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Asteroid Safety...Are we safe? [merged]


AsteroidX

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Any chance of a brief summing up of what's in the video?

I can't always watch them, depending on where I am, so I find it kind of frustrating when people just post videos...

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Basically it said we have found 1% of Earth impact Asteroids the size of the Russian one and they can hit us with 0 warning. He said it would take a 10 year window to prevent an event if we knew it was an incoming impact regardless of size basically. With current tech they believe they could deflect up to a km size Asteroid with that 10 year window.

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I suspect that we could manage some kind of major asteroid deflection effort in less than ten years, if we had to. Better still to not press our luck and wait for an emergency. Shouldn't we have an asteroid defense ready as soon as possible, even with no obvious threat in the offing, just in case?

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Hey AX, I believe the concern has very recently been brought-up in the US Congress.

Don't have the link, but I think it was CNN or Fox.

Anyway, surprisingly enough at least one leading Congressman expressed interested concern from, I think, NASA and JPL panelists, enough for him to advocate special funding on this issue. I guess we'll see how it goes.

I think it was an advisory commitee versus actual appropriations commitee, so who knows where it will go from here.

Edited by pallidin
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We really do need a system in place within the next ten years ! One that Works with 99.99 % Proof .

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I just was reading that the head of NASA said that "Only God could save us from an asteroid at this point", and "The only thing we could do if we knew one was coming is Pray.".

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/20/nasa-the-best-thing-you-can-do-before-a-meteor-strike-is-pray/

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Considering we can only really see them when they come closer to the sun. If one's gonna hit us, we are screwed. Our only chance I suppose is to shoot all our nukes at it /shrugs.

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Considering we can only really see them when they come closer to the sun. If one's gonna hit us, we are screwed.

Not true.

The objects which are the most threatening are Near Earth Objects (NEOs). These are asteroids which have an orbit that crosses that of the Earth. These can be tracked and their orbits calculated. In many cases a collision could be calculated years in advance. As the recent meteor over Russia should, we still have a long way to go to locate all of the smaller objects, but the task is not impossible.

There will always be the remote chance that Earth will be hit by a comet or a rogue asteroid whose orbit we couldn't calculate in advance, but tracking NEOs will give us fair warning of the vast majority of objects which pose a threat.

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Not only that but if we are smart we will not just identify everything that could be a threat but also be ready for that comet or rogue asteroid, so that we could do something other than pray.

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Not only that but if we are smart we will not just identify everything that could be a threat but also be ready for that comet or rogue asteroid, so that we could do something other than pray.

It's not about being smart. Most of the ideas currently being discussed involve deflecting a potentially harmful object into a safe orbit over a period of years. A comet or rogue asteroid simply would not give us enough warning to do that.

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I know that. I can just see us delaying the research for economy and therefore not being smart.

The difficulty of doing something with less than a few months' warning is considerable but not unimaginable. Considering the risk management outcome it is something that is needed.

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The difficulty of doing something with less than a few months' warning is considerable but not unimaginable. Considering the risk management outcome it is something that is needed.

It's all very well saying "we must do something" but what? We can't perform miracles. If it is not possible it is not possible and no amount of wishful thinking will change that.

Given that these objects have only a very remote chance of hitting us the logical thing to do is to put our resources into doing something about the ones that we can predict and which present the majority of the the threat.

Edited by Waspie_Dwarf
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That is an unfortunate and I think overly pessimistic attitude: one that I sure hope the authorities don't take. There are enough resources for dealing with both issues, although I would agree that the more likely and more easily solved scenario should get priority -- if a threatening object is found.

An object headed straight at us with little warning time would need a much more brute approach, including accepting risks that can be avoided with an object we know about decades in advance.

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I don't know that we need to prepare for rogue planets heading out way. That would indeed be difficult.

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I was watching something about asteroid impacts and the effects on life. I really don't know enough about the physics of it all but there are scientists who say the effects of asteroid impacts on Earth are often wildly over estimated.

Obviously an impact will be devastating however maybe not as globally destructive as it is often portrayed. It was sometime ago I saw this so I am trying to rack my brain to remember. If I remember rightly they studied Amphibian life in the vicinity of known impacts and how it effected them. Apparently Amphibian life is the most fragile to sudden change and dies out quite quickly, around the known craters where they can study Amphibian life they found very little extinctions of species if any after the impact.

So again it ignites the debate whether an asteroid did wipe out the dinosaurs, they also concluded that the dinosaurs were well on their way to extinction way before the impact. I can never understand why certain dinosaurs such as crocodiles and alligators managed to pull through when all others died, maybe somebody could help me there? I can totally buy small mammals surviving because they burrowed under ground but they were not the only survivors.

Point I am getting too is maybe we could simply relocate people if we knew an impact was imminent if the technology isn't there to stop them.

Edited by skookum
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I don't know that we need to prepare for rogue planets heading out way. That would indeed be difficult.

.

i'm not really bothered about rogue planets frank, I just want to build a huge space-based death ray!

besides, who WOULDN'T want to look up at the night sky, point, and say ''that's no moon, it's a space station'' in their best obi-wan kenobi voice....?

:-)

Edited by shrooma
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I know what you mean skookum.

the deccan traps in india had been erupting for thousands of years around the time of the asteroid impact, and as the dinosaurs were dying out over the same thousands of years and not overnight, i'd say they were more of a factor than the asteroid.

although, being hit in the face with 500 miles of high-speed space rock can't have been good.....

and I also think that underground bunkers would come into play to save us from total extinction if it were to ever happen again.

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I can totally buy small mammals surviving because they burrowed under ground but they were not the only survivors.

I would guess that the small mammals did it right by burrowing under ground. I guess there be a lesson. Amphibians being cold blooded I would see as having a harder time. I imagine small pools of warmer water would be there necessary habitat being fast reproducers both these creatures could breed there own food supply in a sense. I guess that would be my best guess IMO. Im not sure how well humans would fair as we are so complex and I dont see the elitist opening up the door of the underground city for me so Im going to go the way of the mammals and take a few bunnies to my secret place I like to go when Im running from Giant Asteroidi.

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Charles Bolden, the chief of the Nasa, has warned that the US space agency's best advice on how to handle a large asteroid heading towards New York City is "pray".

http://www.telegraph...Earth-pray.html

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Nice.... Sometimes it's better to say nothing.

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Well, at our current level of technology praying is really all that we could do.

I think saying this actually highlights our (meaning humanity) need to focus on the development of ways to divert/deflect/move dangerous NEOs before they threaten to slam into us.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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I can't believe it's all we can do as a species, even if it was all we could as single people. Bill Gates actually has a base in Antarctic (or was it the other pole) for this kind of stuff, so I've read, supposed to be a lot of species there preserved in case anything happens. Norvegians have invested in this sort of stuff too, they're a wealthy country. I think it'd be sensible for the rest of us to do so too a bit more, not saying everyone should dig shelters in their backyard but a much more concentrated effort than what has been done now. Considering how deep we can dig in to mine minerals with the current tech, I dont think it's impossible.. just a lot of work.

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