NEWSFLASH: Asteroid Could Hit Earth!!!

by 2SYN 4 Replies latest social current

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  2SYN

  Or so Ananova says. No need to grab your water bottles and run for the mountains tho, as it's only coming in about 850 years. That should give you plenty of time to stock up on BEER!

  Maybe this is Armageddon? Must be, because at the rate the Dub Armageddon predictions have been coming true, I see the 'End' coming in about a millenium or so...and I'm being OPTIMISTIC here!

  http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_557184.html

  
  [SYN], UADA - Unseen Apostate Directorate of Africa - For Great Justice!
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  slipnslidemaster

  ok, ha ha. April Fools day is over dude.

  Slipnslidemaster:"Every man dies, not every man really lives.
  -William Wallace

  Unseen Apostate Directorate of North America
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  Xander

  Well, given our current level of technology, that would be a species-killer.

  Movies like 'Armegeddon' and 'Deep Impact' aside, nukes won't help a bit against an asteroid. Really - their biggest effects are the fireball and shockwaves generated by their interaction with an atmosphere. No atmosphere in space! The actual vaporization a nuke does is very, very little.

  Best bet to survive an asteroid is to find it a LONG way ahead of time (say, 850 years), then send some ships out to mount giant rockets to the side of it and changes its course. Over a few million mile elliptical path, you only have to change its course by a half degree or so to make it completely miss Earth.

  So, yeah, it's a problem. And, we'd better have a small fleet of ships heading towards that rock within a hundred years or so if we want to survive it.

  If it had only been found 50 years out, we'd have no chance whatsoever to survive it (space travel takes a LONG time, and we'd have to develop the technology to beat it in the first place)

  A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts.
  --George Santayana
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  2SYN

  I agree w/you, Xander. You're right - it would be an Extinction Level Event for sure. Blow it up and instead of one big asteroid you have a thousand small ones flying towards you, OUCH.

  Maybe I should just drink more, and the problem will go away

  
  [SYN], UADA - Unseen Apostate Directorate of Africa - For Great Justice!
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  Xander

  Right, that's a problem, too.

  IF you could blow it up, lots of small fragments would be just as bad.

  However, Earth's total nuclear arsenal at the peak of the cold war would not have been able to destroy even a moderately-sized asteroid. Hard to believe, I know, but I bothered to look it up and verify it when I first read it. Do a search on google and you'll find some good papers on the topic.

  A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts.
  --George Santayana