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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.
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?
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
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
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.
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
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