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The looming threat of NEOs
Nova_C
I have the needThe need for speedRegistered User regular
I have the needThe need for speedRegistered User regular
More money for NEOs!
NEO = Near Earth Object, not some dude in sunglasses saying 'Whoa'.
So, someone in Congress is decrying NASA's lack of attention for NEOs because of the perceived threat. Am I the only one going O_o? I mean, the last major impact of an asteroid into the Earth was approximately 65 million years ago. For the people much more knowledgeable than I, is this a real threat to Earth, or, as I believe, is it simply paranoia of less than intelligent people brought on by movies like Armageddon?
NEO = Near Earth Object, not some dude in sunglasses saying 'Whoa'.
So, someone in Congress is decrying NASA's lack of attention for NEOs because of the perceived threat. Am I the only one going O_o? I mean, the last major impact of an asteroid into the Earth was approximately 65 million years ago. For the people much more knowledgeable than I, is this a real threat to Earth, or, as I believe, is it simply paranoia of less than intelligent people brought on by movies like Armageddon?
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Because this over a populated area is something it'd be ideal to spot and either try to divert or at least evacuate the projected impact area, for example.
This is the NEO Apophis, which was the Greek name for the Egyptian serpent of eternal darkness. On Friday, April 13, 2029, it will pass so close to Earth that it will be within the orbits of geosynchronous communications satellites. If it passes through a small area known as a "gravitational keyhole", this will set it up for a collision with Earth on the same date 7 years later.
Of course, the chances of it hitting the keyhole are pretty miniscule. But Bill Nye mentioned it when he was here and I thought it sounded cool.
I heard he's something of a cock.
He seemed cool to me. Of course we're all Cocks here so we may not be the best ones to judge. :P
Edit: also, with all this talk of keyholes, I want to make a Keymaster/Gatekeeper joke but I just can't work it in.
I hope whoever does the job brings a back brace!
Hey o!
Shit loads of little ones aren't a big deal. The atmosphere will burn up most of them and some minor property damage may happen. But it won't have a death toll in the tens of thousands to end of civilization as we know it range.
And not blowing it up.
Whose responsibility is it to make that announcement? NASA? And would they even disclose the full extent of the threat? I can't imagine any sort of press conference where they would come right out and say that the thing was gonna impact and the death toll would be catastrophic.
And if that was the case, what do you imagine the public reaction being? I'd hate to think that we would all resort to our bas instincts and start looting immediately. But the only other reaction I can think of would be like at the end of the 3 days in Majora's Mask where everybody cowers in their homes and shit. It's such a depressing concept, this idea of an asteroid impact.
Sorry, whenever I hear about this sort of thing I start thinking about what I would do with my remaining time.
(The first one will fail horribly)
It would depend on who found the object and how they wanted to handle it. Some scientists might hold a press conference, some might go to Nasa.
i likes the way you think
MORE NUKES FOR EVERYBODY
Actually, given how long there is to prepare, it is well within current technology to "do something about it". It does not take much energy to turn a near hit into a near miss. The earth moves a distance equal to its entire diameter every 7 minutes. You don't have to blow the thing up or move it at right angles to its path. Just a tiny adjustment to its course or speed would do it.
Edit: Also "Which one?"
My favorite proposed solution to NEOs was to paint them white on one of their approaches and the solar wind would take care of the rest. I don't know how actually effective it would be. But it is certainly amusing and lazy.
Oh noes!
No no no, you have to send motherfucking Bruce Willis to drill a hole in it, duhhhh.
That would work if we had a few decades to prepare, and it wasn't rotating. :P
I'm ok with that, because it will probably lead to some developments that might be worthwhile. There are better ways to spend the money, but it's not really that much money, and there are far worse ways to spend it.
That's why you paint the whole damn thing white. The Sun just keeps pushing it away. But yeah. It is definitely a plan that takes a while to come to fruition.
The priorities of committees aren't supposed to make sense!
Trivial relative to what?
Amount of money wasted on Iraq? Probably.
Current education budget? Probably not.
Look, the thing is, even if we see the thing coming, we don't have any feasible technology to stop it from hitting us anyway.
The chances of a big rock hitting Earth and causing global calamity are incredibly low to the point of "virtually non-existent". The worst case scenario that has any meaningful possibility of happening is a local disaster, as in the case of Apophis. In such a case, I don't see why our money should not be spent toward averting other local disasters, such as floods, storms, or even things like epidemics. Proactively trying to prevent such disasters not only costs much less, it saves more lives (because such disasters occur on a much more frequent basis than killer meteors), it is also actually feasible.