as "liberal" or "terrorist" to get things moving
Re:Within a couple of days!? (Score:2)
However, I think it will actually take a hit somewhere on the planet for anyone to take it seriously. Sad, but true.
It would mean the end of life as we know it ? (Score:5, Funny)
Scientist: No, but it might burn up a few cities and destory 70% of the humans
Onlooker2: So I'd be dead ?
Scientist: But the people left alive will have an excellent chance of survival due to the systematic culling of slashdot trolls
Onlooker1: Why did you keep it under the wraps ?
Scientist: We were kinda hoping it would slag Sanford Wallace in location... and have the Pope claim it was divine intervention
Onlooker3: What about SCO ?
Scientist: Looks like the next one from Kuiper belt would do that clean
PS: maybe you should read "God's Debris" to be frightened by Slashdot.
How they really figured out that it was ok (Score:5, Funny)
Since they didn't felt any shake, it was proven that the meteorite had missed the Earth.
It was further proven that a zillion cans of beer barely lasts a couple of days and that having a million cans of baked beans is pretty useless when you forgot to bring a can-opener
One thing of note is that somehow, 10 years worth of Playboy magazines disapeared without a trace.
Re:How they really figured out that it was ok (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm.. lets see. Your in an underground bunker, sealed from the outside world, with nothing to eat but baked beans and beer. If that isn't a recepie for a WMD gas attack then I don't know what is!
Re:How they really figured out that it was ok (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How they really figured out that it was ok (Score:2)
Server Unresponsive, Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
Back to Archive
Article Posted: February 19, 2004
By: David Morrison
For the story of AL00667, which briefly masqueraded as an asteroid that would hit the Earth within two days of its discovery, read on.
February 19, 2004 Short Warning Times
Following is information on the small asteroid known last January 13-14 as AL00667. A preliminary analysis of the discovery data for this object yielded a possible impact with Earth in less than 2 days time -- a situation not encountered previously in the Spaceguard Program. Although we knew at the time that such a prediction of imminent impact was improbable, a collision could not be ruled out. And if a possibility of an impact in 2 days existed, what should we do about notifying governments or the public? The story of this situation on January 13, 2004, is included as part of a paper by Clark Chapman (Southwest Research Institute) presented on February 22 at the Planetary Defense conference of the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics). Several paragraphs taken from this paper are reproduced below. Following these quotes from Chapman's paper are additional quotes from a letter Brian Marsden (Minor Planet Center) wrote to CCNet on 14 January on the same subject. Finally, there is a statement posted on the website of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) discussing what lessons we should draw from the story of AL00667, and how such a situation might be better handled in the future.
Asteroids never cease to surprise us. We may never encounter a situation just like this again, but we are fairly sure to have other crises as the rate of discovery of NEAs continues to increase.
David Morrison
FROM CLARK CHAPMAN'S AIAA PAPER "NEO IMPACT SCENARIOS"
presented February 22, 2004
"Just last month (January 2004) perhaps the most surprising impact prediction ever came and went, this time out of the view of the round-the-clock news media. It illustrates how an impact prediction came very close to having major repercussions, even though -- with hindsight -- nothing was ever, in reality, threatening to impact. It is a story of success in that the impact prediction was nullified in record time, less than half-a-day, but the success was accomplished through a set of ad hoc, unofficial, and often unfunded activities and relationships, although assisted in major ways by the official infrastructure, such as it exists (the LINEAR Project, the IAU Minor Planet Center, and the NASA NEO Program Office).
"About 36 hours before President Bush's planned speech at NASA Headquarters on future American space policy, the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) observatories in New Mexico routinely recorded four images of a moving object. Half a day later, on Tuesday, January 13th, these data were sent (as part of the daily submission of data) to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just before going to dinner, MPC research Tim Spahr ran the data through standard software to generate a nominal ephemeris for the new object. These are posted on the publicly accessible NEO Confirmation Page (NEOCP) so that amateur and professional asteroid astronomers around the world might be able to follow up on the LINEAR observations that night. It is through such follow-up astrometry that NEO orbits can be refined so that the object is not permanently lost. Spahr posted the ephemeris, based on LINEAR's four detections, on the NEOCP under the designation AL00667, along with ephemerides for several other recommended targets. Less than an hour later, a European amateur astronomer, Reiner Stoss, went to the NEOCP and noticed a curiosity: AL00667 was predicted to get 40 times brighter during just the next day, meaning that it was going to be six times closer to the Earth! He expressed his amazement on Yahoo's MPML (Minor Planet Mailing List) chatroom on the internet.
"Professional asteroid researcher Alan Harris happened to be monitoring the chatroom and noticed the strange
Re:Server Unresponsive, Article Text (Score:5, Funny)
Puny Earthlings! We will crush them!
Re:Server Unresponsive, Article Text (Score:2)
Re:Server Unresponsive, Article Text (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing that they can make accurate
observations and orbital calculations on a
30 meter object so far out. I can't imagine
why anyone would be complaining about the
process when it is working so brilliantly.
Recognition does not increase likelihood (Score:5, Insightful)
That does not make such a collision more likely in the next fifty years -- or hundred and fifty, or fifteen hundred. Significant and successful collision are _rare_, much rarer than earthquakes, tornados, or even human-caused meteorological effects (as in weather systems, not meteors).
It doesn't matter if we can see "just how close we came". It matters that we know, empirically, that there are vastly more pressing concerns.
What I don't want to see is an orbital weapons platform deployed under false premises. If the pretenses are true, that's a different story. Just don't tell me its to shoot down asteroids!
--Dan
Re:Recognition does not increase likelihood (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is, as we all know, the wolf finally did arrive one day...
Homeland Security Alert (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Recognition does not increase likelihood (Score:5, Insightful)
We also know that major impacts, the sort that changes the climate over the entire globe and causes mass extinction of species has happened atleast on a few occasions.
But we don't really know enough to say anything about the true risks. For that reason alone, the first nice thing to do would probably be to increase funding for telescopes, radars and other instruments for better accessing the real risk. That is not a very expensive proposition, as this is an area that is very lowly funded today, a little bit of extra cash will go a long way towards establishing the real risks.
If we should do anything more depends on the risks and the costs of potential defences. It's a cost/benefit calculation.
You are rigth that ICBM-interception-systems are irrelevant for this purpose. All realistic systems for doing something about asteroid-impacts rely on the fact that a small change to the orbit of the thing a long distance from earth will result in a major change, enough to miss the earth, by the time it gets here. Changing the orbit in the last few hours is going to be impractical, it'd require huge amounts of energy. Sligthly more practical migth be blowing the thing up, which would result in a large number of smaller impacts instead of a single big one.
To stop a ICBM you need to hit it with, say, the explosive force of a hand-grenade. That's not going to cut it if you want to blow apart a asteroid of extinction-threathening size.
Re:Recognition does not increase likelihood (Score:4, Informative)
Recent theories suggest the whole solar system moving like a sinus curve up and down through a "cloud" of more-than-usual-objects in the galaxy, and thus every ~30M years or whatever it was there's an increased risk. Several of the almost-everything-killed things that has happened to the earth could be explained this way.
(source: Some issue of Scientific American)
Re:Recognition does not increase likelihood (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, if you really doubt that this happens, you need only to take a look at the moon. It has no atmosphere which causes smaller asteroids to evaporate before impact, and also helps washing away the signs of impacts after they happen. It's probably a fair bet that the earth gets hit more often than the moon, given that it's so much larger. It's also a fair bet that anything that is big enough to create a major crater on the moon is also big enough to punch trough the atmosphere and create major destruction here.
Re:Recognition does not increase likelihood (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, because putting weapons in an orbital platform is so much cheaper and more effective than housing them in silos in Kansas. Who knows what evil could come if Rumsfeld got his hands on a large, unprotected orbital concentration of weapons from which missiles could be launched only in well-described orbits that could be easily intercepted.
more info (Score:4, Informative)
Only 30 metres? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Only 30 metres? (Score:4, Interesting)
As an example, many military weapons, including the original 2 atom bombs, detonate shortly before impact.
That number.. AL00667 (Score:4, Interesting)
Is number 666 ever issued? A lot of numberiung systems miss this one out, in order to keep the religeously insane from freaking. For instance the UK number plate authority stopped using it a few years ago after complaints from some quarters.
So my real question is: Would this have -actually- been AL00666?
Spooky...
Re:That number.. AL00667 (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of it as an early-warning system. Someone who lives his or her life in the fear of getting tainted by a number from a fairy tale should not be let anywhere near positions of power.
Re:That number.. AL00667 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That number.. AL00667 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:That number.. AL00667 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That number.. AL00667 (Score:5, Funny)
this could have certainly made life more... (Score:4, Funny)
And maybe my neighbours underground bunker would have finally proven to be useful for things other than coding marathons...
This would also be one hell sure way to get rid of windoze once and for all... only something as distributed as open-source software can survive such a catastrophy... wouldnt it be amazing if entire source code of windows was lost. wow !
Now compare that to the linux source present on millions(?) of computers all over the world. Reminds me of the phoenix...
tisk tisk..
(warning: seriousness levels dangerously low)
Re:this could have certainly made life more... (Score:2)
The media wouldn't survive, but the software would.
Animation (Score:5, Informative)
Follow up article? (Score:3, Funny)
Missed due to Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
Only tracking asteroids over 1km in size? (Score:2)
Re:Only tracking asteroids over 1km in size? (Score:5, Interesting)
What We Need (Score:5, Funny)
We build a nondescript isosceles triangular spaceship, controlled by one man with a joystick. Left and right rotate the ship, up thrusts the ship forward, and down, well, down depends upon your configuration. Optionally, it could throw the ship through hyperspace to some other random point in space, or else it could put deflector shields up around the ship.
In addition to the joystick, the ship's pilot should have access to a red button (it must be red). Pressing the button should cause balls of energy to shoot out of the front of the ship, capable of breaking apart large asteroids, and destroying small ones. Pressing the button should also make a "PCHOW!" sound.
It is our clearest and best long-term option.
That's not what Q said we should do... (Score:4, Funny)
How they knew? Numerology. (Score:2, Funny)
Good book (Score:4, Informative)
Except for the cheesy ending (Score:4, Interesting)
What about AL00666? (Score:4, Funny)
AL00667 reminds me of that "neighbour of the beast" joke
More reporting of near-misses the past 5-10 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Recent movies aside, the thought of a HUGE rock (or solid chunk of iron) falling from the sky, is so completely beyond the experience of most humans, as to be practically ludicrous.
"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky." - Thomas Jefferson (supposedly)
Let's hear it for GEODSS, our defense against UFOs (Score:5, Informative)
GEODSS first came up in 1982. It consisted of four sites (three today, budget cuts) worldwide, each with three 1-meter telescopes. The whole system is computer-run and reports to NORAD automatically. This was the beginning of automated astronomy.
The telescopes scan the whole sky every night, subtract out everything in the star catalog, and report unknown objects. New satellites and space junk are found this way. Even dark objects that occult stars are noted. There's also a more elaborate USAF site on Maui with even bigger computer-controlled telescopes.
Some of the sites have lasers (Maui definitely does) and can illuminate their targets using one telescope while looking at it with another. This allows time-of-flight ranging, photography of dark objects, and determining whether a satellite has cameras. But illumination is only useful for near earth satellites; it doesn't help with asteroid search.
Asteroid search is a spare-time activity of one of the GEODSS sites. They continue their real job for the USAF, looking for anything near the Earth that shouldn't be there.
The GEODSS hardware was updated in 1999, with better sensors, new computers (the 20 racks of PDP-11 hardware had to go), better positioning accuracy, and some infrared capability for working around cloud cover. The original main optics remain in use.
Your tax dollars at work.
Decisions (Score:3, Funny)
Scientist: Heads or tails?
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:5, Informative)
The power required to destroy any rock big enough to survive atmospheric entry would be orders of magnitude greater.
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, stony asteroids tend to explode if/when they reach the lower atmosphere. Comets, which are primarily ice and stone, are very unlikely (but not impossible - see tunguska) to survive entry.
Any of these are much stronger than an ICBM, of course.
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:2, Funny)
Tunguska was Tesla, MAN! wake up and smell the ozone
they never found not one drop of evidence of foreign matter in soilcores from all the expeditions back there since. It was Tesla testing his death ray, i'm convinced
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Informative)
High density and low total surface area
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Interesting)
I looked this info up during an earlier discussion of planet killing asteroids. Sorry, I don't have the references handy. My recollection was that it didn't matter what the composition was if it were only a little bigger than the estimated size of the Tunguska rock... IIRC if an asteroid were about 100 meters in diameter, it would be sure to strike the surface and dig a crater.
From the lack of a crater the
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Interesting)
Would depend on how one measures and verifies the mass or weight of the material. Let's make the reasonable assumption that we're weighing both at room conditions (760 torr, 295 K) using a beam balance. The point is that feathers displace a lot more air than lead. This means that when we add enough feathers or lead to measure 1 kg, the mass of feathers is slightly more than that of lead (due to compensating for buoyancy in air etc). This applies even to a
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:4, Interesting)
Only the older American missiles which used their outer wall as the skin of the fuel tank. It saved on weight and gave them formidable acceleration. The Soviets always used separate tanks and a thick steel skin - largely because they never worked out how to build precision skins. Both of which gave their missiles a massive strength.
Both countries now use solid fuelled boosters which are much tougher.
And as for a grenade - why bother - you can use a wrench [k12.ar.us].
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Insightful)
So instead of one huge target you could in principle land on, you'd get a swarm of smaller but still deadly rocks that would rain devastation on Earth?
No, the only permanent solution to the extinction level event problem is to get some of us off this goddamn planet.
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:4, Insightful)
So instead of one huge target you could in principle land on, you'd get a swarm of smaller but still deadly rocks that would rain devastation on Earth?
I've always wondered about this. If I have a chunk of rock 1 km in diameter hurtling toward the earth, wouldn't it be better to break it up into small chunks so it would be more likely to burn up in the atmosphere? Even though the mass is the same, the surface area presented to the atmosphere would be greatly increased, which would be much more efficient at ablating away mass and slowing down the incoming pieces (transferring energy to the atmosphere instead of into making a crater).
Where's the trade-off point between distributed death from all the smaller chunks and increased burnup in the atmosphere?
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Informative)
How would an electron gun produce any significant kinetic change in the rock? Alternately, you could boil off part of the asteroid and "jet" is to the side, but the energy this would require, if it's only a few days out, would be enormous.
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather than maths, lets look at facts.
from this page: http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c439.htm
(look for section 4)
" A typical ICBM gets about 500 to 1000 miles above the ground at the highest point of its trajectory."
Now, lets see what I said, an ICBM doesn't have to go out the _atmosphere_...
From this page: http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/CAMPAIGN_DOCS/ATM_CHEM/ a t
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Insightful)
Meaning they'd be pointing in the wrong direction.
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Interesting)
Doubtful. Weapons for bringing down delicate ICBMs -- even if they had surprised everyone and actually worked -- would be useless against a mountain of rock and ice moving at kilometers per second.
It would be like flicking peas at the Exxon Valdez.
To deal with large objects on a collision course we first need a few decades of warning.
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:2)
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:2, Insightful)
what you would want to do is attaching some kind of nuclear device to it, which melts away pieces of its surface and with the gas and pressure created it slowly pushes the meteor (or comet) in another direction.
it would be like pushing a huge ship away with your hands, whilte it is just floating in the
Re:Flipped a coin? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually that could be a really bad idea, the majority of asteroids threatening Earth are probably not solid bodies - more like aggregations of rubble. A blast could smash such bodies to rubble (all of which would still be heading our way). Many bodies have a composition similar to foam - very fragile with lots of pores and sp
Re:An exercise for the reader (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An exercise for the reader (Score:3, Informative)
This is rather easily estimated.
We can assume most (~95%) of the atmosphere lies in the first 14 kilometers (it's actually 18 km at the equator and 8 km at the poles). Assume Earth is a sphere of radius 6371 km. This gives a total atmospheric volume of 7.16e18 m^3. Assume a conservative average density of 0.8 kg/m^3; the mass is therefore 5.74e18 kg. If that seems overly heavy, consider that the Earth weigh
Re:8 Comments so far - server has already timed ou (Score:5, Funny)
NASA Server hit by slashdot asteroid. They didn't see it coming...
Re:8 Comments so far - server has already timed ou (Score:3, Funny)
But... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Natural diaster... (Score:5, Insightful)
do you really think a global cataclysm would make people work together for the common good more than they do today? Or is it more likely that resources would become greatly limited so humans would be more likely to kill each other for their own good? While human life is still a struggle for resources, I doubt the red cross was around in the caveman days, helping the guy who got clubbed on the head and had his dinner stolen.
Wow. . . (Score:2)
That's fear for you!
I happen to agree with you wholeheartedly. When the clock needs re-winding, the Earth tends to clense itself. It's a cyclical thing; happened before, it'll happen again.
Cheers!
-Fl