Slashdot Mirror
Nine Hundred Asteroids in Near-Earth Orbits
SEWilco writes: "This Discovery.com item points out a new estimate of 900 asteroids in orbits closer than Mars. Cornell University's William Bottke did a new study of The Spacewatch Project's small-object search. This estimate says that we've found 40% of the nearby asteroids. Well, I'm glad that we've started looking before a disaster, unlike 'Rendezvous With Rama'." Or "Lucifer's Hammer."
Wouldn't we expect that the greater mass of the large planets, and consequently greater gravity, would compress all their matter into denser (solid) forms?
Whilst it's still an open question thanks to the huge pressures inside Jupiter, it is theorised that Jupiter does have a solid core surrounded by a layer of liquid metallic hydrogen - see this page for some more information. Since Jupiter is so large the gravity at its outer edges isn't enough to overcome centripetal forces and cause the entire planet to collapse to a solid core.
And a related question: our solar system has solid and gaseous planets; is there any fundamental eason that there couldn't be liquid planets, or is that just how it happens to fall in this particular uncharted backwater of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm?
Well, there aren't that many liquid elements at the temperatures present in the Solar System - the material that formed it would have been mainly simple elements that were either gaseous or solid at those kinds of temperatures. IIRC some of the outer moons have liquid ammonia and methane on their surfaces, but in terms of overal quantity these substances remain rare.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
We'd probably be like that if the collision which split the Moon off the Earth hadn't also blasted away a lot of the gases I thought that this theory of the moons origin had pretty much been discredited?
King Arthur? Are you mad?
--Emmett
Mankind has used up the necessary resources to divert an asteroid collision. Those used resources in question were traced back to pyrotecnic displays used in popular motion picture features about asteroids colliding with earth.
But we do know (approx.) how many we have not found! To find out how many fish are in a pond, one starts fishing. As one extracts fish the rate at which one catches fish will drop. One then interpolates the zero-crossing, and the integral is the total number of fish that were there to start with.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Why can't they show a more realistic alien?????
Planetfall is much more appealing tactically, then a nuclear weapon is. If you nuke a city, you make the area radioactive. In addition, those who survive face lukemia and other various defects. If you drop a small asteroid on the capital, you kill the people in the area, but damage is constrained to the center of attack. Thus, your troops can be waiting relatively close by for the final tactical strike to seize the ground. As too the morality of human kind, we need not look further than Mr. Truman. To prevent the deaths of American soldiers, he killed Japanese civilians. I do not doubt that this weapon will be used. I know it.
Pax Digitalia
I don't think you realize how difficult it is to deflect or destroy a large asteroid. You pretty much have to get to work about ten years before impact. The real solution to protecting human civilization from being wiped out by an impact is to get off of this tiny rock and become a presence in the rest of the solar system. How can we be safe when we haven't even explored 1% of our local environment? As for the scientific accuracy of armageddon, I can only assume that you're being sarcastic.
[javac] 100 errors
You forget that there are many different sized asteroids. Provided enough velocity and shielding, even a rock the size of my head could devastate the world. Of course my head would have to be travelling close to the speed of light, but... Anyways, a small or medium sized asteroid could be harnessed as a weapon. We are not talking about droping Ceres into Earth orbit, merely a smaller asteroid.
But if the effort of snagging an asteroid from the Belt, then I suppose you could construct an artificial one with some moon dust and the water on Mars. Yeah. Sure.
Pax Digitalia
Actually, NASA has been tracking space debree for a long time.
At one time, they even delayed a launch around 3 months to stay clear of some objects out there in space. They weren't really going to come very close, but then I can understand how they didn't want to take the risk with that kind of hardware.
Bjarke Roune
An exceedingly indirect way to find out if a planet has hosted intelligent technological life at some stage - see if there is an statistically too-low number of asteroids in dangerously close orbits.
Hopefully we'll make that grade soon.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neo_map.html
;-)
Delivering a dose of harsh reality to the world for the last 2 years
The important thing about the asteroid threat is that it's one of the few dangers to the human races that
(a) Can Kill us All
(b) We Understand
(c) We have a remote chance of avoiding using modern technology
But Fundamental to this all is the fact that we need to get as much wartning as possible - that's why we should be spending more money on telescopes and serach programs.
In fact - we're so underfunded that I've been seduced away from my job of 'saving the world' to go and work at myplay.com.....
So you know which Music serivce provider to blame when armageddon comes calling.
Using the latest equipment stationed in orbit around the world, scientists barraged humanity with radio and X-Rays mapping out large infestations of so called "dead" spots. Using Open GL 3D CAD programs, they then mapped out and ruled out areas that were electromagnetically shielded naturally. The results were then run through a beowulf cluster, and parsed against hospital records for incumbent lead poisoning.
(Note: Only those idiots who are dense (aka lead headed) fall under this census. Airheads require space density measurement equipment, scheduled to come online in two years.)
The results of these tests were astounding, to say the least. Of the Billion or so idiots who were cataloged, a random selection was made to track these idiots through interferometry. (Judging by the interference they caused with others, and their discussions) These results were then sided against web hits, and so called "Pirst Fost" or first post messages.
Looking at the data, Cowboy Neil was actually dumbfounded to see that, in a 3 dimensional internet, around 900 of these Idiots could be found orbiting slashdot.org at an extremely high rate of speed. Impact collisions, and therefore the spread of such idiocy was extremely high, due to morons missing the "pull up" signal from more intelligent data packets.
krystal_blade.
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
They do track nearly _every_ piece of space debris in orbit... how do you think they keep space shuttles intact?
I've always wondered what they would do in a situation like that. would they have seperate waves of bombs to go in? One set to break it up real good and another spread apart to get the peices that break off? Though I'm sure if we had enough time, say two years or more we could come up with a plan. Our country busted its ass to get on the moon before Kennedy's deadline, I'm sure the end of the world would make people work even harder :D
I refered to the last major climatic catastrophe which good research implicates a similar but larger Krakatoa event in the ninth century. Dendrochronolists have narrowed this down to between 832 and 836 based on tree ring sizes. This has also been backed up by higher than average levels of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere as detected using ice cores drilled by from both the Artic and Antartic surveys. Krakatoa is implcated by geological survey showing a darker band in the strata of the area. Estimated to have been layed down between 1000 and 2000 years ago.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
Why worry? It's not like there are any dinosaurs around anyway...
And a related question: our solar system has solid and gaseous planets; is there any fundamental eason that there couldn't be liquid planets, or is that just how it happens to fall in this particular uncharted backwater of the unfashionable end of the western spiralx?
Well, there aren't that many karma elements at the temperatures present in the Slashcode System - the material that formed it would have been mainly simple slasjbots that were either gaseous or solid at those kinds of temperatures. IIRC some of the karma whores have liquid ammonia and methane on their surfaces, but in terms of overal quality these substances remain rare.
BTW, if any one is tempted to pick up the book, do so. It's excellent. Do yourself a favor, though, and pretend that the rest of the series doesn't exist. They were tacked on long after the fact and are LAME.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Nope, the entire thing was tongue in cheek. I know perfectly well that if a big humanity killing asteroid was coming our direction and we only had a couple days till it got here and wiped us all out, we'd best max out the credit cards, do everything we'd never do if we'd have to suffer the consequences of society/the law, 'cuz that's all she wrote on humanity.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
No, that's Fountains of Paradise. (That's the one that's about the orbital tether.)
But seriously, Clarke did do an asteroid impact novel, Hammer of God, which wasn't nearly as good as Niven & Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, which in turn wasn't as good as Footfall, which included rocks as weapons, but not done as well as in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
tc>
tc>
Most Americans don't understand science, and they wouldn't like it if they did.
Da Pimp be trackin' YO asteroid, honey!
You wanna be a karma whore?
Fine, but don't forget...
The article suggests that it is difficult to track the asteriods and see if there is a chance they could hit Earth. Isn't this something that could be done SETI@home style ? I'd much rather be looking for asteriods that could kill millions of people than looking for aliens.
It's been a while since I read it, but I'm pretty sure that when humans first see the Mote, they comment on all the impact craters. I think the midshipmen learn more in the museum, but I'm not sure.
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
Wow, I've read both of those books...I'm amazed that anyone else has. ;-P
I'm curious though, why should we believe that scientists/astronomers can track _every_ asteroid in a near-earth orbit, when they can't even track _every_ piece of space debris in orbit around earth now?
---
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
Better call Bruce Willis!
It had some Iowa-sized asteroid hitting the earth at a 90-degree angle, like God was taking a dump on the planet or something.
With repsect to accuracy problems: You can make assumptions on the measurements and associate some statistical uncertainty and then run several million simulations. This would then necessitate some high level computational power. A study could then be done to determine which bodies need higher accuracy.
:)
Solving that N-body problem once is probably not to intensive as you mention. Throw in some statistical deviations on velocity, mass, etc. and then you would need to run that simulation over and over and over and over.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
BTW, somebody want to buy a 2 KVA generator? Only 6 months old, hardly used. Comes with 200 gallons of petrol. Can optionally throw in a solar panel and radiation proof undies...
A)bort, R)etry or S)elf-destruct?
Just remember...big rocks kill big tanks! (Think of Heinlein.)
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Who said we need to shoot it down? Or even break it up? Trying to destroy it would just cause more problems than it solves.
Of course, everything I'm proposing may well be impossible. 'Nuff said.What's wrong with launching a missile which is designed to rendezvous with the rock and just push it out of the way? It wouldn't take much of a nudge if you caught it far enough away from Lunar orbit, a few tenths of a degree would do the job easily. Even inside Lunar orbit, a matter of a degree or two could get it to 'skip' off the atmosphere.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Of course conversely, altering the path and being a little off does have some nasty side effects. (Eliminating civilization instead of preserving it)
Jon, Thanks for the NASA link. Please read my response to another slashdotter who made a similar point to you.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
More importantly, the asteroids would be more VALUABLE to reach than the moon. Actually the moon is relatively easy to reach, there just isn't much there to make it worth visiting.
The real trick, as outlined in The Case for Mars, is to establish a Mars waypoint. That opens up the entire asteroid belt for mining. Due to unpleasant technical details (see the book, IANAE [engineer]), it's apparently much, much easier and cheaper to mine asteroids from a Mars base than directly from Earth. Apparently even considering the vast mineral resources of the asteroids, once you get it all back to Earth, if you don't have a Mars waypoint you'll have spent more than you could profit.
None of which is particularly relevant to the main topic, of course...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Pick some sample regions. You know how many asteroids you know of in those regions. So do a careful search of that section and see what portion of the ones that you turn up are new.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
If an asteriod big enough to level NYC were to hit Earth, the first we would probably hear of it would be when it hit.
This is almost a certainty if it came from the day-side. (A few years ago a pair of mountains did this and were spotted heading *away* from us - they had actually come closer than the moon.)
And even if we did, how quickly could we put together a mission to divert an asteroid? Even if we did, would it work?
If you try to nudge an asteroid with a nuclear bomb and instead shatter it, what would have possibly wiped out a city could cause significant damage across an entire hemisphere instead.
And don't count on insurance. This would be classified as an "act of God" and insurance companies will not be liable unless you purchased special insurance for it.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
For rocks as weapons, see also Niven & Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye...
There's a moment in the final conference when they notice that every large and small feature on the alien homeworld is either circular or a fragment of a cricle....Neither the Tungusta blast (probably a cometary fragment) nor Arizona's Meteor Crater impact were extinction level events, but both devastated the surrounding regions for hundreds of square miles. Satellite imagery has turned up hundreds of craters on the Earth that we never knew were there, which indicates that these types of impacts are much more common than previously thought. A Meteor Crater level event on any of the major landmasses today would probably kill several thousand people if it fell in a rural area, or several million if it fell in an urban center...not quite a threat to the existence of humanity but a major disaster in anybodys book.
I think a healthey sense of urgency is entirely justifiable.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Nemesis by Bill Napier is a novel on this subject... and it's pretty damn good (Even mentions linux). Bill Napier was talking about killer asteroids a long time before anyone else - you should read his books.
Hehe, yeah, not that it was _really_ funny, but it sure as hell wasn't redundant. I wrote a program that outputted all 900 verses just to make a point, but the post was to long for /. to allow it. =)
Now my Fallout playing skills will be able to put to use.
"Sure", he said. "They fought at least one war with asteroids. Just look at the surface of Mote Prime, all torn by overlapping circular craters. It must have damned near wiped out the planet. It scared the survivors so much they moved all the asteroids out to where they couldn't be used that way again--"
Of course what you'd really like to do is move the big rocks in, closer to the primary, where you'd have to add energy, and away from obvious gravity assist targets.
I suppose you could dump them all into the primary, but I'd hate to give up all those resources....
tc>
tc>
Most Americans don't understand science, and they wouldn't like it if they did.
it would be interesting if we could put an incoming asteroid in orbit around earth instead of blasting it onto a different course.
Probably damn near impossible, but interesting.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Did the person who moderated this up even *look* at where the links point to? This is a -1 at best.
Idiots.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Wouldn't it be a good idea then to ship some water into orbit now, just in case. I suspect it is a good idea, but governments don't like spending money on things that aren't certain to happen. But then certaintanty has some form of timescale which may be longer than a term of office!
IMO that targetting these would be quite difficult. I think that nukes down here use GPS for targetting, this means that the GPS satellites are point the wrong way, so the nukes would need some NASA software upgrades or something.
No point worrying though, shit happens and it always will.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
They're just hiding.
--
Peter
No need to blow the thing up... if you have resolved all the trajectories of earth orbit crossing asteroids, you will know many years in advance if and when it will hit the earth. All you have to do then is speed it up or slow it down a tiny fraction of a %. Over the course of billions of miles left to travel, this adds up to a huge change in the trajectory, at a potentially very low cost...
If the object is small enough, simmply crashing a satelite into it could be enoug.. otherwise landing a probe on it's surface, with a small rocket engine to give it a gentle push could do the trick. Attaching a solar sail onto it was a similar, even cheaper solution proposed somewhere, but I don't remember where I read it.
Ofcourse in the case of a real dinosaur killer, a comet, we are screwed, because by the time you see it, it's going to hit in only a few months. (or a few million years if you can measure it's trajectory accurately enough to know it's not going to hit for another few of it's orbits)
If you are going to go through all that trouble, wouldn't it just be much easier to nuke the city of your choice? It would take years and billions of dollars to send the asteriode to the city. Chances are that once the thing reaches the city the country will no longer be pissed off; or the country in question will figure out a way to stop the asteroid.
It would be MUCH easier just to strap a nuke on the back of some mad man and smuggle him into the country.
You can't rule out the fact that the rulers of the saddestic country are human. I hope morality would oppose them causing distruction on such a scale (I believe this is what kept the cold war cold.) If the morality of the leader isn't enough, I doubt any group of citizenship (not even Iraq) would stand for mass distruction on such a scale. When you talk about killing millions of people the pety arguements of a couple of countries just doesn't seem important anymore.
Well, I'm glad that we've started looking before a disaster, unlike 'Rendezvous With Rama'." Or Lucifer's Hammer.
The people of Earth were actually pretty lucky in those books. Humanity survived in both -- pretty well in Rama, not as well in Hammer. But they survived. It wouldn't take too big an asteroid to kill us all, so don't go kidding yourself that those books describe worst-case scenarios. They don't.
--Jim
The probability that any of these is going to hit a few months after we find it is vanishingly small.
We're all here because the chance of anything large hitting us is so remote that no extinction class impact events have happened in MANY millions of years. We can take our time about finding these, maybe a few centuries before we should really consider ourselves tardy.
As for the prospects of deflecting an orbiting body, it's much more likely that we'll have decades of forewarning rather than months for a regular Earth crossing orbit. That should give us more time to plan and more opportunity to act early. We might not have much warning for a cometary impact but unless it's an old one it should be easy to spot and maybe easier to deflect through heating.
As for other deflection schemes, there seem to be several viable alternatives. The solar sail option sounds promising and NASA is about to test the technology. Using anything up there you can find as drive mass for the nuke also seems like something you would consider. With all those earth crossing bodies it might be possible in a few decates to rendevous with one at closest approach to the threat and mine some mass for use as projectile matter for your nuke. It isn't so far fetched when you consider that NEAR is in orbit around such an asteroid.
Given the likely forewarning (not the Hollywood timescale) a NEAR like scouting missions to the threat and other objects followed by a flotilla of missions intended to deflect the threat seems like the most likely scenario.
I doubt we'll ever see this type of mission for thousands or even millions of years. We should probably be more worried about smaller more frequent climate threatening objects, and we should be able to do more about those although they are harder to spot. I guess they're not as sexy as big Earth busters but they're still extremely threatening and vastly more likely to happen. These might be frequent enough to merit a sense of urgency in searching for them.
Maybe, looking at Mt St Helens and all that. Problem is, the guys looking at "near Earth" asteroids haven't found them all and so they can't give a reasonably accurate prediction. Well, yes and no. You don't need to look at the rocks in the sky, there's no reason to believe they're suddenly all more (gravitationally) attracted to Earth than they have been in the past. From the geological/fossil/etc record, we can see that truly catastrophic collisions seem to occur on the order of once every few 10s or 100s of millions of years. Now, a much smaller rock would still wipe out a city and make life rather unpleasant for the rest of us for a few years, and they are somewhat more common. But on the timescale of recorded history, significant impacts seem fairly rare.
except when was the last asteroid that killed a billion people? :) it hasn't, and until it did, we should be more afraid of those things that fly in the sky, rather than fall from them. wait, i guess they both fall when you die. ugh, nevermind.
1st it would be very difficult to accurately predict an asteroid outside of Earth's orbit.
2nd it would have to be a very large missile to reach said rock
3rd it would take a lot of fuel to move said rock even the 1/10th of a degree you are talking about
We are talking about a asteroid that is HUGE by most of our terrestrial references. We are talking the size of a good size building. It takes a lot of energy to overcome its momentum. Imaging trying to deflect a 6 story office building dropping on you, even if by a tenth of a degree or so.
With the uncertainities in the universe we would have to be VERY careful. Even assuming you have the fuel and means to push it, how would you be certain you deflected it the right direction?
OTOH,imagine a Beowulf Custer of those babies! if we can get them all moving in sync, we'd have a shield for our planet, courtesy of 900 hunks of ice/rock!
"Space Junk" is the discarded bits of boosters, chunks of satellites such as solar panels that are in a (relatively) close orbit around the Earth, whereas what this article says is that they are looking for asteroids, et al, that are NOT in an orbit around the Earth or are on eccentric orbits.
Don't take life too seriously. It is only a temporary situation. Usual disclaimers apply.
Well, the current status of the theory is that it still seems the best one. You might be thinking of the early 1997 research which is mentioned near the bottom.
Rendezvous with Rama is a classic of science fiction, but has pretty much exactly nothing to do with asteroids hitting the earth. Let me point y'all to a synopsis.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
This was Carl Segan's fear. The danger as he saw it was the ability to destroy the Earth using this technology. Something which even man cannot currently manage.
I think you underestimate the danger these rocks represent. You wouldn't deflect these things onto a city or country, they are continent busters, Earth crushers. These are the kind of objects you cannot get safe from. If one hit the USA there would be no living creatures left on the continent and probably no humans alive anywhere a short time later.
You are also right that smaller rocks represent a danger too, the big question is will it be easier to deflect such a rock at Earth than to use other unconventional weapons. How easy will it be in future to go up there paint a rock black and nudge it at the Earth, perhaps to hit a city of your choice in a few years time.
You are correct about the evidence supporting this theory, however the appropriate conclusion to draw from this is that we should be far more worried about volcanic eruptions than earth crossing asteroids. They seem much more likely. I'd wager that Krakatoa will grow and errupt again long before an equivalent impact event... if I thought I'd be around to collect.
Actually, that is not completely accurate. Unless the Earth was *completely* obliterated, there will continue to be at least some form of life. There are bacteria that are capable of surviving in sulfurous pools, etc, etc. Who knows, the Earth might eventually be repopulated by creatures that evolved from them.
From what I've read this is because those planets were to far from the sun, and its gravity, so most of the gas from which our solar system was formed got pulled towards the outer planets. The direct result is a relatively small 'solid' planet with an huge amount of gas surrounding it.
As for the liquid planets; there were such planets; take the earth in the beginning. One giant ball of lava which finally cooled down on the surface.
Just because it's not likely to happen at any given moment doesn't mean you shouldn't do something to prepare. It's like saying that there's no sense in having death and dismemberment insurance because it's so unlikely you'll ever be unexpectedly killed or severely injured. Yeah, maybe the chance is only 1 in 100 million, but that's no excuse for not being prepared when the roulette wheel lands on your number.
Since now is the first time in our history when this kind of disaster is concievably preventable given some preparation, would should begin preparing.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Actually, if you're a member of "the world was always the way I see it now and should always remain the waiy it is now" movement, we should move a bunch of asteroids up around geosynchronous orbit. We'll have to move them to eclipsing positions to shade the Earth when The Authorities decide we're getting "too warm", crash one to make clouds when we're "way too warm", and put mirrors on them to give us more sun when we're "too cool". After all, The Authorities and their experts are always right. And how well is your toilet flushing?
They're right here in the open. Just they've evolved slightly; in their modern form, they look not like a traditional dinosaur but like an IBM mainframe.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
What is up with it?
All of the paranoid, but well-written arguments, "oh we going to die any second from an asteroid and there is nothing we can do about it." posts have all been modded up to like 5. Whereas a rational well-written argument like this one above is left at one.
Now I understand, when moderating that one is inclined to simply mod up posts that one agrees with but no one moderating is not a paranoid nerd?
I for one think that the large amount of time between events is substantial enough to warrent non-paranoia over being killed by asteroids. However my paranoia that this is some American political consipiracy to drum up more support for a space based missle defense system.. is seeming less paranoid.
A substance is only liquid (or solid or gaseous or any of the other states of matter) in a very narrow area on the temperature/pressure curve.
For example, if you take a planet made of water with an avarage surface temperature of 50 degrees celcius, the surface would still boil and evaporate near the equator, and be frozen solid near the poles, while at a certain depth below the surface, the pressure would make it solid etc.
It is not surprising that the gas giants are mostly made of lighter elements and molecules, as they are far more abundant in our solar system than heavier materials.
A small gas ball would probably not have enought gravity to become a 'planet', and just exist in the form of a sparse gas cloud, eventually captured by larger concentrations of mass.
That is stretching it a bit. Especialy seeing as how there is no strong evidence for 'King Arthur' being a historical figure, rather the legends seem to be a conglomerate of different petty- kings ranging from the retreat of the legions (ca. 420AD) to the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty (Egbert in 802AD). If he was a historical figure he probably lived in the 6th century (Battle of Badon Hill was around 500AD).
A better example of disruptions to society due to volcanic activity is the explosion of Therea in the eastern mediteranean circa 1200BC. This event destroyed the Cretan civilisation, brought an Egyptian dynasty down, and led to mass migrations all over the mediteranean area (including, probably, the Etruscans). The ensuing chaos allowed invaders from the steppes (Dorians, Persians, and Celts amongst others) and deserts (various semitic peoples including Hebrews and Arabs) to establish the civilisations that spawned our own.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
The small metallic planets simply weren't able to hang on to most gases -- look at Venus and how hot it gets and imagine how much gas is boiling off its upper layers. There are calculations someplace of the actual numbers. We'd probably be like that if the collision which split the Moon off the Earth hadn't also blasted away a lot of the gases.
If you forget how much more gas is around, remember the Sun. The vast majority of the Solar System's mass is in there.
Unfortunately, objects placed in orbit tend to not stay in orbit for long periods of time. Expect this thing to stay up for maybe 10-15 years before its orbit decays and it burns up in the atmosphere. It seems more plausible to find existing weights already in space, like maybe a small asteroid.
--
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Not that history is any comfort if something happens to land on your house now.
Did you consider a mass driver? Take chunks of the asteroid itself and throw them off into space. The asteroid becomes its own reaction mass.
Could we at least let one of the smaller ones through in the hopes that it will hit Jim Carrey?
That's why in "The Mote in God's Eye" the asteroids had all been moved to nice stable orbits. Rather than continually track them, put them in corrals.
Just curious: have any estimates been made on the frequency with which the smaller, climate-affecting asteroids impact the Earth? What kinds of time scales are we talking about? 10k years? 100k years?
In almost every 'Space craft crew only has 5 minutes of oxygen left' movie I've ever watched they're all utterly paranoid about the angle of descent into Earth's atmosphere. Getting the angle wrong, even by just a degree or two, would mean either bouncing off the upper stratosphere if the angle is too shallow (Bit like skimming a flat pebble over a calm lake), or burning up rather quickly if the angle is too steep.. Our good old atmosphere is actually pretty decent protection against these things.
Chris
http://twitter.com/onion2k
At least according to this article on spaceref.com which states that the eartch approaching asteroid 2000 BF19 has a small probability of impacting Earth. And this press release would seem to counteract the claims made here, since NASA states they have cut their estimate of the total number of large asteriods in the Solar System in half.
Perhaps trusting statistical analysis is the problem? Whats the saying "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics"?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Sky and Telecope Magazine has a neat asteroid and comet information page here. And to make things more interesting, there is an excellent online impact calulator here, complete with comments by "Marvin the Martian" if the interplanetary object you dial in is sufficiently large.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
No, no, no! This is a good thing. Then it will be possible to just nudge these asteroids out of their path, so they will wander harmlessly by. This will probably be a lot more reliable than just blasting them to bits. The pieces can still hit Earth.
A)bort, R)etry or S)elf-destruct?
Seem's we're back to books again. This is what Footfall by Niven and Pournell is all about. OK, so the protaganists are a bunch of elephant shaped aliens but the priciple is the same. Also a pretty good read.
Actually, if we knew the orbits of all the asteroids in the neighborhood then we could select a small one which only needs a small deflection to use for nudging a larger one. Billiards, anyone?
Reread the start of the book. An impact on Earth is featured, and that is not Rama.
As far as I know, should we be hit by something a few KM across, the devastation would be immense. Even after the initial impact had settled, there are likely to be worldwide temperature falls of a couple of degrees.
Well, if the global warming theorists are correct, a small asteroid or comet collision may be just what we need to bring rising temperatures back into line. So instead of figuring out how to repel these cosmic invaders, we need to figure out a way to attract them. Just plop one onto some sparsely populated area every few years, and we're all set.
To the person who asked how we could track asteroids if we couldn't even track space junk, the answer is simple: space junk is a lot smaller than asteroids. Like space junk is old one inch bolts and screws while asteroids are hundreds of meters across.
And besides, we're close to tracking most of the space junk with radar anyway.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Shouldnt we have giant orbital space stations and thousands of Laser Guns on starships zipping around the planet to get rid of all these things by now? It's the year 2000! We should be mining them, not worrying about them!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I believe the problem with long-range asteroid prediction is not computational power. The N-body problem with only a few dozen good-sized gravity wells in the system is easily simulated with a desktop machine. The problem is the accuracy of our measurements. The magnitude of the error term dominates the significant result pretty quickly as you extrapolate measurements centuries into the future.
What are we to make of the lack of public response to the problem of protecting against meteor collisions? With--what?--3 movies two summers ago about major collisions (okay, one was about a comet, which I don't think anyone would survive), still no one has much of a reaction. I don't know whether to revive my faith in humanity, since those execrable had so little effect on the national consciousness, or to leave it dead, because we never wake up and try to save ourselves until it's too late.
See, we should have kept those iridium satellites up as shielding...
Asteroids, specifically ones with metals, water, or volatiles are a prime target for mining. Any serious exploration of the solar system, or attempts at constructing habitation in space will require manufacturing capability in space, which will require loads of raw materials. Near Earth asteroids, such as the ones in the Apollo, Amor, and Aten belts may be easier to reach than the moon.
After all, the film was highly regarded for its scientific accuracy and convincing portrayal of how the US would deal with such a situation.
Does anyone know of any reallistic strategies for dealing with one of these babies should it decide its time for a visit to Earth?
As long as you have enough forewarning, you should be able to get a probe to it and nudge the orbit enough to keep it from hitting the earth.
You could explode a nuke near it, or set up a nuclear or solar powered small mass driver on it and have the mass driver change it's orbit.
Perhaps you could even hit it was a high powered laser, not with the intent of melting it, but with the intent of generating gases that nudge the asteroid away.
You don't need to move it much, if you have enough leeway.
On the other hand, if you only have a few days, hijack a nuclear sub and fill it with woman of superior genetics, wait 200 m under the sea and then repopulate the Earth. Mein Furher, I can valk!
George
I thought it was funny, but I guess if you count all the other posts that mentioned this song parody, all none of them.
I think a moderator needs a dictionary for Christmas, to explain what redundant means.
George
Krakatoa is a caldera, about every 1000 years is its term. Yellowstone is another caldera due now with the consequences you, everybody with any sense and I fear. The place has risen 8 metres in the last century. Geologically this is scary.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
Why not start launching 0.5 tons of water or so with every shuttle launch? Get it all collected in one place in orbit, and the reaction mass is at least out of the gravity well. Sounds like an excellent preparation move to me. Instead of having the strategic helium reserves, we can have the strategic reaction mass reserves. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Until we look at the actual situation we won't know. Not looking simply means we have no choice. Such as a few years ago when a chunk of rock was seen just after its closest approach to Earth -- closer than the Moon.
Apologies. I may have been some hundreds of years out. Though I was present at this lecture I remember the years without the century. Please read my earlier post for clarification. Maybe remove my century and insert yours here and see if it fits. I'm no historian, and agree that many famous people from history cannot be unless they lived for 4 hundred years. Robin Hood is a classic example of the history/folk lore/chinese whispers thing.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
The asteroids are pretty easy to handle, they travel in straight lines, they go off one end of the screen and appear on the other, but thois UFOs?
They shoot at you, and sometimes you have to use hyperspace to get away. We need to focus on teh UFO's first.
George
Why worry? It's not like there are any dinosaurs around anyway... Poor Bob Dole...
- Justin
"Firestar", "Rogue Star", and "Lodestar" (and more coming) by Michael Flynn. A woman obsessed with this topic has the means to start a commercial space program, jump-starting a whole industry. In the third volume, we finally start to see how justified her obsession is...
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
that another big difference between ateroids and space ships is that asteroids are solid and space ships are hollow (and have people in them). So a little crisping of an asteroid is not a big deal, but a space craft (atleast from this planet) must come into the atmosphere just right to keep the occupants medium-rare.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
I must wonder when a asteroid will first be used in war. With 900 near earth objects, you could decimate the world. the saddest thing, is that the technology is being developed to propel clectial objects with their own content as the fuel. Redirect an asteroid for Washington DC, Chicago, and LA and you could run your ground troops in to sweep up while the chaos ensues. While this may not be as effective in the US, a small nation would easily be taken by this method.
Pax Digitalia
Ok, theoretically we find an asteroid that would collide with earth
ok..what do we do now? I guess I mean to ask who would shoot the damn thing down (if possible!)
the US can't even develop defenses against missiles under the START treaty...how can we build something that has to be even bigger..
and if not us...who exactly would handle this?
I can just see it now, bidding wars over who gets to launch the world saving missile
"and nike announced a 2 mil donation if the rocket has a swoosh on it..."
(define the-question (or (* 2 b) (not (* 2 b))))
As far as I know, should we be hit by something a few KM across, the devastation would be immense. Even after the initial impact had settled, there are likely to be worldwide temperature falls of a couple of degrees.
I heard of some research done on tree rings that suggests that there was a similar global climatic catastrophe around the middle of the ninth century. This produced frosts in summer in temperate regions for a few years. Lord knows how cold it git in winter. This was caused by Krakatoa, but estimates suggest that an impact by one of these asteroids at about 6KM across would produce similar results. Here is a link to the NASA page covering this topic.
The last major climatic event (being Krakatoa going bang) in the dark ages was probably responsible for the death of King Arthur.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
I've read that a 1kilometer asteroid falls on earth every 1e6 years, and that an asteroid of that size would kill 1e9 humans.
So, we can say that the mean is 1000 people/years. This is more than plane crashes (which is about 500 people/year).
But I really wonder; if you don't know how many are out there how can you tell that you cought 40% allready ?
There are dinosaurs. A dinosaur named Archaeopteryx left descendants that didn't die
out 65 million years ago with the rest of them. They're called birds.
Arun
Which begs the question:
What's wrong with many small pieces coming into the atmosphere?
The reason that a big asteroid makes it through the atmosphere is that there's so little surface area. It's like saying that a large block of ice takes 1 day to melt, while a similar block smashed into pieces takes 2 hours. Since the surface area is higher, there's:
a) A higher chance that the pieces burn up in the atmosphere (this happens all the time).
b) Less damage since the resulting pieces don't have the same amount of kinetic energy (Would you rather be hit by a car going 20 MPH, or a bicycle going 20MPH?). There have been numerous stories of meteors falling out of the sky and punching a hole in a roof of a building with no other damage. Surely you'd rather pay to fix everyone's roof than have all life on Earth wiped out.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
otherwise landing a probe on it's surface, with a small rocket engine to give it a gentle push could do the trick.
a la "L5: First City In Space"?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Perhaps this report is just an attempt to bolster video sales?
The last major climatic event (being Krakatoa going bang) in the dark ages was probably responsible for the death of King Arthur.
Eh? What are you talking about with the dark ages? Krakatoa started being active in May 1883, with the final explosive eruption of Krakatoa taking place on August 27 1883. The force was equivalent to that of a 100 megaton bomb, some 5000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima nuke.
There's more information on it here at NASA.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Ok, you find a dinosaur killer on a collision trajectory with the Earth. It will hit us in 18 months. What do you do now?
:-).
It looks like the only technology that could possibly pack enough energy to deflect an object with such momentum is a nuclear bomb. Isn't it ironic that the same technology that brought us the possibility of destroying life on planet Earth could also save it?
A few years ago I did a few back-of-the-envelope calculations to see what would be required to deflect an object a few kilometers in size. Naturally, the delta-V you need to deliver depends on how early you can catch it. If it's still very far you need just a little nudge to ensure it won't collide. It also depends on what margin for error you want to tolerate i.e. how far from Earth do you want it to pass.
It looks like some of the bigger H-bombs have the energy to do it. The problem is how to convert it efficiently to kinetic energy. If you blow up a nuclear bomb in space all you get is a fantastic flash. The relatively small mass of the device itself evaporates and disperses into the vacuum in a matter of milliseconds. You need mass to convert this energy into motion. Using the mass of the asteroid itself is dangerous - if you blow up your bomb too close to the object it could break into many fragments with different orbits. Many of them could still hit the Earth. Splitting it neatly in half Armageddon-style is not very likely
So you need to bring your own reaction mass. The bomb will be accompanied by some big tanks of water. I don't remember the calculations, but you need quite a lot of reaction mass. It appeared to be more than what current launch vehicles can handle.
Have a nice day.
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
This reminds me of a question that bothers me: how is it that the small planets in our solar system are solid, while the large ones are gaseous? Wouldn't we expect that the greater mass of the large planets, and consequently greater gravity, would compress all their matter into denser (solid) forms?
And a related question: our solar system has solid and gaseous planets; is there any fundamental eason that there couldn't be liquid planets, or is that just how it happens to fall in this particular uncharted backwater of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm?
--
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.