Planetary Defense: Protecting Earth from Asteroids 342
securitas writes "Space.com has published a feature about developing a planetary defense against catastrophic comet and asteroid impacts. The story arises from the aptly named 'Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids' held in California February 23-26. The article discusses potential methods to prevent an impact, the need for study missions to comets and asteroids, the to-date haphazard approach to monitoring Near Earth Objects (NEOs), and the NASA/US Air Force Spaceguard Survey, which aims to discover and track 90% of 'Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) with a diameter greater than 0.6 miles (1-kilometer) by 2008.' Some ideas for anti-impact technologies to develop include gas blasts, nuclear detonations, ramming microsatellites, lasers, mass drivers and gravitational tractor beams. The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger. Mirror at USA Today."
Low priority? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Low priority? (Score:5, Interesting)
These problems are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Re:Low priority? (Score:5, Funny)
So an asteroid could actually be the solution to these serious problems! I like your thinking.
Re:Low priority? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Low priority? (Score:5, Funny)
War would still be a crucial issue. We cannot allow a mineshaft gap.
Re:Low priority? (Score:5, Insightful)
When, or if? It's probably true that a major impact is a near certainty. But what's the time frame for that kind of certainty? 1000 years? 10,000 years?
On the other hand, the probability for significant famine, disease, and war is 100%. That is, those things are all happening, right now. And it seems that there's a very strong chance that these problems will get worse in the near future.
I don't know about you, but I'll take a 0.01% chance that an asteroid will land on my county over a 5% chance that SARS or HIV or some drug resistant bird flu will do me in prematurely.
Re:Low priority? (Score:3, Interesting)
But let's assume just for the time being that there's an asteroid due to hit the earth in 10 years that nobody's seen yet. In all likelihood, I think that someone would probably notice when it was a week, or maybe a couple of
Re:Low priority? (Score:5, Insightful)
It will happen -- the question is not whether or not an asteroid will hit the earth and whack us back to rats and cockroaches again, the question is whether we'll still be here when it happens, in some shape or form of an organized society. The risk of dying of an asteroid impact is also very small, but because so many people would die as a result of such an impact the risk in terms of total lives is large compared to other, far better funded projects (like earthquake/volcano prediction and mitigation which, in the U.S., costs taxpayers ~$50M per probabilistic death).
Great. any ideas on how to address those problems, or will you just use those problems to make an excuse for not addressing a less likely but much more dangerous hazard? An asteroid is far more likely to put an end to the american way of life than famine or disease. A significant thermonuclear exchange could do the job, as could hundreds of years of economic shifts and global warming, but these are problems that don't effect the U.S. and have no tenable solution.
On Famine: A bunch of people live in an environment where it is impossible to grow their own food and they lack the industrial capacity to be able to afford to import food, so they're starving. It sucks. The U.S. does send aide, but this is not a problem that will be solved by spending -- these people either need to die, move, or find a way to feed themselves because spending billions on some sort of global foodstamps program is not a solution to famine -- just like icing down someone with a fever does nothing to help them defeat the infection that is causing the fever, feeding the foodless will only create more foodless while destroying the global market for food. The problem is not, by the way, that there isn't enough food, just that these people can't afford to buy it and/or won't accept american surplus. It's an economic and distributive problem and, while there is no good philosophical reason to let anyone starve, the economic, practical reasons are the ones that keep you (gainfully employed 1st-world citizen) from starving by keeping the farmers employed.
On Disease: People die. tough beans, that's the way it is. Some diseases are horrendous and terrible, and AIDS in Africa and southeast Asia is horrible, but again there is no good solution to the problem and in many cases these diseases are attacking areas already massively overpopulated, undernourished, and poor. Do the poor deserve to live long, fulfilling lives just as much as the rich? Yes. Should the rich be forced to shorten their lives in order to lengthen the lives of the poor? No. This is the choice -- compell pharmaceutical companies to deliver drugs to third world countries at bottom dollar rates only to have a large portion of those drugs, sold at or below cost (with govt subsidies in the latter case) dumped into the profitable markets. What happens then? Nobody gets the drugs because the ROI disappears. We already give free AIDS medications to many patients in africa, for example, but many of those with the disease sell some of their doses back to american individuals and/or continue to have unprotected sex with uninfected individuals, spreading the disease and allowing it to build resistance to our drugs.
Disease is a fact of life, and seeking to somehow eliminate it is an unrealistic goal. Nevertheless, the U.S. spends massive amounts of money on every sort of disease -- I doubt there's a disease out there that a qualified individual couldn't get federal dollars to research. Medicine has advanced a g
Re:You don't understand stats (Score:3, Informative)
The probability that an impact will occur within the decade is 50%. No more no less. It either happens or it doesn't happen.
Excuse me? Who doesn't understand stats? Just because an event can happen or not happen in a given time frame does not make the probability of that event 50%. By that reasoning I could say that either I'll win the lottery next week, or I won't therefore my odds are 50% (I wish).
An event with a 10% probability still happens or doesn't happen. Maybe I ju
No, YOU don't understand stats (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, there is a special distrubtion to describe the occurrence of random events in time (the Poisson distribution), but suffice it to say, the probability of an asteroid hitting the earth in the next decade is NOT 50%. This would only be true if, in the past, an asteroid has hit the earth (on average) once every other decade.
Re:No, YOU don't understand stats (Score:3, Insightful)
Stats although a purely mathematical concept of probability, is very different when measuring a event such as an asteroid strike.
Probaility of an event is only one issue.
True, we have wars constantly going on, and will continue, but they do not wipe out humanity or even 90% of life on earth.
I think, very few people understand what we are talking about really when we talk about asteroid impacts.
Why? Well, because the event unleashes energies we have no experience with. Energie
Re:You don't understand stats (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually in 1960, the US Navy sent the Trieste with 3 Navy personel to 'Challenger Deep' at the southern end of the Marianas Trench. At 10,920m (about 7 miles) deep it is the deepest known point on the planet.
Also what do you mean it's a simple tech problem?? Are you nuts? It's a fucking immense tech problem. Your talking about changing the trajectory of a piece of rock that could concievably be the size of a fucking state
this whole thing's blown out of proportion (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus H Christ. Leave it to humans to think t
Re:this whole thing's blown out of proportion (Score:3, Insightful)
Famine, Poverty, Disease... (Score:5, Insightful)
There won't be a welfare problem anymore, because there won't be anyone left to be on welfare.
Jim
Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war (Score:5, Interesting)
Famine, disesase, and war could all be ended in a moment -- by a sufficiently large asteroid.
Gallows humor aside, I'm sorry to say it but: why should we realistically expect an end to famine, disease, war? They've been with us throughout history. Man has always wished to eliminate these woes -- yes they keep getting worse and worse.
At least there's the possibility that a technological fix might save us from asteroid impact. Give me some reason to believe that there's any kind of fix for war etc.
-kgj
Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war (Score:2)
The fix for war mongering would require genetic fixes [hedweb.com], but in order to get a handle on the unintended consequences we'd need more intelligence first.
The fix for famine & disease is much simpler, and much closer: decentralized molecular manufacturing, and artificial immune systems / cell-repair.
--
Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an idiotic, self-perpetuating argument. Just because something is, and has been for a long time, does not mean it is an unchangeable truth.
In this particular instance, consider this: the world is rapidly changing and is not the same as, say, during the Roman Empire, yet there is a lot of residual ideologies and beliefs left over from those times. They are not set in stone, however...do not mistake them for "human nature." There have been a lot of improvements to the world that should not be overlooked (civil rights movement, etc).
There are some people who are interested in actualizing change in the world. Some have even written down their thoughts about it [amazon.com].
Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war (Score:4, Insightful)
No more so than the "we should feed the entire planet, cure every disease, and end war before we work on anything else" argument that the original post regurgitated.
That argument is a tar baby - it's designed to attract people in and then get them stuck working on things that haven't been resolved for, what, six thousand years of human society?
Obviously all three of those things are noble goals, but as I've said before, putting other things (like asteroid defence, or space exploration in general) aside until they are taken care of is like me saying "I'm going to wait to have kids until I've got a seven-figure salary, three cars, and a mansion." It could happen, but the probability is so low that it's not worth considering. I will probably be dead of old age before that happens, just like the human race will probably be dead by asteroid impact (or other cause) before we resolve the three issues someone always mentions in this type of discussion.
Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Prevent a lot of humans from being killed.
2) Prevent a lot humans from suffering badly.
No, I think we should prevent all of ourselves from dying. There is nothing in the world right now apart from a global nuclear war and a large asteroid that can do wipe out the entire human race.
Why not spend that money now to help the dying and the suffering people of the world.
People already are spending money on that. It will never "solve" that problem, because it's one that wil
Re:Low priority? (Score:3, Informative)
It could be a bad virus that kills all mammals. Or the grey goo syndrome [aleph.se]. Or global nuclear war. Or an ice age. Or an asteroid. Or if we're lucky and none of this happens, then in a few billion years, the Sun will expand, melt and disintegrate the Earth, and that'll be the end of it.
So, you see, we humans must (A) protect ourselves and (B) colonize other parts of the solar syste
Re:Low priority? (Score:3, Informative)
Putting aside the sun expanding for a minute...
The earth has been hit with many asteroids. Never once has it destroyed all life. There is always something that survives and perpetuates. After the asteroid that destroyed the dinasaurs the dominant life on the planet was ferns for a very long time and eventually even human beings.
Humans will die (most of them anyway) but all lif
Defense from asteroids? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Defense from asteroids? (Score:4, Funny)
Look Ma, it's raining planets!
Re:Defense from asteroids? (Score:5, Funny)
I smell a lawyer! (Score:2)
You honor I claim my client is innocent of manslaughter and instead wish to claim that this so called victim is charged with delibaratly and maliciously dirtying my clients knife with his blood.
Anyway the latest planet is 2000km is diameter. I think if such an object is coming our way then there is nothing we can do.
movies (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. (Score:5, Insightful)
> The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.
Just like every other problem?
And even then, it isn't so much likely to be "meaningful" as to be "just enough to convince the public we're doing something about it".
Re:Yep. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just my
Re:Yep. (Score:2, Funny)
don't worry, the U.S. military is working on the ability to take a huge asteroid and redirect it so it hits the Middle East.
Unfortunately someone has to say this... (Score:2, Funny)
Tractor beams (Score:5, Funny)
Personally I don't know why this wasn't thought of first before all those silly ideas like just blowing something up
A nice large tractor beam from a high orbiting satellite to repel or attract any asteroid or other thing that's going to hit the planet, and problem solved.
Of course, there's the technical side...
Re:Tractor beams (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tractor beams (Score:2, Informative)
This is a non-story (Score:5, Funny)
Stick with what works. (Score:4, Funny)
Bad idea? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bad idea? (Score:3, Funny)
The Soviet Union's collapse discredited Red governments forever, and rouge ones got caught in the riptide too. So there's no need to feel blue about rouge governments, even if you're a Green yourself.
Re:Bad idea? (Score:2)
An absurd premise. You'd have to be colossally stupid to do it. Anyone smart enough to carry it out would understand that they'd be wiping themselves out too. If they're severely mentally ill and hence willing to try, they're going to find themselves hard pressed to come up with people willing to give them
Re:Bad idea? (Score:2)
Of course about Same thing could be said about nukes. Yet "sane" governments were willing to use them.
And thats just for policical idealologies, there wasn't even a promise of virgins in the afterlife. (Personnaly, there is a lot I would do for a couple of really good professional-non-virgins).
>If they're severely mentally ill and hence willing to try, they're going to find themselves hard pressed to co
Re:Bad idea? (Score:2)
Any government that would do that type of thing, would have cheaper means with conventional warfare....
Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Risks of dying in plane:1 in 20,000
Risks of dying from asteroid 1 in 20,000 to 100,000
Source [space.com]
May I just get somebody to help me pay off my student loans and make sure that there is enough social security to cover my health when I get old?
AC
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Funny)
Large asteroids aren't the only ones (Score:3, Insightful)
What should be considered is the pr
Re:Perspective (Score:2, Funny)
2. Unfortunately, the empty lot is in downtown Islamabad. Pakistani government mistakes it for an incoming nuclear strike from India, and retaliates with missile strikes on Bangalore and Calcutta.
3. Indian government sees incoming missiles, retaliates against Pakistan.
4. Lather rinse repeat.
5. One of the missiles goes off course and hits North Korea.
6. North Korea thinks it's from the US, and hits Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Re:Perspective (Score:2)
Also... what does the 1/100,000 statistic mean? That I have a 1/100,000 chance of dying from being hit by an astroid during my lifetime? (Seems rather high to me!)
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Funny)
The chances of boarding a plane with a bomb aboard are approximately a million to one. The chances of boarding a plane with two bombs aboard are a million x a million to one. Reduce the risk, bring your own bomb!
Re:Tunguska hit (Score:3, Interesting)
On the contrary - lots of things during the last 1000 years might be due to "cosmic" events. We have very little (popular) knowledge about quite drastic environmental changes like the "little ice age" or even the years without the sun that might've been the cause for the nickname "dark ages" [freerepublic.com] (also a
Geo (or larger) Politics and the human condition (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in April 2002, the UK government started to fund a centre [bbc.co.uk] studying both the near-earth-orbit rocks we know about, and ways of increasing awareness and detection rates, as well as investigating possible protection strategies.
Personally I think it's just playing at people-politics, at least in the form the UK has done it $600k isn't going to go very far, but it's a relatively cheap purchase of public goodwill... On the other hand, at the moment I'll take what we can get.
There's a tiny chance of life as we know it being destroyed. A really tiny chance, and one thing humans aren't good at is disaster-planning - even when the potential result is extinction, the "gut-feeling" is to say "it'll never happen", because none of us have any experience of it happening. This is short-sighted, we should be doing something.
Although I don't think there's any reason to panic about it, the last great ecosystem was destroyed by (perhaps two, perhaps 1) asteroid, as far as we know. Researching, thinking, creating plans would probably be a good idea, at least IMHO.
Simon
A few related sites..... (Score:5, Informative)
http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/I7.ht
http://home.att.net/~thehessians/asteroidstrike
http://www.sandia.gov/media/comethit.htm
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/crater.h
The Tin Foil Hats Say (Score:5, Interesting)
-
As practically a deathbed speech, he educated me about those concepts and who the players were in this game. He gave me the responsibility, since he was dying, of continuing this effort to prevent the weaponization of outer space.
Be sure your Tin Foil hats are well groundedWhen Wernher Von Braun was dying of cancer, he asked me to be his spokesperson, to appear on occasions when he was too ill to speak. I did this. What was most interesting to me was a repetitive sentence that he said to me over and over again during the approximately four years that I had the opportunity to work with him.
He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics That was how we identify an enemy. The strategy that Wernher Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered to be the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had "killer satellites". We were told that they were coming to get us and control us-that they were "Commies."
Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country "crazies." We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons.
The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it.
Asteroids- against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons.
And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card.
"And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie."
I think I was too naive at that time to know the seriousness of the nature of the spin that was being put on the system. And now, the pieces are starting to fall into place. We are building a space-based weapons system on a premise that is a lie, a spin. Wernher Von Braun was trying to hint that to me back in the early 70's and right up until the moment when he died in 1977.
I'd say it's overblown except (Score:5, Insightful)
To be completely flippant (and yes, I do realize there is a risk, I just think it is relatively low) ... boring! I just hope this doesn't turn into another cause where misguided celebrities drive us into spending money on it disproportionally like certain trendy diseases.
Re:I'd say it's overblown except (Score:2)
Except the dinosaurs survived 100 million years before going the way of the dinosaur...
Re:I'd say it's overblown except (Score:5, Interesting)
As well, detection systems have other benifits (think advances in optics or radio-imaging, and the discovery of other inner-solarsystem bodies that may be scientifically interesting).
Re:I'd say it's overblown except (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not. I worked on a study where we examined what the options would be for dealing with an asteroid due to hit in 10 years if we detected it today. The bottom line was that it would be really hard to stop. And we could only say it wasn't impossible if we made some convenient assumptions about the composition of the asteroid.
Who knows, maybe an Apollo-scale effort could be mounted to stop the impact. B
Will they ever learn? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to be pessimistic; I'm sure if anyone ever manage to agree on some way to protect the earth from celestial bodies, it will be in the form of some weapon that is capable of destroying the whole planet before anything else can hit it.
Ruthless men control the weapon's industry, and the weapon's industry controls the money that goes to persuade the desicion makers.
It would be better, at least more senisble, to let the heavenly bodies decide our fate, than these fellows.
Well... (Score:3, Funny)
Hasn't he done well? (Score:3, Informative)
Last time I was in the same room as him he was asked "OK, now you've got the politicians taking this seriously, when we spot one of these beggars coming towards us what do we do about it?"
His reply was that that wasn't his area of expertise; once politicians were taking the threat seriously they'd allocate money to the scientists and engineers, and a solution, if one were possible at all, was a done deal.
His lecture on how he got the politicians to take him seriously is well worth listening to; but actually I've found him rather good as a comic lecturer on several other subjects as well.
[1] Oh, and I'm sure slashdot geeks knew already that the "Oort cloud" is just shorthand for the "Oort-Opik cloud".
Rendezvous with Rama, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all there in "Rendezvous with Rama." Just remember, the Ramans do everything in threes.
Hmmmm...Top Raman...
Need protection against ourselves (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be a cosmic joke for us to have made it these past hundreds of thousands of slow years, only to be wiped out by a dumb rock in the next ~30 years or so that matter most in our evolution to post-humanity.
--
Colonize Mars! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Colonize Mars! (Score:2)
It seems very unikely that the humanity would be completely destroyed even if a disaster on the planetary scale occurs.
Famous actors with family attachments (Score:3, Funny)
Well... (Score:3, Funny)
Nerdliness aside... (Score:5, Interesting)
But isn't it sad that governments throw billions of dollars towards defense (from other humans) yet nobody is willing to invest in defense of the earth at large?
This is the kind of shit that makes us look awfully silly when the aliens come inspect the rubble after the impact.
First Target (Score:2, Funny)
I personally believe... (Score:2)
chicken! ...good! (Score:2)
Getting hit by rocks - old fashioned! (Score:3, Interesting)
What SPF do I need for that threat?
In this modern age, it is good to be reminded that you should look out for the simple stuff - like rocks falling on you.
We need to upgrade our citadel... (Score:2, Funny)
less competition (Score:3, Funny)
Gameplan (Score:3, Insightful)
To those who think money could be better spent... (Score:3, Interesting)
An asteroid has just hit Affrica and wiped out 90% of it's population. (There goes famine.) The impact has also spewed massive ammounts of dust into the atmosphere and Global Tempertures are dropping (so much for global warming) and we are expecting winter to last for several years. () We are expecting most plantlife on the planet to die off due to lack of sunlight from the dust, and a mass extinction of animals from starvation after that. (ah well, no more animals, no more animal rights activists.) Humanity is expected to follow suit being unable to feed enough of it's population due to not being able to grow anything. Wars develope over the remaining food supplies and total anihaltion results, or some survive and we are back in the stone age. [wikipedia.org]
Water Impact:
An ateroid hit the (Pacific/Atlantic, your choice) today causing 1,000 foor (300 meter) tidal waves along the coastlines of all the continents (unless it was in the atlantic, in which Australia is safe). Millions of people were drowned as the water went 10's (100's?) of miles inland causing flooding and destruction of everything in it's path. Need I go on about what a 30' (10 meter) Tsunami can do? Much less one 30 times taller, occuring all over the ocean at once? Entire Islands would go under, possibly entire contries (Carribean, New Zealand, Japan, etc...). The only place that would be safe would be the mountains (Like the Rockies the Andes,and the Alps). Plus what all that water vapor would do.
Umm... (Score:4, Informative)
Everyday something hits earth, comets, mini asteroids, space dust. Most burns up in the atmosphere, but every so often something makes it through (meteorites) and hits the surface. True most of these meteorites are about the size of a golf ball or smaller.
Waiting will solve the problem! (Score:3, Funny)
Remember basic lessons in probability (Score:4, Insightful)
We're not 'running out of time' just because we've gone a long time without a major impact. The chance of a major impact this year is exactly the same as it has been in each of the last million years.
51% same as it started out (Score:2)
You assume (Score:5, Insightful)
But we don't know what causes asteroids to wander our way, only that it hapens on a semi periodic basis. Perhaps as we orbit the galaxy we come accros regions with more gravitational distortions that are more likely to send stuff hurtling inwards from the oort cloud. Perhaps there is a misterious 10th planet that goes through a dense part of the oort cloud. Perhaps....
Anything that makes the system non-memoryless (i.e. statefull) and makes the events more periodic than random allows us to say that given no events so far, the probability of an event in the near future is greater/has gone up. (Extreme example: We arrive in london at some random time and don't have a watch. The fact that Big Ben hasn't rung in the last 40 minutes allows us to state that it will ring 'soon' with greater certanty than the fact it hasn't rung in the last 10.)
Of couse the fact that an asteroid doesn't hit in just one year makes the already small probability change for the next year only by an infentesmal ammount. I.e. a change of 1/50000000 --> 1/49999999 or even smaller.
Star Trek has the answer (Score:2, Funny)
GEORDI: You have a better idea... ?
Q: I would certainly begin by examining the cause and not the symptom.
GEORDI: We've done that, Q... and there's no way to determine...
Q: This is obviously the result of a large celestial object passing through at near right angles to the plane of the star system...probably a black hole...
DATA: Can you recommend a way to counter the effect?
Q: Simple. Change the gravitational constant of the universe.
Next project... (Score:3, Funny)
upside-down priorities (Score:2)
subcontract Al-Quaeda to blow up asteroids ... (Score:2)
yes, this is probably a joke in bad taste. I'm not sure.
Paranoid Asteroid Hemorrhoids (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait a minute... Whose hands are being tied by an antispace weapons poliferation treaties again?? Bush had to dissolve one of those just to get a ballistic missile shield off the ground, let alone something that will actually project weapons into space. And when we do turn our backs on another one of these assnine treaties (and make no mistake, they are assinine), just remember that quote, because whining bitchasses will crawl out of the woodwork to label the US with emperialistic tendancies and world domination theories. AGAIN. We haven't even mentioned the tree-nazies absolute paranoia of putting nuclear anything into space.
I really don't think the government would mind implimenting this project and others like it. Half (if not more) of the problem is the sorry external opposition to such measures, in addition to those who will hammer the administration for ponying up the cash to make it a reality. As soon as they do, you'll hear the statistics of how unlikely it is an asteroid will hit and how we could be spending that money helping the childern!
Perhapse it's partially the fed's fault, but you have a lot of hipocrites out there complicating the issue by serveral magnitudes both inside and outside this country. That quote is ignorant and indicative of a lazy thought process considering their are a lot more parties involved in this- both domestic and ineternational -that desperatly need that wake-up call.
Dual Use Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
All our eggs in one basket (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think that this will happen in my lifetime. With nanotech gaining speed, it won't be long before the first space elevator is built. That technology will facilitate space-based research in biosphere technologies: hydroponics, solar energy, and efficient recycling.
I don't doubt that an asteroid would collide with Earth. Hopefully the inhabitants of the planet won't be at war at the time and will be able to properly respond to the threat and prevent the destruction of humanity's birthplace. But by that time, I imagine humans will be living in hundreds of worlds - still at war with each other, but not vulnerable to a single asteroid.
Problem or Opportunity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like it would be a lot easier to move it into a stable orbit that to destroy it.
It would be a great way to build an interplanetary ISP without all the expense of hauling materials up from the gravity well.
Also, it would make a swell military base to be used against those sneaky aliens.
USAF Already Funds An Asteroid Survey (Score:3, Interesting)
There's mention of the big buck$ LSST telescope, and a proposal to pop for six dedicated scopes, but nothing about the US$8mil or so that has already been allocated to the PanSTARRS [hawaii.edu] project in Hawaii. UH is developing a telescope array and automated asteroid detection system to scan almost the entire sky every few days. Once deployed on either Mauna Kea or Haleakala, a five year campaign is planned to catalog at least 90% of the estimated number of 0.3km or bigger NEOs out there.
If an orbit is found that seems to intersect with us, then it becomes someone else's problem.
Re:Famous last words (Score:2)
1. Quite often (in geological proportions)
1b) There was this little explosion in russia 1907 (iirc). If it had hit somewhere else, it could have killed 100000s...
2. Do you want to suggest a hit into water would be better than a land hit? Think again. There are such things as Tsunamies, and massive water vapour can mess up climate as well as dust/ashes.
Re:Famous last words (Score:5, Interesting)
Though realistically, the most damaging place for an Tunguska-sized impact would be in the India-Pakistan area during a crisis, or just about any time in the Middle East. It could easily be mistaken at first for a nuclear explosion. All it would take would be one decision-maker jumping to a conclusion without waiting for the radiation readings, and even a small impact could trigger a horror that would make the twentieth century look good by comparison.
Take a look at the moon (Score:2)
Earth to has been pelted with rocks. Just that we got this thing called an eviroment wich tends to smooth everything over. There are still plenty of craters however. Ask the dinosaurs about the one they had hit. Oh wait. They died out didn't they. Mmmm.
Ehm missed your change then (Score:2)
Google for it.
I think Terry Pratchet had a bit in one of his books about. Talking about probabilty and how everything can exist somewhere. "Apparently there was an civilization that one day saw several thousand tons of rock collide with a planet nextdoor and then did nothing about it. It is however considered that is to unlikely to have really happened as any species that dumb would never have discovered sloot in the fi
Re: What we will do (Score:2, Funny)
I see that you're
Re:Too big to handle (Score:2, Interesting)
Natural objects cannot move fast than the speed of light, and substantial size stuff like planets or asteroids cannot move at relativistic speeds (i.e. - substantial fraction of the speed of light) because the stresses when render them to powder.
Therefore the fastest something fairly large could move to get here, starting 1000 LY away, would me
Re:Too big to handle (Score:2)
You appear to be challenging Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Unless you can come up with some substantial evidence that Einstein was totally wrong, I will continue to assume that macroscopic objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light, no matter where they are in the Universe.
Re:Too big to handle (Score:2)
Well unless accelerated slowly, the stress would cause the object to breakup
Plus space is never truly empty. Even in Deepest space, there are many atoms per cubic meter, and thus there are enough over the light years to cause enough friction to melt the asteroid away long before it reached us.
How many atoms exist over the lightyears to impact on a body moving at such
Re:Too big to handle (Score:2)
Im gunna be nice. I promise.
Arggggnnnnnnnnnnn. so-hard-to-maintain-decorum
[Calmness Grasshopper]
If it is 1000 LY from us,
Re:Too big to handle (Score:2)
Re:Too big to handle (Score:2)
The Solar System is, for all practical purposes, only about one light day across. Just about any object that could cause us harm is within the heliopause.
what if that thing is moving at 1 million LY? Wouldn't we be hit seconds after we 'saw' it?
One million light years is not a speed. Granted, some people say they were "going 60 miles" when they mean "60 miles per hour", but any implied time measurement would have to be at least 1 m
Re:dumbass (Score:2)
You this sort of thing too seriously. Try to think of it as humor fueled by a healthy cynicism 99% of politicians create that makes the other 1% look bad.