Slashdot Mirror
A Rock Moves In Space
theBrownfury writes: "The BBC is reporting here that
a very large Earth collision course asteroid has been discovered. This asteroid, NT7,
was first observed on July 5th and current data suggests an impact date of
February 1st, 2019. NT7 is 2kms wide and on date of impact will be approaching
Earth at 28km/s. An asteroid of this size is large enough to cause continent
wide destruction. However astronomers are still cautious in reporting this
asteroid as the orbit of NT7 has not been fully verified. Current data on
NT7's orbit suggests it orbits the Sun every 837 days and travels in a tilted
orbit from about the distance of Mars to just within the Earth's orbit." The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again!
Maybe they are just doing this so we all get worried and start to horde gas, food, and other products so the economy comes back.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
"You have 19 years to do something about a 2km rock headed for Washington. Go!"
Nothing like a crisis to focus the mind, eh?
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Mother nature is a terrorist! First the thunderstorms and now the asteroids! What's next? Exploding stars? scary stuff
Got friends?
What about the chances of the Asteroid landing on a Llama? I'm taking bets!
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
Well, if Win2k was NT5, and WinXP is NT6, then I suppose it's due time that the next generation NT7 makes it's "impact" on the world.
We need to hurry up and send a team of foul-mouthed perverted semi-illiterate oil miners into space! And for the love of all that's holy, somebody start having sex with Liv Tyler!
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
Those aliens are running NT7 already!
Leave it to British tabloits to sensationalize a non-story. Fortunately I never see biased or inacurate stories at this site.
well i was caught in a llama stampede when i was younger, so anyone within a 1000 mile radius of me might wanna consider moving...
-f
www.blackant.net
It keeps getting worse and worse. NT5 had an estimated 65000 bugs, if I recall correctly, but at a few grams per bug (when they don't fly), nobody cared about such a tiny mass. But now NT7 would be large enough for continental scale devastation? Wow. That must be a serious number of bugs.
On the other hand, announcing a product 17 years before it hits, come on, that's not really serious, even by NT's standards.
You think you know about programming?
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
I told my cow orkers not to worry about the unix signed 32-bit int date problem! Ha-hahahaha, I love being right! Oh, wait a minute...
... then the asteroids will have won.
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
This dangerous situation only get's harder to deride the longer we wait. I am doing everything I can to influence NASA to start working on getting a nuclear blast to deride the course of the oncoming danger. I agree that detonating a nuclear bomb in the course of the approaching llama is a bit drastic, but I refuse to sit idly by as the approaching threat of llama collision approaches.
I guess in about 17 years it'll be time to ask that girl if she'll sleep with me if the world was about to end
;-)
and won't *you* feel like shit if she still says no?
Considering the record they have established lately, I consider it highly unlikely Microsoft will be ready to ship NT 7 by the February 1 2019 date listed in the article.
They will probably just repeat the Windows ME trick, and release "Windows CANDY" in 2019 (so that they could confuse consumers into thinking that that thing MS Marketing had been talking about so long had actually been delivered on), then release the real goods two years later. Rather than the promised 2km asteroid that ends all life on earth, "Windows CANDY" will just be a baseball-sized rock that lands in Ontario, Canada, killing a small boy's pet dog.
So we should be safe from the asteroid until 3rd quarter 2021 at least, at which point it won't matter becuase the UNIX Date Rollover Bug will have plunged the world into anarchy and killed everyone by that time anyway.
Apparently it's too late... Check out this news flash.
Note the picture. The asteroid in the story is a couple km wide, the one depicted was hundreds of km (big enough to discorporate this seemingly solid little planet of ours for a while). Also note that it is hitting right in the U.S. I think that the artist has some issues with Uncle Sam...
In short, definitely unwarranted.
BlackGriffen
Smithers! Release the flying monkeys!
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
probably, but hey... like the old saying goes...
you can't make somebody love you
you can only stalk them and hope they panic and ive in...
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
Most of you only have 16 years to lose your virginity!
Heh teasin =)
Bush declares war on A Rock!
sulli
RTFJ.
We may never see Mozilla 2.0. :(
"Derp de derp."
Don't worry everyone. I spent most of my youth in the local arcade preparing for just such an event!
Everything will be taken away from you.
pull it into earth orbit.
Well im fresh out of tractor beams today, and I think at 28km/s I wont be pulling along side it in the Pinto. But fear not it will have a use!
We will finally be rid of Britney Spears.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
By the time 2019 rolls around, machines will rule the world, it'll be their damn problem.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
...we will have a really big rock to throw at any one who pisses us off.
Anyone that figured out a real nice way to make these NEO rocks bounce, blow up, deflect, time phase shift, or tractor away from the earth could pull some mass patents on that and laugh all the way to the bank.
Well, that's just the problem with our outdated patent system. Not enough incentive for developing killer astroid deflection systems. Before you get the chance to make your royalties, you find out the end of the world is just past your expiration date and those damn generic solutions and open source hackers are already waiting in the wings to save humankind for basement bargin prices. If you want to make any money at all you've pretty well gotta tie up your application for as long as possible and then slap injunctions on all the would-be good samaritan heroes with some killer submarine claims. We can only hope that they'll increase the term for anti-apocalyptic devices - otherwise I just can't think of any incentive to innovate.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
After a brief press conference today, president George W. Bush was seriously mauled, when he declared war on The Rock, actor/wrestler Dwayne Johnson, which resulted in a surprise drop kick attack followed by a head butt and a pile driver by the professional wrestler, before White House Spokesperson Ari Fleisher managed to stop laughing out loud and informing the press and Dwayne Johnson that the President meant " a rock" and not "" The Rock". President Bush was rushed to the local hospital where doctors feared severe brain damage, but concluded that "there was nothing there to begin with, so it couldn't be hurt anyhow".
The President later appologised for his mistake blaming it on terrorists who had sabotaged his statement.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Perhaps a group of interns will make off with it, eliminating the threat and saving planet Earth...
It doesn't look so bad. -0.14 on the Palermo Scale (recently downgraded?).
You mean slashdot-like moderators can save us from asteroids just by modding the rock down?
I'm impressed!
Better a rock than me.
Table-ized A.I.
When/if this becomes a confirmed earth course, you can rest assured that the experts would never go public with it.
Last thing people want is a whole continent of people on the run.
1. Pull asteroid into Earth orbit. ....
2.
3. Profit!
The asteroid is actually stationary and peaceful. *We're* going to slam into it...and the World's Governments are trying to cover-up this earthly act of terrorism.
-psyco
quoteth : "On the other hand, announcing a product 17 years before it hits, come on, that's not really serious, even by NT's standards."
/. :
The following story will be on
Duke Nukem Forever Released!
Posted by CmdrTaco'sKid on Thursday January 31, @10:00
from the just-in-time dept.
----- One piece short of Legoland
Remember all that fuss and bother about Y2K? Remember the Unix crowd talking about having a similar problem in 2038 when the epoch rolls over?
Suddenly it doesn't seem like much of a problem anymore, does it?
Someone you trust is one of us.
...the most frightful disaster Earth has faced since NT4.
5. ...and, well, you get the point. If it's coming close enough, let's turn it in to something useful.
How about making a Deathstar?
Does this mean that Taco Bell will be putting another target out, and we all have a chance at getting a Free Taco?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This asteroid will hit Buenos Aries, and our new fascist government will blame it on evil, giant bugs from another planet (even though these bugs couldnt possibly have the technology to do something like this...you will see when we get there to blow them all up)...
Oh wait, I've been watching too much sci-fi...
Never mind...
If it's something from far away, then unless it were going really fast it wouldn't get here yet.
...then can we send Jeff Goldblum to infect them with an Exchange virus?
Can we make sure that Téa Leoni is near the impact site?
December 1, 2017
Reuters
Today in the 17th year of the anti-terror extended presidency, Bush urged everyone on Earth to pray to Jesus to stop the asteroid. He blamed democrats for stopping all efforts to divert destruction but said he had faith everything would be "hunky-dorey."
A summery of the anti-asteroid efforts are as follows:
2002: Republicans reject idea that asteroids exist.
2004: A bill funding more science is rejected as "pork barrel".
2006: Republicans reject theorey asteroids have ever hit Earth in it's 4000 year history, and therefore never will.
2008: Republicans admit asteroids may exist, but if one did hit the Earth it wouldn't be that bad.
2010: Despite mounting evidence that the asteroid will have a direct hit, Bush rejects the science as "shakey and controversial."
2012: UN resolution on asteroid vetoed by US as being too intrusive.
2014: Senate plan to stop asteroid rejected by Bush as "too costly." Tax cut for rich is passed.
2016: Emperor Bush rejects an internation coalition to stop the asteroid as "flawed."
Calm down? CALM DOWN? You just mentioned three ways the human race could be annihilated that I've never even thought about and there's not a damn thing we can do about it and you want me to CALM DOWN? Well YOU can calm down mister, I'm going out to buy a tin-foil helmet RIGHT NOW!
However what about global earth warming? Oil resources? Malaria? The pest coming back?
Better make that a tin-foil helmet AND a copper torc bracelet!