Asteroid Near-Misses (AKA: Holy Shit! We're All Going to Die)

[Anonymous]

You remember the 'Talking Point' message board I mentioned above ("What do you think about the asteroid? Should we be afraid")? I feel I must share a late entry with you.

"Bad idea. We need LESS asteroids, and MORE money for public services. "

Quite right too. Those crazy boffins, wasting our money on asteroids and getting us all into trouble.

To quote the classics (The Simpsons ) 'Lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again'

 

[Anonymous]

Businessman offers cave shelter from asteroid

Okay perhaps this may better serve under the already existing Asteroid thread or the underground thread but as this is a separate news article I thought it might merit attention in its own thread. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Anyhooo....

Source: Ananova

Businessman offers cave shelter from asteroid

A businessman is selling places in a Welsh cave to people who want to escape from the asteroid which might hit Earth in 2019.

Ashford Price is selling the spaces in the National Showcaves of Wales in Abercrave under the Brecon Beacons at £1,000 a go.

Experts say the 1½-mile wide space rock 2002 NT7 could destroy a continent if it hits the earth.

Mr Price took out a local newspaper ad saying: "Children free. One week's food and lighting included."

He claims he has already had calls from a dozen interested people, reports the Sun.

He said the caves - which he runs - are 1,000ft underground and big enough to shelter 100 people for a week.

Mr Ashford added: "The caves are perfect. If this asteroid is heading for Earth there will be a lot of people looking for somewhere to hide."

Story filed: 07:38 Friday 26th July 2002

 

[_schnor]

Perhaps the Carter Catastrophe was somewhat optimistic

 

[Anonymous]

Perhaps the Carter Catastrophe was somewhat optimistic

I wouldn't worry. Even if we do die, we will all be resurrected by the Omega Point

 

[JurekB]

I wonder how big a shock everyone will get when they come out of the cave after a week, 'hurrah, we're saved! Is it supposed to be this dark?'

I think I'd rather just watch the show.

 

[DerekH16]

NASA are, unsurprisingly, blaming the press for the kerfuffle.

 

[Anonymous]

caves

Caves for sale,
food and other stuffs included.
Well taken care of and proven
to be safe from inpacts.
More than one entry/exit.
Location: Afghanistan
Former owner: O. bin Ladin.
:devil:

 

[Anonymous]

The Lib Dem MP, Lembit Opik (crazy name, crazy guy) is getting a hammering in the press for lobbying for a Spacewatch programme.
Its a lot of money, but it is a mathamatical certainty that Earth will be hit by a ELE eventually.

 

[Spookyangel]

Only 100 ppl, and presumably he's not choosing who goes in, so it would end up being a mixture of rich eccentrics who couldn't fend for themselves. Would there be any point in them surviving in that case?

 

[_schnor]

I wouldn't worry. Even if we do die, we will all be resurrected by the Omega Point

Very interesting article indeed, and could theoretically negate entropy, infact that is the only way they think (assuming the CC is real) we could survive it

 

[Anonymous]

Y'know I was thinking that...

I would have different criteria for selection, even if it was done for profit. I would have people only able to pay for other people to go in, not able to pay for themselves.

It would then either go one of two ways:-

1. (Optomistic version) People that others thought merited saving or were worthwhile enough for other people to care about would get in
2. (Pessimistic version) A cabal of rich people would pay for each other to get in. At least then you would get organised and intuitive rich people who were able to work together as a group who might then be worth saving
   [/list=1]
   
   Yeah, I know, flawed to hell. On the day it would be a free for all anyway. There is a damned good Twilight Zone episode that deals with the "fallout" (pun intended) of having the choice
   
   

   THE SHELTER - 09/29/61
   Written by: Rod Serling
   Director: Lamont Johnson
   Cast: Larry Gates, Peggy Stewart, Michael Burne, Jack Albertson, Jo Helton,
   Joseph Bernard, Moria Turner, Sandy Kenyon, Mary Gregory, John McLiams

   
   Check out samples here

 

[stu neville]

Omega Point

Heaven's Gate revisited, to a big degree and by another name. Except that they haven't mentioned Reptoids.

Oh Bugger.....

 

[rynner2]

For some reason this thread puts me in mind of an old story:

On Friday, teacher tells her class to carefully revise the week's work, because one day next week she will give them a surprise test.

The class all groan, but after school Smart Alec tells the other kids not to worry, it's impossible for teacher to set a surprise test.
"If we don't get the test by Thursday, we know it must be on Friday, so it won't be a surprise. So we can rule out Friday, and that just leaves four days for the test. But the same thing now applies to Thursday, so we can rule that out too. And so on for the other days!"

They all agree that's brilliant, they go home and no-one revises, but next week teacher gives them the test on Tuesday, and everyone is surprised...



PS: Exo reveals that the Bishop has written a novel on Asteroid Impact!

 

[SoundDust]

Its a lot of money, but it is a mathamatical certainty that Earth will be hit by a ELE eventually.

and the remaining amoeba will all blame Mr Opik.

p.s. is Lembit Opik an anagram? i.e "I'm Pike Bolt"

 

[rynner2]

Good point, Uni'. The "I'll get a round tuit" factor, or, as they say in this part of the world, "I'll do it dreckly".

As for Mr. Opik, I believe he's related to the astronomer Ernst Julius Opik (1893-1985), who first put forward the idea, in 1932, of a vast cloud of comets surrounding our solar system. This idea was elaborated by by Jan Oort in 1950, and the cloud is now known as the Oort-Opik Cloud, often abbreviated to the Oort Cloud.

 

[Anonymous]

Mankind has NO future unless

a) we can protect ourselves from bombardment from space (sooner or later, a big one will get us): or

b) we can spread humanity throughout space so that the loss of one planet is not the final catastrophe.

Both of these options (they are not exclusive) require space research.

To ignore the big picture and concentrate on short-term objectives is so foolish that, if the human race were to pursue it, we would not be worth saving. (We would, in effect, win a mega-Darwin Award, having sawn off the branch we were sitting on!)

Ooh, Lovely! Rynner, you sound just like the bad scientist, Weston, in CS. Lewis's, `Out of the Silent Planet. According to Brian Aldiss, Lewis based him on a mixture of HG. Wells and Olaf Stapeldon.

 

[Anonymous]

And here's the bit from `Out of the Silent Planet'

'Life [says Weston] is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not by tribal taboos and copy book maxims that she has pursued her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to civilization.'

"She-" began Weston.

'I'm sorry, ' interrupted Ransom, "but I've forgotten who She is."

"Life, of course," snapped Weston. "She has ruthlessly broken down all obstacles and liquidated all failures and today in her highest form-civilized man-and in me as his representative, she presses forward to that interplanetary leap which will, perhaps, place her forever beyond the reach of death."

Of course, Christian apologist, CS. Lewis took a very dim view of that sort of materialist philosophy. Question would be, if that was all there was to life and man, would it be worth saving our abstract arses?

 

[Mattattattatt]

The part of me that would like to have seen the Big Bang (or whatever) would kinda see some, ummm, priviledge(?) in witnessing the wiping out of mankind. However, I would rather see it on TV than be there...

Whether you like that kinda thing or not, it's an "event"... worked for the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe...

 

[rynner2]

Ooh, Lovely! Rynner, you sound just like the bad scientist, Weston, in CS. Lewis's, `Out of the Silent Planet. According to Brian Aldiss, Lewis based him on a mixture of HG. Wells and Olaf Stapeldon.

Ah, so that's where I got it from! I read Lewis's SF trilogy many times as a teenager, as well as Olaf Stapledon's books.

The Christian bit hasn't survived many decades of life experience however (I was a Christian as a teenager), but the 'bad scientist' has! [Strokes goatee beard thoughtfully, eyeing naked female experimental subject strapped to workbench...]

 

[Anonymous]

Unstoppable laser meets immovable asteroid

Unstoppable laser meets immovable asteroid
Fri Jul 26, 2:24 PM ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian scientist says that a massive asteroid said to be heading for Earth could be destroyed with the help of a powerful laser.
He was speaking on Friday after space experts warned this week that an asteroid, spotted from several different countries, could hit Earth in 2019, destroying life as we know it.

Boris Kartogin, general director and designer at rocket producer Energomash, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying the asteroid could be thwarted, using a powerful laser installation based in space.

"Defences for the Earth can be designed," Kartogin told a news conference.

Lasers in space were hugely controversial during U.S. President Ronald Reagan ( news - web sites)'s term in office in the 1980s. His scheme to shoot down Soviet nuclear missiles was dubbed "Star Wars" after the cult science fiction film series.

The two km (1.2 miles) wide asteroid was first detected earlier this month by the United States Linear sky survey programme.

But NASA ( news - web sites) scientists are downplaying the danger of a collision saying the odds are very minimal.

Kartogin said the laser defence scheme would require the assembly of 10 to 12 platforms in Earth's orbit, which would then be equipped with powerful, chemical lasers capable of destroying the approaching asteroid.

He added that "a laser of such power does not yet exist, but the international community is already seriously talking about the need to create one".

Energomash is carrying out work on laser technology.

Scientists from several countries, including Russia, are already studying ways to defend the planet from an asteroid collision.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...0726/od_uk_nm/oukoe_science_russia_asteroid_1
Hope this could do it.
sakina

 

[NilesCalder]

A giant laser would not probably derstroy an asteroid but could ablate (sp?) it's surface and produce a little thrust which, if concentrated properly could move it away from us on this pass if it turns out to be on a collission cpurse with the Earth.

Of course next pass we could find we've moved it into a direct impact tragectory...

Niles

 

[SoundDust]

Of course next pass we could find we've moved it into a direct impact tragectory...

Hopefully by then we'll be colonizing space though

 

[rynner2]

Perhaps lasers could be used in a less dramatic fashion. It is only necessary to defect the asteroid into a safe orbit, not destroy it entirely. If sufficient laser energy can be focused on it, the reaction from the ablated particles would act as a rocket motor, very slowly altering the orbit.

To a certain extent the success of this would depend on how fast the object is rotating, and at what angle, but it seems likely that enough orbital change could be achieved well before the asteroid is destroyed.

 

[Mattattattatt]

All we need is a very long stick, another big rock and john virgo...

 

[Beakmoo]

.....or perhaps we could lay out mattresses, or catch it in a very large blanket? Best get knitting now.

 

[rynner2]

Forget about asteroids - Invisible Comets might get us first!

But in Australia, Dr Robert Foot, of the University of Melbourne, has just published a book, Shadowlands: quest for mirror matter in the Universe, which suggests we may never see our doom approaching.

Foot theorises that invisible comets made of a substance called mirror matter are spinning through space and may already have collided cataclysmically with Earth.

More, there may be entire solar systems with their own suns, planets and forms of life that are invisible to humans or their instruments, apart from a possible explanation for the equally mysterious "dark matter" scientists suggest may be the cosmic framework of the universe.

"It certainly seems fantastic," Foot said yesterday. "But so did antimatter. Before antimatter was discovered experimentally it was [also] a theoretical idea."

 

[Anonymous]

Does anyone else ever wonder what we might be preventing by fending off an asteroid?. If the big one that wiped out the dinosaurs hadn't hit then the mammals wouldn't have had their big break and we might all still be "small tree-shrew-like animals" dodging dinosaur feet. Maybe evolution is supposed to get a kick in the pants every so often And, of course, some people believe that life itself hitched a ride here in the first place. Don't misunderstand- I'm not for one moment suggesting that we should let it hit if we could do anything at all to stop it- (my species, right or wrong) but when you consider how much damage we've done to the planet in the short time we've been around…Look at the efforts they went to to prevent "disastrous" forest fires, for instance, until they realised that they actually play an important part in the ecology. Would "saving" the planet be just the ultimate example? Who knows what wonders are waiting in the wings? Maybe it's the cockroaches' turn. Maybe they's get it right.

 

[Anonymous]

Maybe it's the cockroaches' turn. Maybe they's get it right.

We already live in the Empire of the Cockroaches. They developed mammalian life on this planet and, eventually, humans to provide them with just the right kind of hot, steamy homes and kitchens and greasy, sugary delicacies upon which they thrive. Why do you think we humans love and eat food which is so bad for us, it's killing us?

We're not in control, it's THEM! Aaaaargh!!!

 

[rynner2]

Silverpit Crater

A bit OT, but it didn't seem worth starting a new thread:

New impact crater discovered in North Sea 60 million years old

I have a personal interest in this one, since I was sailing in this area 20 years ago and passed a surveying vessel of some sort (at night) - I wonder if it collected some of the data that led to this result?

 

[FraterLibre]

From What i Hear

It's remarkably unlikely we'll even spot the big one, let alone be able to deflect or destroy it. As it stands we watch only about 10% of the sky at any given time, and that randomly and as funding permits.

As for deflection, well, we just don't have the equipment. And destroying something that big, moving that fast, is damned difficult, too. If we break it up we just create multiple strikes.