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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."
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
To qoute the movie Armageddon:
"Begging your pardon, sir, but it's a damn big sky."
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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