Slashdot Mirror
Rand Expert Says To Keep Mum About Killer Asteroids
crashnbur writes "NASA is conducting a survey of the sky to find asteroids large enough that a collision with earth could 'extinction-type impact', and none studied so far will threaten us in the next 200 years. Of course, if a doomsday asteroid is discovered, the current policy is not to say a word: 'If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all', says Dr. Geoffery Sommer. The issue may be making its rounds because an asteroid was discovered orbiting the sun between Venus and Earth earlier this week. Space.com presents a lengthy, four-part 'Impact Debate' (next three parts coming next three Tuesdays). Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash."
Duct tape. Just be sure you have plenty of duct tape. It could save your life in the event of an asteroid collision.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think with the advent of CCD imaging (which gets better by a factor of 2 every 12 months) and sophisticated telescopes in the hands of amateurs, any approaching asteroid of any size will be reported forthwith.
That's good news for me considering that I never fly.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all.
You might not be able to anything about it. Chances are nobody else will be able to do anything about it. But FFS issue a warning because the brains of the world can collectively work on saving our collective ass.
Thank you very much.
...we have the ISS. If there is an impact in the next few months, the three men on the ISS will come down to earth and repopulate. Yeah, that's it.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
I don't fly anywhere so I can't possibly die in a plane crash.
Does anyone else dislike vague and pointless statistics?
Maybe I have a super asteroid killer 1000 in my basement and they don't know about it? (Bruce Willis downstairs I swear) Or better yet what If I have a fallout shelter to protect me from the blast, quakes, tidal waves? It seems very closeminded to assume that no one can do anything about an incoming asteroid. If you have a weeks noticed maybe you could evacuate a city and save millions of lives?
How can that be?
Are they saying that as many people have died by asteroid strike as plane crash?
I call shenannigans.
Can someone explain the economic reasoning to me on why we are bothering to spend money searching for life-ending asteroids when:
a) We can do nothing but panic if we find one. and
b) If the people searching for them find one, they won't even tell us?
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
... the same policy is applicable to:
- Non-stoppable domestic terror attacks
- Aliens landing and harvesting us all for our brains (GWB2.0 is safe, though)
- The return of Christ
In either event, the U.S. Government is supposed to tell FEMA heads to activate the Iron Mountain facility, and leave it at that.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
In the event of an asteroid impact, lay flat down on the ground, with your hands covering your head, and you will be protected.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
They could publish info about imminent space catastrophe and I wouldn't be able to read about it because somebody'd post it on Slashdot first.
Sweet oblivion.
The issue for me, is if they beleive that nothing can be done about it, maybe they have not thought of the clever solution to fix the problem.
Yes you will frighten the populice, yes the world may increase in suicides etc. The thing is, if you had undeniable proof that an asteroid WOULD hit the earth, and it WAS BIG ENOUGH to destroy it in a very convincing, end of the dinasours way, you could drive any arbitrary amount of money into finding a solution. Who is to say that with the combined ability of every nation on earth that there wouldnt be a way to put enough explosion on target to move such an object?
I mean, we have TONS of nuclear weapons, and possibly even the ability to create even more horrendous things that can explode quite violently, who is to say that a 100 year or so effort to put that much firepower into space to avert such an object wouldnt come to not? I mean imagine if you had the entire planet set forth to figuring out a solution, instead of a small relatively smallg roup going "welp sucks to be us lets not tell anyone that our kids or grandkids are going to explode in a fireball"
even if it was going to come within a few years, at least SOMETHING might be done, some way to preserve what as humanity are. I know it sounds a bit star trek, but having something aroudn to say "we were here" would be just as important as doing nothing.
Oh well, probably a lot more info in the article, but hey, can't just ignore it, especially if it won't go away.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Like hell. If I know Armageddon is coming, I can be finishing the last bottle of wine from my cellar just as the shockwave hits.
that a huge asteroid was heading for earth, because I was working on my secret subspace deflector beam in the garage, and I could have easily moved it into another dimension and saved us all a lot of finger-pointing. But becuae you decided to keep it a big secret like a little schoolboy, I didn't go get the last part I needed at the mall Radio Shack and went to see the Matix sequel instead. Now the sun is blotted out for a hundred years and we are all fucked. Thanks a lot.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Sheesh, if I had a nickle for every false alarm our "Homeland Security" folks issued I'd be rich.
Actually, we should probably call it "Der Vaterland Sicherhiet." I never thought I'd see the day when you would see assault rifles and fatigues in American airports.
(Say, don't you thing that Green Camoflague is a bit inneffecting in an urban combat environment, like an Airport?)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I say we let EVERYONE know, EXCEPT this selfish jackass... we find the likely impact area, quickly build a house on it, and tell him he's won the house as part of some contest. :-)
But would you want to survive? If you make it past the impact, survive in your shelter as the massive P-waves rip most above-ground construction apart, happen to live through the tidal waves and global forest fires raging overhead, you walk out of your little shelter into a world that is blackened, dead, burning, and is a million times worse than the world's collective nightmare squared. Would you really want to see that sort of world?
I mean, don't get me wrong, I would love to get a shelter and try to live through this thing just like the next guy, but when your options are dying instantly or dying gradually over the next few years (blocked out sun = no photosynthesis = no green plants = no food = good luck), unless the chances were greater than 50/50 of dying anyways, I'd much rather be living my simple little life out to the end.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
if you were under the plane when it went down, you would die in the crash, too.
Glad I could help. &:-)
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
this guy is related to either W, Ashcroft, or both. You know, both of them behaving like Hoover and all.
That was the most coherent post I've ever read.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
"Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash."
Since some 3000 people died as the result of airplane crashes in 2001, I don't find this terribly reassuring.
Well, if Bin laden is capable of hijacking an asteroid, then he must have gottten the rocket from somewhere. Yet another bit of missile technology Iraq failed to declare...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
The chance of being dying as a result of an asteroid impact is statistically the same as dying in a plane crash, for the following reason: if the earth is hit by a large object, it would be an 'extinction event'; nobody would survive. Phrasing the statistic without that piece of information could lead one to imagine that people are hit and killed on a regular basis, which we know isn't true. Based on this logic, the chance of any of us being killed in our lifetime by an impact seems to be much lower than being in a fatal plane crash.
Not to say we shouldn't be concerned; perhaps we should look at the larger picture and remove the individual from the statistical claim. An impact is not something that would affect us on an individual level. Humanity would be wiped out by such an event, something that should trouble us on a much deeper level.
'If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all', says Dr. Geoffery Sommer.
Would sopmebody pass this along to Tom Ridge and the rest of the Bush administration?
Edith Keeler Must Die
The real reason they are keeping mum is to prevent hoardes of geeks making fools of themselves camping outside Natalie Portmans house trying to get a date before they depart to techno heaven.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
But FFS issue a warning because the brains of the world can collectively work on saving our collective ass.
I'd rather have my last remaining days, hours, and minutes free of people who are acting without fear of consequences. Even if you _could_ do something, in the mahem which would most likely prevent you from carrying out your brainy solution.
If they don't tell us then how will we know when it is time to start looting, raping, and pillaging!
me karma am bad
Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash
Except one of the situations happens often enough to make headlines multiple times every year...and the other doesn't. So why are they listed as the same?
My guess is that somebody was considering that a great number of people would die as a result of a large meteorite impact. Taking this into consideration, then over a long period of time (long enough to include one or two significant meteorite impacts), then yes. If you counted the number of people that die from meteorite impacts and those that die from the sum total of all plane crashes, then they might be equal. But this is statistics, not probability. The probability of being killed by a meteorite would be much much lower.
The same thing is seen in a coin toss. For instance, say that you have flipped a coin six times, and each time it has landed on 'heads'. Statistically, you know that only 50% of flips will result in 'heads', so you might think that the odds are very low for the coin to land on 'heads' a seventh time -- 1 in 32 or so. BUT the seventh flip has the same 50/50 chance of landing on heads that any other flip had. That's probability.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
So if Dr. Geoffery Sommer goes to his physician and the physician finds he has 8 weeks to live, he should keep it a secret because Geoffery and his family may panic.
It is nice to know we have such people looking out for us. But it does not matter because their
is an asteroid headed our way. By the way, that is why all the aliens left, but they did not tell us that either.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
statistics comes in handy.
.days old. The so called "Life Expectency" has absolutely *nothing* to do with how old any particualar person might be at their time of death.
I've known several people who have died in plane crashes ( one of whom ended his life against the World Trade Center). I've never known anybody killed by an asteroid. Neither have you, or your parents, or *their* parents.
This statistic is derived because relatively few people die in plane crashes, whereas *IF* an asteroid hits a great many people will die.
Technically, mathmatically, the statement is correct, but really has nothing to do with whether or not *you* will die by being hit with an asteroid.
It's this same misunderstanding that leads people to believe there were no old people 200 years ago, because the *average* age was low. Whereas a quick study of the death age of America's founding fathers would put the lie to that idea.
The low *average* age is heavily weighted because so many people died before they were two. .
So don't bother spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for asteroids. *You* are far more likely to die by having a plane fall on you.
KFG
But would you want to survive?....but when your options are dying instantly or dying gradually over the next few years (blocked out sun = no photosynthesis = no green plants = no food = good luck) /.
I don't like to see this kind of pessimism, at least not on
Okay, so the asteroid hits, dust in the air, no sunlight. Check. Sounds like it's about time to crack open a couple of books on hydroponic gardening, and rigging up an impromptu electric generator.
I've never bought the whole "living will envy the dead" cliche. By god, I like to think humanity is made of sterner stuff. Asteroids. So you killed the Dinosaurs....big deal. If you can't pull off a mass extinction more than once, you can't do it at all.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I see no reason for the probability of an asteroid collision of earth to be increasing, as most people seem to behave. We aren't any more likely to get hit by an asteroid as we were in the 1700s, a time in which we didn't have any sort of asteroid detection/warning efforts. In fact, earth has not been hit by an asteroid in at least several hundred thousand years. Why do people suddenly feel protection is urgent now?
We should make a Planet Druidia-style airlock and make the combination 1-2-3-4-5. That should deflect any incoming asteroids!
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
It'll burn up in our atmosphere and what's ever left will be no bigger than a chihuahua's head...
NASA and the various other governmental space agencies shouldn't have a monopoly on the access to space.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
where I've typed "statistics" I meant to type "probability".
So shoot me.
KFG
What we need is an EABP (Earth airbag project).
We need to calculate where the asteroid will hit. Then we simply inflate a giant (the size of several US states) airbag over the region.
When the asteroid hits the airbag, it will slow down enough that it won't be dangerous, just like a guy who is falling from a building.
Towel: here it is.
The kind of information they are likely come up is not "a 10 km. asteroid is definitely going to hit New York next week." More likely it will be "a .5 km asteroid has a 1:300 chance of hitting the earth in the year 2080." Then they will track it for a few more months (or find it in archival photos), and recalculate its orbit. "Upon further analysis, we don't think it has a snowball's chance in hell of coming within the moon's orbit in the year 2080."
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
on this planet.. for how long? and there hasn't been a doomsday asteroid yet.. why is it that suddenly it's a high priority? It's just more political propaganda...
Uh, give it a few weeks, then USA will be in Iraq, and the asteriod will need to head over to N. Korea.
If the government announced that everyone has been sentenced to imminent death (which is what such an asteroid announcement would be), I don't have enough faith in humanity to presume that the majority of people would act like grown-ups about it; rather I feel most people would go running around, screaming, looting, crashing cars, smashing things, blowing stuff up, etc. All religious people would immediately go insane.
If a doomsday asteroid is heading for earth, there's nothing we can do about it, and if you think there is you've watched too many Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay movies.
Bottom line, if we have one year to live, it would be better for everyone if that last year were not spent in anarchy.
That being said, I remember reading an article (wish I could find it and cite it) that said there were only 4 government employees whose job description includes looking for asteroids to hit earth; most of the people doing this are amateur astronomers. They won't keep it quiet. So, if there is such an asteroid on a collision course with earth (which there is, somewhere), the odds highly favor it being discovered by an amateur astronomer who will immediately tell everyone which makes this entire thread moot.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
because he was afraid to fly?
A plane fell on it.
KFG
If people know, yes, the collective brains could possibly think of some sort of contingency plan. But what about the other 99.9% of the planet. They'll just go apeshit, and rape, pillage, and murder. It's as simple as that. When confronted with the end, the majority of people will just snap.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
hmm... and what does a coin have in common with a plane or an asteroid?
If we suddenly see NASA people making a lot of big purchases with their credit cards, we'll know.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
here's the headline on another article linked to the one posted above:
David Morrison figures his long effort to keep the world safe from asteroids has been very successful. "In 11 years of protecting the planet, not a single human has been killed," he pointed out to me recently.
heaoeahoahaohea
oh, these wacky astrophysicists and their humor. and to think, i was beginning to believe that they were, you know, all brain, no penis.
I wonder if Taco Bell will sponsor this. If a killer Asteroid hits a special target (like the franchise on my street), they could give everybody on Earth free diarrhea.
Because we don't know when the next large meteorite will impact, it could be next year. If there's one chance in 10 million that something will kill half of the population next year, that gives you a one over 20 million probability of dying of asteroid impact next year, like it or not.
on a credit card.
KFG
what was that arnold schwarzenegger movie again?
Lets recap....They propose not telling the world to avoid the 'unnecessary' social costs (ie mayhem). Of course, if this is a certainty, we will all surely die. So what's a little social disorder (understated, I know). The public has the right to know. In this certain scenario, any social disorder is moot.
Who are these enlightened people who get to make such sweeping judgements for all of mankind? Where do I sign up? They are scientists, not social engineers. However, that does not give them the right to make that type of decision. Depending on your religious flavor (or the lack thereof), these last few minutes/hours/days/weeks/months might be of the utmost importance.
I believe if they know the end is nigh, we should be told. I want the last days of my life to be judiciously spent with the ones I love.
... but if humanity can live long enough to see Rosie, Tom Arnold, Rosanne, and Al Sharpton shot into the sun, the rest of us can die in peace.
I've thought about what I would do if something like that would happen.
I figured if I believed it was going to destroy everything, I wouldn't take shelter or anything. I wouldn't be afraid. I would completely accept the fact that I'm about to die and there's nothing I can do about it.
I would like to be at a place I enjoy with a view of the horizon, with my family, friends & girlfriend and have a nice, loving time.
Then, when the time was right, we'd all look off into the distance, waiting to see whatever comes screaming over the horizon, sealing our fates.
In short, I would rather just accept it and die happy with the people I love rather than sitting terrified in a hole.
It's been something like 200 million years since the last "extinction level event". If they happen statistically at random this suggests that the chances of one happening in the next 200 years is only one in a million. Not one in a million per year, or per rock, or per observation - one in a million total over the next 200 years. And that's assuming that we can't or don't do anything to improve the odds.
On the list of doomsday threats I'd say that asteroid impacts come pretty far down. Man made disasters are overwhelmingly more threatening.
Err, I'm not sure, but I think "i" before "e" is a rule for English only.
Uh, no.
If, on average, a certain even over the course of a long time has some chance of happening, like, say, a plane crash or an asteroid hitting, then it's reasonable to compare them. If an asteroid hits, a ton of people are going to die, but it's unlikely. If a plane crashes, relatively few people are going to die, but it's much more likely.
The thing that isn't being taken into account is variance. Asteroid impacts are low-probability, high-variance events, kind of like winning the lottery in a really bad way. But, like the lottery, when it hits it has a much bigger impact.
So if I bet a dollar, and half the time I lose my dollar, and half the time I get back my dollar plus another 50 cents, I would expect to win as much money on average as if I bought a lottery ticket. The money won, on average, is the same. It's the same concept, except instead of dollars won in this case, you're picking people from the population to die. Grim, I know.
It seems to me that in a world of restricted resources, you should tend to put those resources not necessarily in the place that has the highest number of expected deaths, but rather in the place that will lower the number of expected deaths the most. So I think it's reasonable that we spend more money on airplane safety than on asteroid detection.
- target
I doubt that "[t]he issue [of killer asteroid censorship] may be making its rounds because an asteroid was discovered orbiting the sun between Venus and Earth earlier this week." As was made quite clear in the link, this asteroid will remain harmless for the rest of its life, unless aliens strap a nuclear rocket to it, or space-monkeys attach a 1000 km solar sail to it, and heave it out of its low energy orbit.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Or are the people in charge of our space program completely out of touch with reality?
Most of the asteroids >1km diameter that go anywhere near earth have been cataloged, and their orbits have been simulated hundreds of orbits in advance, with the closest match being like a 1 in 100 chance of being hit by a certain 3km asteroid in 8000 years. It would be pretty hard not to discover an asteroid that large with an orbit that intersects Earth's at least a few years in advance, in which case you could just blow it off course with a 100 megaton nuclear missle that NASA would build in a hurry. ;)
Repeal the DMCA!
by threatening ridicule.
"Asteroid! Halt or face ridicule!!"
I don't really like the overcrowed planet we live on. I don't like cities, I don't like towns. I would be willing to live underground or in a sterile self contained enviroment growing hydroponics powered by wind, water, geothermal or even nuclear energy. As long as I had a computer I would be ok ;) hehehe.
I think you'll find that currency will become quite useless VERY quickly...
I don't know about you but I just wanna shove hot grits down her pants!
You're using her as bait, Master!
"Rember that study you guys did about keeping mum on killer asteroids? Well, we changed our minds the last second. One is about to hit the Rand building."
Table-ized A.I.
When does the "Welcome home Giant Killer Space Rock" welcoming party begin?
When the end comes, at least I won't have to endure all the stupid talking heads on TV, fools who blabber endlessly in public into their cellphones and at each other because they don't know the value of sitting STILL and THINKING quietly, they have to vomit their mind lest they stop and actually consider something..anything..for a mere moment in time, and other such annoying factors of everyday life. Sometimes I wish I was born deaf. There's too much noise.
BOOM
I can't wait. No more noise.
Just which Washington should it hit? Redmond, or D.C.??? Maybe we'll get lucky, it'll split, and hit 'em both!
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
I can't give my real name or tell where I work for obvious reasons...
The good news is, no matter how broke you are, if the rent's due after next Thursday, you shouldn't worry about it too much. You're probably better off blowing the spare cash on whores and booze.
You can buy yourself that Corvette you've always hankered after - trust me - the repayments will not be a problem - just do it quickly.
The bad news is you really should call your parents. Come on, a five-minute call versus an eternity of guilt!
Gotta go now: Cheyenne mountain won't just fill itself with faceless spooks, you know! Oh, and er Good Luck. You never know - we might meet up after "It", and I'll buy that Corvette from you for an MRE and a bottle of water.
Ciao,
T&K.
Political language
The chances that all of slashdot will shoot you are about the same as your being killed by an asteroid! Danger!
Bruce Willis has been spotted at NASA and mentioned something about drilling and a Nuclear warhead.
THINK! It's not illegal...yet.
If it's going to hit in the ocean, I want to be on that shore with a surfboard when the giant wave comes!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Clearly, they know that the world is going to end on next Tuesday, and they cynically promised us the next installment of the debate for Tuesday, knowing that they won't have to deliver.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There are no secrets in Washington!?
Once the Weasels get word of it, if enough time is left, they will "take leave" and or "retire" early, in droves. Otherwise, they would call in sick. This would be a clear indication something is up, even if they don't tell you.
Remember, in a truly national emergency, don't try to call your Government; they won't be there as they will be running away from D.C. as fast as they can.
I propose that we:
A)Construct a large, white, triangular craft that shoots white dots
B)Launch it
C)Use an Atari 2600 controller to pilot it
Then we find the Twin Galaxies high score holder and get him to save the planet.
If, on average, a certain even over the course of a long time has some chance of happening, like, say, a plane crash or an asteroid hitting, then it's reasonable to compare them
:) especially the fact of variance
except if the 'long time' in which the certainty needs to happen exceeds a person's lifespan. that is why I bring up statistics vs. probability. statistically, over this 'long time' there might be as many people die from planes as meteorites.
but, that 'long time' is almost definately much much longer than your lifespan or mine. therefore the probability of me dying from a plane crash is much greater than my probability of dying from a meteorite.
now I'm no math expert, this is just my opinion generated from my limited knowledge. But probability is what defines every instance, versus statistics which are used to find out general patterns. This is where my coin analogy came from.
To look at this with another example, take the Black Death. It was a significant event, with large variance. Lots of people died. So, the history of the last 1000 years might show that 1 in 400,000 people die of the black plague. So does that mean that my odds are 1/400,000 in dying of the black plague? No, the probability is much smaller than that because probability must look at my lifespan, and events happening in my lifespan. Things that happened 700 years ago are as unconsequential to my lifespace as things that will happen 700 years in the future.
though you do bring up good points
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Maybe this guy just wants to name the asteroid "The John Galt" and use it to wipe out those evil collectivist moochers. =)
Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash
If I had fair warning something bad was inbound, I would camp out in the middle of Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona. Surely this would lower my odds of being killed.
birthing canal on a man
Caesarean section. Haven't you seen Junior?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is amusing that the ultimate policymakers (read; politicans) are trying to justify witholding information from the very people who were apparently wise enough to put them there in the first place.
The fundamental point here is that they do not have the right to withold the foreknowledge of the death of me, my family, my friends, my country, my planet. It isn't their property to withold and it is morally irresponsible to do so.
Really getting sick of those we install in power insisting they're brighter than us and we must be protected from ourselves. Right this minute the entire PLANET is giving George the big middle finger but is there anyone who thinks he's listening?
My
Limekiller
if we're about to be hit with an asteroid, and they won't tell us.
Watch the astronomers. If all of a sudden they start mortgaging their souls to buy Porsches and big mansions with hot and cold running hookers, look out!
KFG
"Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash."
I would feel a lot better about this if no one ever got killed in a plane crash.....
How do you decide who stays up and who goes down? It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition.
Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.
Wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living? No. When they go down into the mine everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!
Wouldn't the ratio of ten women to each man necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned? Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
I was wondering what would happen if the moon was hit by an asteroid.... Do the earth would have to fear darker nights (maybe a coube of degree less at night), orbit change, no more tide.... sound like a strange question but im very curious about it....
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
That the people who do know (Scientists and politicians) will make sure that they and theirs are well protected and taken care of.
All those nuclear blast shelters our tax dollars have bought and paid for will be filled with *their* families.
Your families will have to look up at the sky and face their death all by their lonesome.
As if an impending collision could be kept secret. Heads of state will be told. Their aides will be told. A portion of the scientific community will know.
Just imagine one of the astronomers trying to keep this secret from their spouse: "Dear, what's with you! You just learned that your cholesterol is high and hear you are eating pizza, with ice cream for dessert! Well, after you've finished scarfing down that half gallon of rocky road we need to talk about that house renovation project..."
I am not so much worried, on a personal level, about an extinction level impact. We can't do much about that and we won't be around to suffer the consequences. I would be much more afraid of an impact that, say caused a tsunami that wiped out all the cities on either side of the Atlantic, or maybe wiped out a single city like Phoenix Arizona but looked enough like a nuclear explosion that the missle start flying. Anyone looking for the small rocks (which are harder to see) or making contigency plans for other scenarios?
If knowledge of our impending doom is truly useless and perhaps counter-productive, then why seek the knowledge in the first place? Doesn't that make the whole project, by extension, an exercise in futility?
Deep under Cheyenne Mountain, and never come out. The probability of you dying in a plane crash is zero, but the odds of you dying by getting hit by an asteroid remain nearly the same.
Get it yet? Those odds apply to *someone,* not you.
Only Mr. J. Random Public need be overly concerned. You are a *specific* individual, which changes the rules, and the odds, entirely.
KFG
So great. While people are trying to get together, and make a last ditch effort to save humanity, we're running around shooting them, and stealing all their money that they need to finance our survival.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Only Mr. J. Random Public need be overly concerned. You are a *specific* individual, which changes the rules, and the odds, entirely.
Unless I have some way to measure those odds, I can only use the average given to me. I fly an "average" amount. And assuming a standard (Gaussian) distribution, most people would be around that average.
It doesn't surprise me that anyone
who thought the movie Armageddon was
worth quoting, wouldn't be able to
spell the word quote.
What an idiotic policy. Just because they can't think of anything to do about it doesn't mean nobody can. What arrogance. Maybe they can't either, but worth a try.
I say if these idiots aren't planning to report Killer Asteroids, then their funding to look for them should be cut off. Give the money to someone who isn't so bloody arrogant, or to someone trying to do something about it (eg cheap access to space).
You may be right. Or you may be wrong. Rest assured that I was quoted out of context. My attempt at correcting the record is included below. It may or may not be an improvement from your perspective. Thank you for not lacing your e-mail with personal attacks - yours was one of the more level-headed responses. Regards, Geoffrey Sommer RAND I'm afraid that the AAAS press office quoted me rather severely out of context. Their press release (which I didn't get to see until two minutes before the press conference) has me saying "if you can't do anything about a warning, there is no point in issuing a warning at all. If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss". It prefaces that by saying that I "take the controversial stance of advocating silence and secrecy". I most certainly would not take such an absolute stand. Perhaps you will let me correct the record. At the Western Psychological Association conference in Los Angeles last year, I wrote that "surveys confer social benefits only to the extent that mitigation is possible" but qualified certain exceptions in the disaggregate (not necessarily exhaustive): fatalists, religionists, criminals and the "yellow press". "Religionists" was meant to include the "make one's peace with one's God" case. By criminals I was thinking of looters and profiteers. My point, then and now, was that the primary purpose of a survey is to enable a response, and absent a mitigation capability that purpose is vitiated. The context of all this is an argument for mitigation. The "ignorance may be bliss" argument is not trivial, however. Analytically, the question is whether the doom-warned population has a negative discount rate - a "dread" factor. Does the population as a whole have a "willingness to pay" to avoid bad news? It's hard to say. Certainly, in the micro sense, the effect is real. Do we prefer a quick (but ignorant) death for Columbia's crew, or do we wish for them more time to "make peace with their God" before their inevitable end? I would guess the former. In the context of astro-doomsaying, is there an absolute right to information? Many passionately believe so. Yet, how many high-dread people are outvoted by one "tell me the worst" person? I don't know - hence, I don't advocate "silence and secrecy" as absolutely as the AAAS press release indicates. It all depends, as I have said many times, on valuations. What gives the government the right to decide? What gives the government the right to decide on any issue of social welfare? I was able to clarify most of this during my AAAS talk, but unfortunately, the press release is now to the four winds.
The analysis is the same if you want to discuss probability of dying in either event. There is a very good chance that there will be a plane crash (several, in fact) during your lifetime, but a relatively poor chance that you will be on one of the crashed planes. On the other hand, there is a very low likelihood that an asteroid will hit the earth, but if it does, there is a very good chance that you will be killed by it. This is why statistics and probability are very closely related, since the number of people killed in an event affects your probability of being one of those people (the more people killed, the more likely you are to be one of them, all other things being equal).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Maybe we could find a way to slashdot it...
But really, even if you couldn't do anything about it, you might as well tell everybody. It's all going to end, so what's the point of keeping secrecy other than for governments to hold on to their precious seats of power? And even THAT really doesn't matter at that point.
You want to see what kind of entity humanity really is? Tell em their's an unstoppable asteroid with their name on it one month out.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
while both would suck, at least for a second or two (if that) I would be interested in seeing what the probability of the average human being hit by a crashing plane while he or she is minding their own business somewhere on the ground nowhere near an airport.
I have this magic talisman that keeps tigers away. I haven't seen a tiger in San Francisco since I bought it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Funny how you get moderated up just because your posts are long.
So could you please explain in a 4 paragraph essay why the 70 years of your lifespan are safer asteroid-impactwise than a 70-year interval taken randomly over a long period of time?
This article reminds me of those who say that a patient diagnosed with incurable cancer should not be told about it, since there is nothing that can be done about it. The idea has been defunct in the medical world for many years. In the US it is extremely unethical to do this, though I am sure in some countries it goes on. The reason is quite simple - with a limited time left on the world, there are likely many things the cancer patient would like to do before he dies, e.g. apologize to that guy he was a dick to at work, tell some girl he loved her, beat civ3 on the hardest level.
On top of that, it is just plain dishonest. Not to mention that in the case of an asteroid, someone somewhere might have a bright idea that would avert disaster or extend human survival.
42% of statistics are made up on the spot.
We can always just call Bruce Willis to bail us out.
"Bah, duck tape won't do anything! Too fragile, too many cracks."
I think duck tape has too many quacks myself.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Argue if you want that you may not have "the brain" that could have helped. What about all the others that say "forget this government rule" and take out the brains that we have. What about the groups that try to turn what remains into a fight for water from some old movie.
And in response to some, what exactly is the worth of money when people panic?
Panic is also not limited to groups. Think about the wavering serial killers that see this "end" as the indication for them to startup.
Who was it that said, "a person is smart. people are stupid and you know it."? This was one of the things they had in mind.
--
It would sure make gay relationships a lot
easier to maintain (though multiples of 2 are
far better than 3). I wouldn't mind of
me and a man I was madly in love with and who
is also gay were the last people on earth.
Any inane comment insulting Bush or opposing the war will get an immediate Funny or Insightful mod but this hilarious French joke gets modded down.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
I agree that there's no point in telling folk about a doom they can't prevent. Supposing some Dr. said that in a year or so some anyurism would take my life and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.* I'd rather keel over into my bowl of rice crispies than spend a year worrying about into what/whom/ or where I might keel over.
/. as well.' Either that or something like 'Goatse THIS buddy!' ;)
Though I bear no malice to humanity at large, if we are all to be extinguished in a shared fate I could find a silver lining. That silver lining (if vocalized) would say something to the effect of '...at least this thing is getting those motherfucking tR011z on
At any rate, as Stephin Merrit of the Magnetic Fields once wrote:
It would be swell
To see some folk burn in hell
But when they go
It's just as pleasant to know
that the dead only quickly decay
--
--
* please don't overanalize here, this is just a hypothetical
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Heard of it? First written about (in the US) by Lorenz many moons ago, he says that most physical systems have extremly different long-term behavior based on small changes in initial conditions (in a nutshell). What this means is that if NASA was even a little off in measuring the orbits of potential 'earth-killers', we may very well be fsck'ed long before that 8000 year mark.
How am I supposed to get laid if no one knows it is the end of the world?
Nor should there be any reason to fear a so-called "killer asteroid." There have got to be ways to fight back. Here is my own, back-of-a-napkin plan.
Of course, there is no need to actually send the killer asteroid into the sun.
Surely improvements could be made. The point is, we can indeed fight back. It would be stupid and cowardly to not try.
In any case, we should bear in mind that it is extremely improbable that a killer asteroid will hit in our lifetimes.
What do you mean if there is no chance of doing anything about it, they are going to keep mum? What about our chance of going on a rampage, killing, pillaging. I've had my eye on a GTA game and a PS2 for so longa. And what about a last-day-on-earth orgies. For many of you, this will mean much less breeding. For me, much much more.
Probably because not all asteroids would fit the profile of an inevitable extinction event. There are probably smaller ones that we can do something about,
Dinosaur-killer sized asteroids only come around every hundred million years or so; the last I had heard we had recently acquired good orbital data (good in both the "accurate" and "not going to hit the Earth any time soon" senses) for over 90% of the asteroids with orbits crossing ours and diameters over 1 kilometer.
The problem is that asteroid populations are disproportionately distributed among smaller sized rocks; asteroids large enough to flatten a small city or cause a small tidal wave may come along every few centuries. It would be nice to start looking for those too.
given a fair enough lead time.
The lead time is the important thing, isn't it? Even if there is a supermassive asteroid that is going to smash into Earth, if we found it with a few centuries lead time before impact then there are lots of options for protecting ourselves.
If they don't warn us, how are we going to know when to have our fuck-everyone-like-crazed-weasles-cuz-it's-the-end -of-the-world orgies??
One of the people in the know would tell his wife, and his wife would tell her friend Judy, who would call her mother and sister. One hour later, every human being on earth would know about it.
As I see it, it would be VASTLY more likely for us to find out about a Dinosaur Killer (remember, we're talking BIG here) hundreds of years beforehand... right?
These guys can't possibly believe that if we found something that was going to hit us in, say, 2100, we couldn't do anything about it before then.
Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash."
It's idiocy like this that make me dimiss these morons as morons.
Actually there are about 100 people worldwide searching for NEOs according to NASA's Ames Research Centre Asteroid Coment Impact Hazards Website.
The most productive NEO search program is the USAF/MIT run LINEAR which has discovered more NEOs than all other search programs combined.
Other search progrms include
- NEAT
- Spacewatch
-
Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (LONEOS)
- Catalina Sky Survey
- Japanese Spaceguard Association (JSGA)
- Asiago DLR Asteroid Survey (ADAS)
NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office helps co-ordiante the activites of all the searchers.I haven't been able to read the article because it's slashdotted, but it makes me wonder why they would have something like the Torino Impact Scale if they weren't going to use it to inform the public. So far only one object has ever has ever been classifed a "1" on the tornio scale, but that doesn't look like it's going to a a problem. But with most NEOs still unidentified the most likely warning we will have is none at all.
If they were dead certain that extinction was inevitable what difference would it make whether we knew about it or not. Frankly, I'd rather go out in a riotous orgy of sex and violence than dragging my ass out of bed at 6 like it was a regular day. Those snooty eggheads want to cheat all of us out of our "what if you had one day to live" fantasies.
Yes, from a practical standpoint, we are pretty much doomed if we find out that in a matter of days an extinction-level impact will occur.
However, if we find out that a more localized impact will occur, there is evacuation.
Moreover, if we have say a year or more warning of an extinction-level impact, they need to make that widely known. While at the current rate of advancement, we probably still couldn't do anything, you can bet your ass that a lot of resources will be dedicated to a solution than before, and with that level of research, we could probably have a viable option with regards to avoiding impact. If a solution would take all of the world's current nuclear arsenal, you could bet they would actually sacrifice it if it meant living another day.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
When a large enough asteroid hits, it will scorch a significant percentage of the planet's surface, and black out the sky for many years, throwing the planet into an ice age. As a result, most life on the planet will die. This has happened many times before.
Yet something survived. Something was able to withstand the ice age until it receeded, and it was enough to maintain the ecosystem, so both animal AND plant life persevered. Somehow. That means, despite how horrible it would be, there would be a CHANCE that humans could survive. Granted, life as we know it would be over, but we could find a way to hold out, hundreds of years if we had to.
The chances of any of this being possible relies upon the amount of time we've had to prepare. If we have minutes, then yes, there's little we could do. But if we have years, months, even days, there's plenty that could be done. The impact area would be known far enough in advance that it could be completely evacuated. Deep caves could be built to house the population of the world. Lord only knows, if we REALLY wanted to, we might find a way to push that asteroid out of the way in time.
And besides, how exactly would you keep it a secret? Half the space objects discovered are done so by people and equipment not under control by the government. Remember the 1 mile asteroid discovered a few years ago with a SLIGHT chance of hitting Earth? Even before they knew for sure that it wouldn't, it was on the front page of the newspapers. It was the effort to notify other scientists for peer review on the projected orbit that the press got wind of. There is no effort to keep these things secret, so how would you suddenly shut everyone up once several hundred people were aware of it?
The smaller asteroids can be just as dangerous. Something 50 to 100 meters wide, similar to what hit siberia in the early 1900's had a devastating effect locally, but today, if people didn't have advance warning, you better hope people figure out what it was before they start launching retalliation nuclear strikes.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I believe the slashdot dupe effect protects us all against this fate, and any other that could end civilisation.
Here's the sequence of events:
Earth-killer asteroid is spotted.
Slashdot post regarding asteroid. Pointless discussion.
Slashdot dupe post regarding asteroid. Even lamer discussion.
Slashdot post regarding recent asteroid impact and destruction of all life. Pointless discussion, mostly lifted from high-modded comments in previous pointless discussion.
*Slashdot dupe post regarding recent asteroid impact*
Clearly that last step - which we can all agree is 100% certain to occur - is paradoxical. Thus I conclude with absolute certainty that *no civilisation-ending events can occur*. We're safe.
So think about *that* the next time you want to complain about a dupe. Ungrateful wretches.
We should only support Open Source killer asteroids.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not to disrespect the 7 people who died, but..
'If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all'
If thats NASA's attitude with asteroids, why wouldnt it be different for the space shuttle? If they knew columbia was screwed, or had really bad chances... and they couldnt do a damn thing about it, would they say anything??
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
How many extinction level meteors have we suffered in the last 100 years? Okay, now how many fatal plane crashes have happened in that same span? Considering that extinction level meteors slam into the earth, what every few millions of years (?), thousands of planes take to the sky every day, this is a lousy comparison.
The last few times the world was supposed to end in a great catastrophy, it somehow did not. Think of the embarassement if the announced killer asteroid would miss, and all the people raping and pillaging would have to answer for their deeds.
In Murphy We Turst
I always figured it would make sense to start a Finding-Killer-Asteroids@Home project that could find objects that move against the background of objects that don't move. Something like that would make a nice distributed project, and its something that is computationally intensive. It would also be a whole lot more useful in the short term then SETI@Home.
Anyone?
If they won't tell anyone, then they shouldn't be looking in the first place. Certainly not with my tax dollars anyway. Obviously someone thinks they're special. I'd like the last few days off work too.
D) Profit!
In the event of a nuclear war:
Duck and cover.
In general, I don't think geeks are any more or less righteous than the average individual, but the hoardes of lustful geeks desperately trying to get laid probably wouldn't be helping themselves get into "techno heaven".
Invest in spam! Go to the Spam Festival. Love Hormel! Learn to prepare spam deserts. Buy lots and lots of spam. (Wait, can't you get free spam?)
If my manager knows we're all going to die sometime soon, he's going to make me spend my last few days documenting all the code! :( I mean, UML diagrams and all! You know that sucks, don't you?
What's worse -- the code has already been badly hit and damaged (heck, fubarred!) by this ass-terroid, that's me.
The whole point is this: it wouldn't matter if it was hell on earth. It wouldn't matter if there was mass hysteria, because EVERYTHING is about to be destroyed. The concepts of "good" and "bad" are moot.
Some will still believe in religion, and just hold themselevs up in their basements/churches/shelters/etc while fervently praying and reedeeming. The rest of us will be doing everything we've ever wanted to do, but couldn't. There would be no more such thing as sanity. There would be no more status quo. Just chaos. You might as well grasp it and enjoy a sense of elation you could never get otherwise. You're going to die anyway, and so is everyone else in the world, so go primal and fuck it all.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
--
#nohup cat
I killed all the elephants in my house today :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I haven't been able to find stats on this, so I will have to leave the values undefined, but it should demonstrate what he's talking about.
Let's say there there is a x% chance that a extinction level asteroid will occur within the average human lifespan.
Let's say there is a y% chance that any given human will die in a plane crash (this is aggregate data, does not factor into personal habits,etc).
Now,
x>=y =>
there is a at least as great a chance that someone will die by an asteroid as they will die in a plane crash (on average)
since, given a extinction level asteroid occrus, they will die by an asteriod.
What if such a life-threatening has been discovered? We're all doomed now. :( How much longer do I have?
If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!
In the event of a huge chunk of rock hitting the earth and you happen to survive dispite NASA/Norad not telling people about it, I will pay one gallon of water and one roll of duct tape to anyone who terminates Geoffrey Sommer. :)
On a serious note why arn't religious groups more pissed off about this.....I have no need for it but I am sure there are plenty of people who would like to make peace with thier god/gods before they die.
Besides the quotee claiming he was quoted out of context, of *COURSE* it's possible to do something. There are two problem areas with an asteroid strike:
(1) Surviving the initial impact.
(2) Surviving the climate-changing "nuclear winter".
Part 1 is a case of moving people away from the place where the impact is about to occur. Water strike: away from coastal cities to higher ground. Ground strike: away from the general area of the continent that's about to be hit. Nuclear weapons are unlikely to be able to do anything about an asteroid. They probably wouldn't change the asteroids course. Might break them up into smaller pieces that do less damage when they hit individually... but it would make them radioactive. Time needed is merely how long it would take to evacuate the predicted impact area in an orderly manner. The worst problem is going to be panic, fear, the generaly stupidity of the population, their tendancy to riot and act like idiots when in perceived danger.
Part 2 poses a much more difficult problem, assuming huge clouds of dust get kicked up into the atmosphere. With a worldwide crop failure as ecosystems die and global temperatures change. Giving ourselves enough clean drinking water, feeding ourselves and providing enough energy to keep ourselves warm will become the major problem facing humanity. Greenhouses would have to be used extensively to grow foodstuffs - coal, oil and nuclear energy sources would be extremely stressed. Farming animals would likely be impossible under the conditions as they're a very inefficient source of food.
And then the rebuilding would begin.
I own an airplane. An antique. I'm going to bring doom upon us all!
1946 Luscombe Silvaire NC71102
Ecce potestas casei!
---
Haha mod the parent up! Truly funny.
Of course, if a doomsday asteroid is discovered, the current policy is not to say a word, its to announce that Bruce Willis, Steve Bushemi, and Ben Afleck will be launched to intrecept.
Billy-Bob will coordinate from Earth.
Good Luck and Godspeed Gentlemen.
Bruce Rules
... because I'd like the opportunity to prepare spiritually for my death.
I guess it depends on how much time we had. Anything more than a couple years I would bet humanity would have a fair chance of coming up with some sort of plan.
You need only look at the Manhattan Project and the Gemini/Apollo programs to see how far we can progress in a short amount of time.
That being said.... probably about 98% of humanity would go absolutely nuts. I'd probably have to go to Northern Canada and get the fark away from the craziness that would certainly ensue...
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
As usual, I will update my journal as orbit model for 2003-CD30 changes.
There is a delay small in announcing significant potential impactors. The purpose of the delay is to allow for additional technical review of the data. This review period is designed to last about 72 hours. I recommend that you read FAQ #2 in my journal for more details.
And speaking personally:
chongo (was here)
I read a post that apparently had a response from the man quoted... what happened to that post?
And I think your journal is really about CR20. I can't find anything about any asteroid called CD30.
I'm surprised Dubya isn't calling for the preemptive destruction of all NEAs because they might pose a threat somewhere beyond the range at which we can accurately predict orbits. Might be more useful than his current bee in a bonnet...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Alanis? Is that you?
just issue a fake warning to see what happens ;)
that way you can figure out what to do in real emergency.
if the world is going to be destroyed I have a few paybacks I want to deliver. . .
Muhahahahah......
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The downside of this policy is that now we'll never be sure that an asteroid is not headed here. If the policy was full disclosure, we could (most likely...) feel secure that nothing like this will hit us at least. But now we can't, and it adds to the level of underlying fear in humanity.
And it's always fun to see how those who think that the publlic can't handle some information, movie or whatever, assume that they themselves will be able to deal fine with it.
What's to say the astronomers and government officials who would be in the know about this will not start looting and raping their way through the final months of Earth as we know it?
The more frightening point is the underlying attitude behind the notion. Essentially he's dividing the world into two segments: those who know what is going on, and everyone else who is properly kept in the dark...
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
And yes, I know its a quote from a game, but it seemed quote appropriate.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
would be ironic.
KFG
1. Call Bruce Willis
2. ???
3. Profit!
Yikes!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
If a doomsday asteroid is heading for earth, there's nothing we can do about it, and if you think there is you've watched too many Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay movies.
That's why you should see the movie "Last Night". In it, the world is going to end at midnight, everybody has known it for a few months, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. The movie never says why the world is going to end, and it doesn't really matter. The point is how the characters spend their last hours of life, and what, of all the things we do in our lives, really matters?
The movie does mention the chaos that happened when people first learned the world would end, and there are people still acting out their violent urges up to the end. Some of the characters are religious people, but instead of 'going insane', they spend their time with family and friends, praying and contemplating their lives, and what will happen next.
I agree that the laws and mores that rule our civilizations would collapse if we learned the end was nigh. But the end of the world would be our last chance to live with greatness and compassion and dignity, in full knowledge of how precious all life is. Losing that chance would be a terrible waste.
Of course, I'd also like to point on that the probabilities that I die in a plane crash or from a doomsday asteroid destroying the planet are probably roughly similar, since I fly very rarely (twice so far) and an asteroid is not likely to destroy the planet in my life time.
There are other ways to hear your news. Besides, if someone did post it to slashdot, you'd see the story's summary there, and you'd find a way to get the news... Unless, of course, the only instance of its reporting happens to get slashdotted. Oh, sweet irony that such debate over global panic is rendered pointless because their server can't handle getting the message out.
falls on a Tuesday this year." Y'all *really* ought to go re-read Niven & Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer." Best disaster story ever penned---a middlin' comet hits Earth. I hope Hollywood never tries to make a movie out of it, 'cause they'd completely butcher it.
What's the density od a cubic mile of ice cream?
Thumper
Of course with current luck the 'killer' asteroid would hit the Moon and slam it into the Earth too....(Yes, I know... BIG asteroid required)
http://www.englishfirst.org
"Open, unfold and Use" - Instructions on a wet-nap from El Pollo Loco. (or most anywhere in my experience)
"For external use only" - Instructions on a disposable hot towel from a Japanese restaurant.
"Assemble before use" - Vacuum cleaner instructions.
I collect these things. Everyone needs a hobby.
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
There is no probabability, which would imply uncertainty, pertaining to whether one's following Christ would prevent him from going to hell or his not doing so would assure his going to hell. These things are certainties.
Likewise, I would anticipate the odds of an asteroid killing of 99.9% of all humanity is greater than killing of 100% of humanity. I don't see that kind of analysis in the articles I read here. The other question is what _could_ be done with 1,2,20 days of notice. If facilities were prepared, 1 days notice could mean that 50 people-a decent breeding population-could preserve humanity in the event the rest were doomed. I personally think that is a better expenditure than a lot of stuff governments spend money on-particularly if some prepartions were made for preservation of additional flora and fauna.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/fashion/16TAPE.h tml?8hpib
Like other products that span the preppy-bondage-plumbing axis, duct tape began in the military. Originally called duck tape because it repelled water, it was developed during World War II to keep munitions and other supplies dry. The first rolls were olive green. During the postwar construction boom, builders began using it to seal ventilation or air-conditioning ducts, changing the spelling, and color, to the now commonplace silver.
"If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all."
Are you suggesting an asteroid larger than earth is headed this way?
Last time I checked we had enough fire power to destroy the earth ourselves.
Hows about aiming those nukes at the inevitable asteroid.
At least for a few years we could survive with scorched sky's. Mankind is not so limited by the Sun as it once was. Given a decade of notice, we could build tens of thousands of nuclear reactors, and stockpile tens of millions of tons of equipment and high-tech supplies.
With nuclear power comes electricity. With electricity comes light and energy. From energy comes food. With luck, many could survive. The greatest danger would be the almost cessation of widespread survace industry and trade. Thus, one would need a huge stockpile of spare parts and equipment. If the average human needs 2000 Calories, thats only 2kW*h of energy/day. A single nuclear reactor produces 24,000,000x that in electricity, and three times that in the form of heat.
Given a decade notice, I don't think its too unreasonable to think that the majority of the industrialized world would survive.
Some people might want to be warned for religous reasons. Perhaps they want to purify themselves or pray or meditate.
NASA is from a country which is, ostensively, a democracy so shouldn't the people have a say?
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
I am confused as to the time scale they think they are going to find this asteroid on. I it is possible that it could be found just days before striking Earth - but that does not seem very likely. It seems far more likely that it will be found at least months or years before striking. I am judging by the asteroid warnings from '97 in which asteriods were found on very near collision courses in 10-20 year time scales.
Also, those were found by amatures, not professionals. One would assume that the professionals are using better equipment (better angular resolution) and thus will catch them at even earlier stages, and thus we would have time to vote on increasing funding for, perhaps, many different anti-asteroid techniques.
Lastly, judging by radio transmissions, our galaxy is not teeming with radio broadcasting life. There might be a reason for this. That reason might be asteroids. I am glad NASA is funding this (finally) - even though that is a lot of maybes.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
In reading all this, there's one thing I really want to know.
WHO has off-planet evacuation?
Someone does. They must do... who is it? Who is prepared to evacuate people from Earth, and who is on their list for evacuation?
I'm willing to bet it's wastes of space like the president of the USA. Sorry, I mean the 'world leader'.
There is no such thing as an asteroid impact that will cause the extinction of human beings.
We speculate that the dinosaurs were made extinct by an asteroid impact. It radically changed the climate of the earth. Yeah, if the dinosaurs subsisted on jungle that wasn't there anymore, then yes, losing your source of food or ability to function at cold temperatures could be a species extinction event.
But note, human beings are a lot more adaptable to harsh climactic conditions. Hell, human beings have lived for centuries off of reindeer that subsist on lichen. I'm sure the dinosaurs had a lot to worry about concerning asteroid impacts...
Actually, it could be possible for an asteroid could extinguish the human race. But it would have to make it impossible for anything larger than a microbe to survive. And that state would have to be in effect for at least 2 centuries. That is not a common asteroid collision event. Bets anyone?
Oh yes, an asteroid impact could cause the extinction of civilization as we know it. I hope you people are bright enough to recognise the difference. Humanity does not cease to exist once you cease to exist.
I have no position concerning concealing such information. Its wrong, but only on an ethical plane which does not exist on earth.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Yeah right I'm as likely to die by an asteroid as in a plane crash.
How many people were killed by asteroids in the last 20 years?
How many people were killed in pane crashes?
Oh what's that you say this isn't a fair assessment? Okay, let's do a real one:
My odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 500,000. But this isn't quite right because it's assuming I fly 100,000 miles a year, which I don't neither does most of the world. So this number should be lower. So assume this killer asteriod kills everyone: 6313622537 people. Since only 20 people died in the year 2000, we would need one asteriod to kill everyone on the planet every 315 million years. Maybe that's a reasonable time frame but, it's still a bullshit comparison because it assumes I'm going to live forever, unless killed by an asteroid. One must factor in the odds of me being alive when this asteriod actually hits, otherwise I'm not being killed by it am I? Say I live for 150 years (much longer than the average lifespan). If one factors in my limited lifespan, I am suddenly 4.8 x 10^-7 less likely to be killed by an asteriod, than to die in a plane crash.
The odds are so low that I may as well start getting worried about being run over by a Porsche driven by a zebra. Since:
My odds of being run over are 1 in 588.
Let's say one in every 5,000 cars is a porsche.
There are around 132,000,000 cars on the road.
Let's say there are 300,000 zebra on the face of the earth.
Finally, lets say only ten of them (circus zebra) know how to drive (10 in 300,000 odds).
Making a totally bullshit analysis, I find out that my odds are 2.58e-14 while my odds of being killed by an asteriod are 9.52e-13. Okay, so I'm a hundred or so times more likely to be killed by the asteriod, but what if I included all those bears that drive cars too? Surely the results would be terrifying.
This public service announcement has been brought to you by my unwillingness to write my DSP paper. Good night.
Life is too short to proofread.
Of course, if a doomsday asteroid is discovered, the current policy is not to say a word: 'If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all', says Dr. Geoffery Sommer.
No, that's a recommendation from an "an adviser on terrorists" from the good old RAND think tank. Judging from this, I think RAND's running out of gas and we can hope that nobody among the Feds is taking Dr. Sommers' advice on terrorism seriously, no matter what hourly rate RAND is burning clients for to get the "benefit" of his services.
Short of an asteroid big enough to smash Earth like an egg, there are always things that people can do that'll improve the odds for survival. Not being at ground zero. If a tidal wave is likely, move inland or uphill. Lots of possible scenarios.
But to prepare, one needs as much information as possible as far in advance is possible.
It appears that the scenario Geoffrey Sommer really has in mind is one where the only people who have a clue are a few scientists, top government officials, and political friends of government officials, and the only people who have a chance at survival are... the wealthy and powerful clients of RAND Corporation, who will end up ruling a scattered population of survivors utterly dependent on the generosity of those who prepared.
He has a right to his opinions, but why are we paying for this bullshit? If I want bad SF, I can rent it at Netflix. This guy apparently hasn't figured out that bad movie science fiction is NOT a sound basis of public policy planning.
For the ELE (it really IS that big and can't be diverted)... I'd prefer to face the end in my own way with my loved ones.
Apparently the RANDite got the "ignorance is bliss" idea by looking in the mirror.
Tech Public Policy stuff
If a small asteroid is going to hit earth and
damage an area too large to evacuate killing
millions there will still be millions more who
could have survived if they had recieved a warning.
If a real dinosaur killer is going to hit us I
find it likely that a warning and emergency
stockpiling and sheltering still could make a
difference of a factor of 100, highly significant
for the survival of our species.
It is never ever so bad that trying is meaningless, 99.99% killed can be enough for
humanity to survive, 99.9999% killed might not
unless they are more or less in the same location.
A policy to shut up and let people die in peace
allways leaves fewer survivors and a worse off
future after the disaster.
A policy to shut up and let people die in peace
allways leaves fewer survivors and a worse off
future after the disaster.
Personally, I'm *fine* with not being notified about a killer asteroid that's headed our way. Just as long as they notify Hamilton Hill.
It's his job to be notified in just such an emergency, since he can contact The Batman, who will then pass on a message to the rest of the Superfriends. No worries.