Apophis - Could Stirke Earth in 2036

[MacLeod]

A Date to pencil in your diary's, there is a 1 in 200 000 change that it could strike Earth 13th April 2036, fortunatly we'll have 7 years warning as we'll know in 2029.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20961003

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Jaffa Kree?

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Not to worry, Hercules and Peter the great will deal with it, that's what they were designed to do, Point outwardshs, not in!!!. lol

 

[MacLeod]

Yes but have they been re-orinated to face outwards yet?

 

[lurok]

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Yes but have they been re-orinated to face outwards yet?

Unfortunatly Landau is beeing quite prissy about it all, seems he was storing a lot of his Space 1999 costumes in the satellite re-orientation room and now we might have to move them elsewhere and he is not happy. lol

On a more postive note Connery has done a smashing job keeping all the floors clean in the place. lol

 

[Silvercrest]

At least you guys are envisioning something good. I keep flashing back to Connie Sellecca and William Devane.

 

[publiusr]

I actually saw those filming miniatures from METEOR at Forrest J. Ackerman' Ackermansion He sold much of his collection before he died: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2008/12/voices----forre.html?cid=142342488#comments

 

[BillJ]

The Tea Party will bitch and moan about the cost to deflect and decide its better for humanity to perish than ask the rich to pay any more in taxes.

 

[Random_Spock]

Nice one!

Wow. O_O Hopefully this won't happen. It wouldn't be good if it did.

 

[Lonemagpie]

A Date to pencil in your diary's, there is a 1 in 200 000 change that it could strike Earth 13th April 2036, fortunatly we'll have 7 years warning as we'll know in 2029.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20961003

Like the Mayans, it's letting us down

http://www.firstpost.com/fwire/aste...sa-589683.html?utm_source=fwire&utm_medium=hp

 

[Deckerd]

Still. How many times do they have to kill that guy?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The Tea Party will bitch and moan about the cost to deflect and decide its better for humanity to perish than ask the rich to pay any more in taxes.

The comedic replies are fine, but this isn't TNZ, so let's not have any more like this one, OK?

 

[JarodRussell]

 

[Silvercrest]

Still. How many times do they have to kill that guy?

Hey, we didn't actually see him die the last time. The bugs were crawling all over his shield and a few minutes later his ship plowed into the surface -- but there was plenty of time for him to ring out in the meantime.

Since then, of course, he's been working on mass drivers to propel the asteroid with his name on it. That's why we haven't seen him.

 

[Gary7]

Hopefully by the time it reaches us, we'll have an idea of its trajectory and if it'll be making a return visit at a much closer distance. If so perhaps we'll be able to do something about it. Imagine if we could get the cooperation of Russia and take a massive percentage of our combined nuclear stockpiles, and deliver them to the asteroid. Then when its at a presumably "safe" distance away we can transmit a signal to detonate and turn it into billions of small rock fragments.

 

[JarodRussell]

Hopefully by the time it reaches us, we'll have an idea of its trajectory and if it'll be making a return visit at a much closer distance. If so perhaps we'll be able to do something about it. Imagine if we could get the cooperation of Russia and take a massive percentage of our combined nuclear stockpiles, and deliver them to the asteroid. Then when its at a presumably "safe" distance away we can transmit a signal to detonate and turn it into billions of small rock fragments.

Dude, that won't be neccessary.

Besides that, turning it into smaller rocks blasting in every direction would make it more dangerous. Good job.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Besides that, turning it into smaller rocks blasting in every direction would make it more dangerous. Good job.

No it wouldn't. The shower of smaller fragments would have considerably greater surface area, allowing for both more complete burnup in the atmosphere (less mass reaches the ground) and lower impact velocity for those fragments that DO reach the ground. It would be slightly more dangerous to orbiting spacecraft and satellites, but considerably less so for anyone on the ground.

 

[JarodRussell]

Besides that, turning it into smaller rocks blasting in every direction would make it more dangerous. Good job.

No it wouldn't. The shower of smaller fragments would have considerably greater surface area, allowing for both more complete burnup in the atmosphere (less mass reaches the ground) and lower impact velocity for those fragments that DO reach the ground. It would be slightly more dangerous to orbiting spacecraft and satellites, but considerably less so for anyone on the ground.

You're turning an asteroid that definitely won't hit Earth into a gazillion of smaller ones that will hit Earth.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Besides that, turning it into smaller rocks blasting in every direction would make it more dangerous. Good job.

No it wouldn't. The shower of smaller fragments would have considerably greater surface area, allowing for both more complete burnup in the atmosphere (less mass reaches the ground) and lower impact velocity for those fragments that DO reach the ground. It would be slightly more dangerous to orbiting spacecraft and satellites, but considerably less so for anyone on the ground.

You're turning an asteroid that definitely won't hit Earth into a gazillion of smaller ones that will hit Earth.

If you make them small enough, most of them will burn up and hit nothing.

In any case, if you have an asteroid big enough to cause an extinction-level event, you are better off doing anything you can to blunt the impact, which leaves two options:

1. Change its course so it doesn't hit Earth at all (this would be difficult to impossible, depending on the situation)
2. Blow it up into as many small pieces as you can

Option 2 means that, yes, some populated areas will probably be hit, and people will die, but if the choice is that or the extinction of most life on Earth, is that even a choice?