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Their minds are closed to anything beyond Earth , benign or malignant.
It is unfortunate the masses are locked into complacency as they have been for millennia. Maybe it's time for the thinkers to take over instead of shouting at discriminately deaf ears.
Then again , it may benefit us in the long run should an NEO strike , provided it was small enough to avoid total annihilation , but large enough to snap us into reality.
Gotta continue this. We hear all sorts of space initiatives. But the one that might save hundreds of millions of lives seems to fall in a global blind spot. Over time, it is a near certainty the planet will be struck by something it can't handle. Happened before, will happen again. Like a volcanic eruption, the timing isn't easy to predict. But the likelihood is much easier.
What we need is a global space agency dedicated to preserving humanity by a planetary defense. We have the brains and the wealth to do it. The question is whether we can rally the species to prevent extinction such as happened to dinosaurs. At one time, I think an eruption or collision reduced homo sapiens to an endangered species status. So, to me, the question is whether this is a species worthy to survive. Not morally. Nature cares nothing about morals. It merely tests species for their ability to overcome environmental changes. Those that fall short become a genetic dead end.
There are plans (not sure how definite they are though) to deorbit and destroy the ISS in 2015. If self-sufficient bases can ever be established on the Moon and/or Mars, you can bet your bottom dollar that if any ELE heads for Earth, only a select handful of people would be quietly relocated to those bases while the rest of us on Earth will thoughtfully be permitted to join the ranks of the dinosaurs.
Kiss of death for International Space Station? - Astronomy.com blog (http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/blogs/...e-station.aspx - broken link)
If an ELE would be confirmed to strike the planet and no self-sufficient off-planet bases to go to, the way the political circus seems to work, there'd be an endless series of debates discussing what to do about it, how to finance it, etc., until... BOOM!
There would probably be a desperate attempt to launch missiles at it, as if that would help. Even if a few people are launched into space to wait it out, if the object is big enough, there'd be nothing to come back to. GAME OVER!
Many asteroids floating around, And while extinction level ones are rare, "City killers" are more common. The Russian meteor recently is an example of one large enough to survive entry and cause damage. Over 1,000 people were injured. Video footage from inside buildings was scary to watch.
Thank you so much. It WAS weird! I never had a video that gave me that error message.
That is one scary video! I guess that's one reason to get on that Mars mission {joking, as Mars isn't immune and I'd really rather be here on Terra if it should happen in my lifetime}
Thank you so much. It WAS weird! I never had a video that gave me that error message.
That is one scary video! I guess that's one reason to get on that Mars mission {joking, as Mars isn't immune and I'd really rather be here on Terra if it should happen in my lifetime}
It's a grim catastrophic scenario of what could happen if such a large object were to collide with the Earth. True, Mars isn't immune. It's closer to the Asteroid Belt than we are. It's possible if we could determine early enough that such an object would eventually collide with the Earth, we might be able to figure out a way to gradually nudge it off course. The thing is that it wouldn't take an object that large to cause serious damage. And there are comets that cross Earth's orbit now and then as well. When Comet Shumaker-Levi broke up and collided with Jupiter, the 'scars' it left were gigantic.
We've had a few close calls by smaller but still potentially damaging asteroids that snuck up on us. We didn't detect them because they approached us from the Sun. If we placed probes between Earth and Venus, which has been proposed as an early warning system, we'd have a better chance of spotting those sneaky ones that may be heading in our direction. Even though the risk factor of a collision is pretty small, all it would take is just one big one. But even a smaller one that wouldn't wipe out the entire planet but large enough to destroy a major city if it hit on land would be an event to try to avoid. If it hit an ocean, it could cause a gigantic tsunami that could wipe out coastal cities.
Many asteroids floating around, And while extinction level ones are rare, "City killers" are more common. The Russian meteor recently is an example of one large enough to survive entry and cause damage. Over 1,000 people were injured. Video footage from inside buildings was scary to watch.
The meteorite that exploded over the Urals this past February was about as small as a meteorite can be and still make it through the atmosphere to actually impact the ground. They estimated its size between 17 meters (55.7743 feet) and 20 meters (65.6168 feet) in diameter.
According to JPL/NASA they have identified 92.5% of all the near-Earth asteroids that are one kilometer or larger. NASA is currently tracking 866 one kilometer or larger asteroids, with an estimated 70 more yet to be discovered. That was NASA's original mission established by Congress in 1998. None of these near-Earth asteroids NASA is tracking will come close enough to Earth to be considered a threat in at least the next 500 years. In other words they all have a Torino Scale of 0.
After the meteorite explosion over the Urals, Congress expanded NASA's mission to include locating 90% of the asteroids 140 meters (459.318 feet) or larger by the year 2020. This is were NASA needs help, because there are considerably more than mere thousand or so. NASA is currently tracking 9,547 asteroids that are smaller than one kilometer and larger than 100 meters, but even that is only a small fraction of what is out there.
The only asteroid that has a Torino Scale of 1 is asteroid 2007 VK184. On June 3, 2048 there is a 1 in 1,750 chance of impact, or a 99.943% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth. The asteroid is 130 meters (426.509 feet) in diameter. Which means that it is large enough to make it through the atmosphere and impact the ground.
If we assume that asteroid 2007 VK184 is dense rock (3 g/cm^3), traveling at 15 km/s, and enters the atmosphere at a 30° angle, it will begin to break up at 171,000 feet creating a 9.27 megaton explosion. The fragments will impact the ground at a velocity of 4.61 km/s. The fragments will not be sufficiently dispersed, so a crater will be created. The size of the final crater will be 1.35 km (0.8388511 miles) in diameter, and 288 meters (944.882 feet) deep.
Even at a distance of 10 km from the impact wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse, glass windows will shatter, and about 30% of trees will be blown down; remainder have some branches and leaves blown off. At a distance of 10 km there will also be a 5.2 magnitude earthquake felt about 2 seconds after impact.
If this asteroid were to impact over Manhattan, for example, it would pretty much wipe out that island.
If it turns out that asteroid 2007 VK184 will impact Earth, it is small enough that it could be broken up into pieces smaller than 10 meters. Which would mean that none of the fragments would make it through the atmosphere.
Asteroid impacts are low-probability high-consequence risks, and NASA needs all the help they can get. Thankfully, just about anyone can be involved these days searching for NEOs thanks to the Internet. "Slooh" for example, provides Internet access to several ground-based telescopes. Their members have already taken 2.4 million photos of more than 40,000 celestial objects.
I'd really rather be here on Terra if it should happen in my lifetime
Not me. If there was a choice, I'd want to be as far away from the planet as possible if something that big was on a collision course with the planet. Where to go is another story since returning to the planet would be out of the question. At the present time though there is no choice like that.
For smaller objects but large enough to destroy a city, a better warning system with enough heads-up time to evacuate would save a lt of lives. That assumes that the strike zone would be accurately determined. You'd need a significant amount warning ahead of time, since a short notice would probably just result in complete chaos and traffic jams. Evacuating an entire city is a major undertaking. But with enough advance notice, such an evacuation could be done.
Although we're getting a fairly decent nose count of asteriods of a size that could potentially cause some serious damage or even wipe out the planet, it's the smaller ones that are more abundant and hold more concern. It's one thing to do a nose count of what's out there (and that is important), but it's another thing to calculate and track the trajectories of all of them. On the plus side, it's fair to say that most asteroids will continue to orbit the sun where they are. But a few rogues do make it into the area of the inner planets. As for comets, they can come into the solar system from any direction.
Not me. If there was a choice, I'd want to be as far away from the planet as possible if something that big was on a collision course with the planet. Where to go is another story since returning to the planet would be out of the question. At the present time though there is no choice like that.
For smaller objects but large enough to destroy a city, a better warning system with enough heads-up time to evacuate would save a lt of lives. That assumes that the strike zone would be accurately determined. You'd need a significant amount warning ahead of time, since a short notice would probably just result in complete chaos and traffic jams. Evacuating an entire city is a major undertaking. But with enough advance notice, such an evacuation could be done.
Although we're getting a fairly decent nose count of asteriods of a size that could potentially cause some serious damage or even wipe out the planet, it's the smaller ones that are more abundant and hold more concern. It's one thing to do a nose count of what's out there (and that is important), but it's another thing to calculate and track the trajectories of all of them. On the plus side, it's fair to say that most asteroids will continue to orbit the sun where they are. But a few rogues do make it into the area of the inner planets. As for comets, they can come into the solar system from any direction.
For asteroids that are well under a kilometer in diameter, but still more than 100 meters across, the odds are we will not know about them until just a few days before impact (if we are lucky). Which means that warning the people is about all we can do. It takes months to put anything into orbit, so mitigation is not an option.
Of the 866 near-Earth asteroids NASA has found that are a kilometer or larger, none of them are any threat to Earth for at least the next 500 years. NASA estimates that there are only 70 or so more that fall into this category that they have not located yet. It is highly doubtful that any asteroid larger than a kilometer will impact the Earth within the next several thousand years. Those kinds of impacts are typically millions of years between events.
It is the city killers that are a more pressing concern. In order to mitigate these smaller asteroids we need something already in space, waiting for them.
I suppose if the asteroid was small enough, and made of the right material (such as ice or rock, but not iron) we could launch a nuke in its direction. However, we had better be damn certain that we can break up the asteroid into smaller pieces than 15 meters across or there may end up being a lot more damage upon impact than if the asteroid were still intact.
Last edited by Glitch; 12-12-2013 at 03:45 PM..
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