World 'must tackle space threat'
- Thread starter Dusty Ayres
- Start date
On some levels, this is completely absurd. The threat level didn't in any fashion increase when we hairless monkeys learned that asteroids existed, or when we learned how to calculate their orbits, or when we learned how to reach them. It will not increase or decrease when we learn how to deflect them.
It would be slightly ironic if an asteroid wiped us (or at least our civilization) out during the next thousand years. But not statistically relevant, not by a long shot. We can easily afford to "delay" for another millennium, or ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand, before we pay attention to this. And we will probably lose less and learn more if we let a couple of dozen small rocks hit us than if we invest resources in the effort of deflecting them.
Timo Saloniemi
It would be slightly ironic if an asteroid wiped us (or at least our civilization) out during the next thousand years. But not statistically relevant, not by a long shot. We can easily afford to "delay" for another millennium, or ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand, before we pay attention to this. And we will probably lose less and learn more if we let a couple of dozen small rocks hit us than if we invest resources in the effort of deflecting them.
Timo Saloniemi
For curiosity value, that's in the same ballpark as you screwing up and ending up executed within the boundaries of US law.
Car crash death would be about 1:100, death in fire about 1:1000, drowning about 1:10,000, and being bitten by something lethally poisonous about 1:100,000, to give some brackets.
Paraphrasing from popular statistics like this one:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/050106_odds_of_dying.html
Of course, the relevant unit of measure here wouldn't be probability, but risk, which is probability times seriousness. And an asteroid strike would be a bit more serious than a lethal bite in the sense that if it happened, it would kill a much greater number of people and destroy more property. OTOH, one would also have to calculate the odds of oneself dying when an asteroid impact did take place, which would be way below 1:1 for most cases.
Timo Saloniemi
Car crash death would be about 1:100, death in fire about 1:1000, drowning about 1:10,000, and being bitten by something lethally poisonous about 1:100,000, to give some brackets.
Paraphrasing from popular statistics like this one:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/050106_odds_of_dying.html
Of course, the relevant unit of measure here wouldn't be probability, but risk, which is probability times seriousness. And an asteroid strike would be a bit more serious than a lethal bite in the sense that if it happened, it would kill a much greater number of people and destroy more property. OTOH, one would also have to calculate the odds of oneself dying when an asteroid impact did take place, which would be way below 1:1 for most cases.
Timo Saloniemi
Wouldn't the astroid break up when it hurts our atmosphere anyways? and sometimes they would have to manuvre past the magnetic field of the planet AND/OR any ionic radiation in the sky!
It also depends on where the impact site it as well
It also depends on where the impact site it as well
What are the odds of suffering a car crash while being executed wherein the vehicle crashes and burns before sinking in a lake right after you were bitten by a cobra?
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Sounds like a 007 plot...master villain launches missles to alter a comet to HIT the earth, thus shrinking the worlds population to just those he takes into his underground city...paging Dr.Noah
Rob
We "hairless monkeys" have a tendency to react to an emergency only after we get smacked in the face with it once. Unfortunately, if an asteroid the size of Manhattan decides to pay is a visit we won't likely get a second chance for a long, long time, if ever. One rock 200 m wide would destroy a large city, millions of people, trillions and trillions of dollars thrown away. I'm not sure how you can say that's an insignificant risk, no matter how small it might be. It's not only possible, it's inevitable.
Better safe than sorry I say. I'd hate for aliens to come to a human-less Earth in a thousand years and wonder why a relatively advanced race of somewhat intelligent creatures ignored the mountain falling on our head when we might have been able to do something about it. They just want more money to find these objects and to think of ways to deal with them, not building a bajillion megaton newculur rocket on the moon.
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
Because we spent so long crying our eyes about what comes out of the tailpipe of a car than do something about an asteroid that will hit earth and kill millions of people, like big lemmings. The people of the world have to deal with this too, not just what comes out of the tailpipe of a car or out of the smokestack of a factory.
Both the asteroid deflection and the going to the Moon are important, and necessary. In fact, the space programs of the planet are going to have to get their asses in gear and hash this problem out, and getting to the Moon may play a part in some way.
Anything rock bigger than a small building moving at typical speeds would punch through the atmosphere like your thumb breaking through the skin of an orange.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwb3FDkxfgQ
The kinetic energy of even a medium-sized asteroid is more than setting off all the nuclear weapons we have EVER built....
Also - which would have killed you?
Overall though, pretty slim, I think you would have trouble planning that, let alone it just happening!
^^
An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of keyboards . . . .
It'll happen . . . eventually.
An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of keyboards . . . .
It'll happen . . . eventually.
I think you can get cream for that.
If only SG1 had taken care of him more quickly. ;-)