What, Me Worry?

Space.com dissects (or see the same story on MSNBC, with handy Torino scale graphic) the asteroid scare that's been in the news for the past week, asking some good questions about the roles of the news media and the scientific community. I suppose my take on it is something like this: given that truly insignificant threats to individuals get hyped all out of proportion routinely, at least in this case it was an insignificant threat to the entire planet.

Comments

Daily Show

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Jon Steweart's comment:
"The torino scale ranges from 0, no likely practical consequences, to 10, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Chicken little syndrome

[Taco Cowboy]

Or, in other words, sensationalization of facts.

We have to remember this, even if the asteroid hits planet Earth, the Earth itself will survive. The asteroid is not big enough to obliterate planet Earth.

Granted, the human race might perish, but so what ?

We, the humans, are killing the Earth anyway.

So if the asteroid hits Earth and all of us die, the Earth may have a second chance !

Sometimes we gotta look at the bright side, y'know ? :)

Re:Chicken little syndrome

[scott1853]

The original post actually reminded me a Carlin bit about how the planet might want things like plastic, so it created humans to manufacture it.

Re:The media is pathetic

[bowronch]

Slashdot is the only place where one can find responsible journalism...

3.9 in a million?????

[Lobsang]

And people worry?

That's the same probability of me waking up tomorrow with Cindy Crawford serving me breakfast in bed wearing Victoria Secret underwear...

or...

none...

(I could easily bear an asteroid hitting the planet if that breakfast thingy happened though...) :)

Target Practice

[SuperMario666]

If this asteroid is coming so close, let's just blow it up anyway. Who knows, the knowledge gained might just come in handy some day.

Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public

[mikewas]

Declare war on asteroids. Like most wars, this'll increase government spending and provide stimulus to the global economy.

Unlike other wars, in this one no one gets killed, only asteroids.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with science, it's an attempt by politicians to justify deficit spending (rightly so in my view) by scaring the public at large.

Re:Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public

[The_Shadows]

More spending? It wouldn't take much more. After all, you'd only need to make one spaceship to fight the war.

You get a bonus ship every 10000 points.

Atari

[kin_korn_karn]

This is old news. Atari predicted the asteroid war in the late 70s.

Does it worry anyone else,

[ByteHog]

That the (not so) possible end of the world is named NT7 ?

Just in time for the US elections

[Mr. Firewall]

This is George Bush's BIG CHANCE! He can declare a "war on asteroids," unite the whole country, and his party can ride the wave of popularity right into the fall elections!

These objects all orbit around an "axis of evil" that we must root out and destroy. We will make no distinction between asteroids and those planets that harbor them. If you are an asteroid and you are listening to this, hear me: You cannot hide behind ANY planet's moon or in any planet's rings. Wherever you are, we will find you, and we will blow you up.

My attorney general is drafting legislation right now giving our law enforcement agencies broad new powers to find the cells of asteroid sympathizers that are operating here on our planet. I ask all citizens of Earth to be on the lookout for any suspicous-looking rocks falling out of the sky that don't belong there.

Thank you very much, and God Bless Earth.

Re:Believe it or not, we ARE killing the Earth !

[Tackhead]

> Silly question, but what the hell is the Earth's atmosphere dragging on, apart from satellites and the odd passing rock?

"Ether, man! Invisible ether! Or maybe Phlogiston! Where the hell do you think homeopathic medicines come from? We have to stop polluting the ether of space with our evil nookyular space probes or Gaia will be consumed by the Great Sun God!"

(The sad thing is, despite the fact that the original author was just trolling, I'm sure there's some envirol00n group out there that believes something like this.)

More proactive solution

[GuyMannDude]

Declare war on asteroids.

Screw this defensive "homeland security against asteroids" shit. I say we take the fight to those damn bugs who keep hurling these things at us! And if our allies are queezy about toppling the Brain Bug dictator, then we'll just have to go it alone! Already we've got a plan in the works to take down BugCentral from the inside out.

GMD

Re:Not so new techniques for science

[Zordak]

That's not scientists. That's environmentalists, who are like the bastard step-children science left on the side of a snowy mountain, hoping they would just freeze to death. Unfortunately, some bleeding heart woodsmen rescued them and now we're stuck with them.