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Mike Casey
Postmaster
Reged: 11/11/04
Posts: 5764
Loc: Pasadena CA
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The odds that a potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10. So why isn’t NASA trying harder to prevent catastrophe?
Target Earth
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If anyone wants to get a real close-up look at a supernova remnant that is visible during the daytime, just look in a mirror. ~ Robert Cook
Mike (tVA)
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astrotrf
sage
Reged: 09/30/07
Posts: 215
Loc: Rodeo, NM
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Such an effort requires money. NASA gets its money from the federal government, which also dictates, in the large, how that money is to be spent. What is asked is not something that NASA can just arbitrarily decide to blast full speed ahead and do.
Your representatives in Congress are the ones you have to convince.
After reading the referenced article, I recalled watching a show some time ago about someone who was tracking old legends and geologic evidence of a tsunami. He concluded that there may have been a large impact somewhere in the Indian Ocean around 5,000 B. C. I wish I'd paid more attention to that show ...
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Terry (astrotrf)
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Mike Casey
Postmaster
Reged: 11/11/04
Posts: 5764
Loc: Pasadena CA
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It would not take a very large impactor to cause immense damage if it were to strike in an urban environment. Take the object that created the Barringer Meteorite Crater some 50,000 years ago for instance. It was only 150 feet across, weighed roughly 300,000 tons, and was traveling at a speed of 40,000 miles per hour. The force generated by its impact was equal to the explosion of 20 million tons of TNT. Now imagine that event happening in New York, Los Angeles, London, or any other large city. I am very much afraid the general public will simply not believe it could happen until something like it indeed does happen. Then, for the hundreds of thousands or millions of people killed, it will be too late to “do something about it” beforehand. I can just imagine the scorn that would be heaped on NASA and other space agencies in event this were to happen. A very well earned scorn at that.
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If anyone wants to get a real close-up look at a supernova remnant that is visible during the daytime, just look in a mirror. ~ Robert Cook
Mike (tVA)
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LivingNDixie
Lord of Ferrets
Reged: 04/23/03
Posts: 15620
Loc: Hoover, AL
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There is not much we can do about a comet... but many of the asteriods that can be detected with the instruments we have are known.
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Preston
Celestron 11" Nexstar GPS XLT
Lunt LS60T/Ha 60mm f/8.33 (on order)
It’s not finishing something when your tank is empty that makes you a stronger person. It’s brushing yourself off and refacing the foe that defeated you with the same determination and willingness to fight that you had when you began your journey.
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lowmal
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 10/27/04
Posts: 980
Loc: Toms River, NJ
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Yawn..
"What she has found is spine-chilling: evidence that several enormous asteroids or comets have slammed into our planet quite recently, in geologic terms."
How astute.. A cursory glance at the moon or Mars could give a similar synopsis..
"Only in the past few decades have astronomers begun to search the nearby skies for objects such as asteroids and comets (for convenience, let’s call them “space rocks”)."
It's only been the past few decades that man has had the technology to do so.. You can mainly thank NASA for that..
Sounds like fear-mongering to me.. While the prospect is real, it is remote..
Solution offered?
Nahh...
There's some pretty glaring political bias in that article and mag as well..
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lyrae
journeyman
Reged: 07/24/08
Posts: 5
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I agree with livingNDixie there is nothing much we can do about it. We cannot stop any disasters cause by the nature. And everything seems to get worse because of politics(chaos is growing).Our minds are confused and bothered by the things that are happening in our universe.
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just somebody who's been very hungry of astronomical information and so thirsty of the so-called "truth".
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Kobayashi
super member
Reged: 07/10/08
Posts: 128
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The statement "the odds...may be as high as one in 10" makes no sense. The odds are what you calculate given the information you currently know, not an absolute number you guess at. You don't say things like "the chances of rain tomorrow may be as high as 80%."
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-- Ken Kobayashi
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gordianknot
sage
Reged: 09/04/05
Posts: 398
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Quote:
The statement "the odds...may be as high as one in 10" makes no sense
You could say "some models show that there may be a one in ten chance, while others show lower probabilities." That is, there is disagreement over the right methodology to use in determining the probabilities in the first place.
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llanitedave
Humble Megalomaniac
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 9580
Loc: Amargosa Valley, NV, USA
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A commentary in the June 26 issue of Nature compares the perceived or intrinsic risk of impact prior to the 10-year Spaceguard monitoring program with the residual risk remaining after the discovery and cataloging of hundreds of potential impactors. The estimated risk of fatalities from bolides of all sizes is now at about 1 in 720,000 -- far less than that of dying in an airplane accident, earthquake, or fireworks explosion (but still greater than being killed by a shark).
Most of the near-earth asteroids larger than 1km in size have already been discovered and tracked, as have all those greater than 10km -- and none of these are on a course to hit us anytime soon. Our remaining risk is almost exclusively from the smaller objects, which never carried much intrinsic risk to begin with.
This is a case of "the more you know, the less you have to worry about", and we know a lot more than we did 10 years ago.
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Homebuilt 10" dob, old Coulter mirror.
16" Royce conical mirror: Construction on S.O.E. (Sauron's Other Eye) has officially begun!
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