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Keeper of the Objects
cEnTiBeE writes that this is "not about the Matrix," but rather about Near Earth Object tracking. "It's accomplished by a staff of 2.5 people watching to see when any 'vermin of the sky' plan to pay earth a visit. This piece titled Keeper of the Objects is in the August '03 issue of Scientific American."
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - brothers in terror Qusay and Uday was found dead in some Iraqi slum house this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular terror culture. Truly an Iraqi icon.
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We should get Ben Afleck and Bruce Willis and some nukes together. You know... in case we need to blow them up... or I mean... the astroid. :-P
Shout out to ma homies in da GNAA, yo.
I like gay anal sex.
2 and a half people? Cool. I wonder what the midget does.
The Object Of Doom
Which extra half do they use, and for WHAT?!
Banaaaana!
Let's see...
1....
2....
3...George! Watch out for that...(splat)...nevermind.
2.5
The scary ones are where the scientists watch them for a week, and only see the size grow, with no apparent movement across the sky.
Negro Kobe Bryant will not be selling his music at the iTunes Music Store. This is for sure.
If only they got 1/10th of the budget of the hollywood films.
There are only a few things that hollywood does get right with respect to science, and this in particular.
1. We are presumably now at the first time in history that something could be done to avoid such a cataclysimic event.
2. Early detection is the key, It is far easier to deflect something millions of miles away, than it is when it is 4 minutes from impact.
I would place the protection of our planet from those things that would kill us all, as far more important than ensuring people didnt cheat on their taxes, and arn't sneaking booze in on the airplane, but, I dont choose where the tax dollars go... yet.
paul reinheimer
Typical nerd pseudo-humor. You should get out of your parents' basement more.
There are only 2 staff because the sacked the entire department previously, NASA begrudge handing over money to this project and has consistantly thought that the object tracking was not an important cause worthy of a whole research department (even though there are billions of objects that will cause serious damage to a sat if they are struck by it, then you have even more junk)
maybe when one lands in washington will they take it a bit more serious
Although your troll sucks. I must congratulate you in NAILING IT before the GNAA FAILED IT! Fuck you GNAA! You are neither black, nor gay. It's time to give it up. Your trolling is not entertaining in the least. No one cares about your stupid GNAA crap. So fuck off why don't you. Have you considered my challenge you little pimply faced weasel? Are you going to meet me in front of the Cleveland Rock Hall of fame? So I can beat you to within an inch of your life for posting crap on Slashdot? Stupid fuqer.
....are the ones we don't need these 2.5 people to tell us about i.e. THAT COMET IS SOOOO BIG..... I can see it with my naked eye....and oh yeah it is comming right at us!!!!!
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
...this program wasn't in place when CowboyNeal was approaching earth.
Dude! Look at the picture! It's Dave Thomas!
Remember, the total number of people involved in watching the skies for potential Earth impactors is fewer than the staff of one shift of a modest McDonald's restaurant.
Lets mail our hard drive and speaker magnets to India.
he can swing it quicker
Now I can sleep better knowing 2.5 people are watching some few million objects that can at any time impact the earth. Lets hope they're not as careless as NASA to convert imperial to metric when doing the calculations.
And how the hell does half a person watch asteroids? No way mini-me went and became a astronomer!
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I just saw how nasty this could be taken. I did not mean it that way. I apologize
This seems like business as usual for astronomy.. why does it merit a story?
The unofficial
Vegeta smirked at Goku, then ran his foot up the other man's leg, causing Goku to shudder and clench his eyes tightly closed. It was a game they liked to play sometimes; see who could hold out the longest, who would give into temptation first. They knew that one of them would lose soon. The game never went on for a long time; they were both experts at it.
They were sitting very close to each other on the couch; now that the boy was home, they would have to retreat into the bedroom in the back of the house.
Goku stood up and grinned slyly over his shoulder, silently urging Vegeta to follow. Vegeta complied, following Goku into the back room, his eyes never leaving the tall saiyan's muscled backside. Walking into the bedroom, Goku casually took off his shirt and turned around to face Goku. Vegeta smirked, running his eyes over Goku's body, and removed his own tank as well. Goku grinned at Vegeta, his eyes bright and intense, wanting the game to end soon. Vegeta moved over to where Goku was standing and wrapped his arms around the large saiyan's neck, pulling him down to kiss his lips lightly. Goku's arms were instantly around Vegeta's waist, and he was kissing the prince back passionately. The smaller saiyan's hands roamed over the other's back, rubbing and stroking the hardened muscles. Goku put his hands on Vegeta's hips, pulling him closer and rocking his own hips forward suggestively at the same time.
"You horny bastard, Kakarott," Vegeta teased with his usual arrogant smirk in place.
Goku captured Vegeta's mouth again, forcefully plunging his tongue into it, and backed up until he could feel the bed behind him, then slowly sat down on the edge of it, taking the prince with him. Vegeta didn't mind, or even notice; he was too busy ravishing Goku's mouth to care. Soon they were lying on the bed side by side, facing one another, their tongues fighting for dominance in each others' mouths. Goku rolled on top; he was not going to be the uke tonight. Vegeta had always been the seme before, and Goku was sure it was because Vegeta didn't want to force him into something he was not ready for...he was ready now.
Goky pushed himself up and off of Vegeta, reaching down to the waistband of Vegeta's pants and slowly pulling them down, blowing cool air across his lover's hardening arousal. Once he had pulled all of Vegeta's clothing off, he licked the head of Vegeta's length, and took it into his mouth, alternately licking and sucking. He continued, taking more and more of Vegeta into his mouth. He glanced up from his work to see Vegeta arching his back and pressing his hips up and forcing himself into Goku's warm mouth. Goku stroked the sides of Vegeta's compact body, delighting in watching him bite down hard on his bottom lip to keep from crying out and losing the game. Goku sucked harder and smiled around Vegeta's arousal when he heard a small animal-like growl escape the prince's soft lips. Goku moved up and leaned down to quiet Vegeta's disappointed whimper with his mouth, running his tongue over the other's lips. Goku's hands moved over Vegeta's body and under him to run along his back and down to the small round scar at the bottom of Vegeta's spine. Once he found it, he exploited it mercilessly, rubbing his fingers across it quickly. Vegeta fought to tear his mouth away from Goku's, yelping and gasping as the larger saiyan tapped the spot at the base of his spine.
Goku moved up and nudged Vegeta's legs apart with his knee, and pulled him up and into his arms so Vegeta was straddling his lap. Goku lifted one of Vegeta's hands to his mouth and seductively licked two of the fingers. The tall saiyan cradled Vegeta's hand in his own and reached down to the prince's entrance. Goku gently pushed two of Vegeta's now-wet fingers into the opening. Vegeta sighed and whimpered "Kaka...uhhhn..." he trailed off as Goku positioned Vegeta's hand to thump a spot inside of him that made him see white when it was stimulated. Goku released Vegeta's hand, and Vegeta continued to move his fingers gent
I'm glad this guy has a good grasp on the subject, since most people don't seem to realize asteroids probably represent the most immediate threat of extinction to the human species. He should exaggerate a few more threats, so that someone actually starts contributing money to finding out ways to prevent the impact of an asteroid. All current /.ers will be dead by the time a big asteroid probably hits, but we should still have a plan.
It is crucial if human kind are to avoid near-earth, super-near-earth, and way-too-near-to-earth apocalyptic meteor.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Isnt the Wizard the keeper. ... Everything inherits from obj 0, but the Wizard is commonly the owner of everything (usually obj 2 or 3). Now of course there are other objects that can do things to ya, like when u logoff, put you into limbo...
MOO!
It's going to be a helluva lot harder to do more than that.
We see them :) yeah we see them
Observer1: How many people do you see there?
Observer2: 2.5
Observer1: I think i see almost three - what do you mean 2.5?
Observer2: Yeah i see 2.5 - Saddam, Uday and Qusay - one of them has his head in another's ass
Observer1: Oh!
Could someone please enlighten me? I hear a lot about NASA and how our budget for monitoring dangerous objects has been way too low.
Are other countries partaking in this? I know we're not the only ones with a space program, and I've BEEN to observatories across the globe. Yet in all of these stories, I never read about a comparison between us and, let's say, France.
Are there any other countries that make it a point to monitor the skies for this stuff? How do their budgets compare to ours? I'm not saying "Go USA," I'm actually curious.
Seriously, any information would be appreciated.
10m - every 1-5 years
100m - every 1000 years
1km - every 100,000 years
The Tunguska blast of 1908 was a roughly 100m asteroid, hitting land.
If it had been an ocean impact, it would have produced significant tsunamis.
On the remote chance it had landed right on top of a large city, then the city would be completely gone.
A 1km asteroid would wipe out a moderate US state, or create tsunamis that travel to most of the globe. Either way it would affect the climate due to dust clouds.
The observational population census for Earth crossing objects is only complete for objects in the 8-kilometre diameter range (such as 1627 Ivor) or larger. The detection completeness for 1 kilometre range is estimated to be in the region of 12%.
(further reading is here)
Maybe it's worthwhile upping the budget so we can track all of them down to 1km ?
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
Check out my NEO map from my astronomer days (before this whole interweb thing stole me away)
http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/
It works off the same data and basically plots all the positions every day.
i thought that there are 3.5 people working. 3 full time and 1 'Kyle Smalley' part time.
vikrant narang
---
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
i mean i'd rather cpu cycles to stopping our total annhilation over seti any day of the week.
...Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum; together they can use a mac powerbook to write a virus that affects even alien asteroid computers, and then use it to spy on the asteroid's built-in doomsday clock. When the asteroid's internal macintosh powered countdown reaches almost zero (of course it's measured in seconds) we then can sick Afleck and Willis on it with a tactical nuke. The world is safe! And we don't need to involve any other Neo's at all. (That would just be ridiculous)
Speak for yourself.
A dead G.W. and more money for science in one fell swoop. That will be a happy day.
(In Iraq, that is) is approaching $70 billion as I type. How much are we spending on finding, let alone planning to deal with, the real Weapon of Mass Destruction that the cosmos will - not might, will - lob at us sooner or later?
I'm just picturing Stacey Implants on Fox whooping and flashing her brights because we've assassinated Saddam bin Laden's great grandkids and Saved Civilization Yet Again, just as the planet killer is nuzzling it's way inside lunar orbit. Shudder.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Homer> "What's everyone so worked up about? So there's a comet, big deal. It'll burn up in our atmosphere and what's ever left will be no bigger than a Chihuahua's head."
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Sounds like you almost did a Wiley Coyote. Did you have the little umbrella.
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