Slashdot Mirror
How We Knew AL00667 Would Miss Earth
jefu writes "In January there seems to have been an incident in which it was thought that an object (asteroid) in space might have hit the earth within a couple of days of being spotted. It did miss, though. This story (from NASA/Ames) talks about the discovery of the object and the process that astronomers went through to determine if the asteroid was or was not a threat."
perhaps AL00667 creates MADMEN
Another article on Miss Earth
Have Linux installed at your place in Amsterdam, for cheap
So many to choose, since it was an entire episode, but this one seems appropriate:
Sounds like the doomsday whistle! Ain't been blown for nigh onto three years.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
better yet, send bruce willis up there, and don't tell anyone. That way he might get some money for it if it works and he returns, or we all die, or (the optimal solution) he diverts the asteroid and goes hurtling off into space with it..
---- Design. Invent. Cheese.
Where is my MADMEN when i need one?
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Else we'd be meeting all the time travelers from the future
Onlooker1: It would mean the end of life as we know it ? ... but we don't really see a threat to the human species. .... not to mention rabid money hungry CEO types... along with a few cities as collateral damage.
Scientist: No, but it might burn up a few cities and destory 70% of the humans
Onlooker2: So I'd be dead ?
Scientist: But the people left alive will have an excellent chance of survival due to the systematic culling of slashdot trolls
Onlooker1: Why did you keep it under the wraps ?
Scientist: We were kinda hoping it would slag Sanford Wallace in location... and have the Pope claim it was divine intervention
Onlooker3: What about SCO ?
Scientist: Looks like the next one from Kuiper belt would do that clean
PS: maybe you should read "God's Debris" to be frightened by Slashdot.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
After buying a milion cans of baked beans, a zillion beer cans and 10 years worth of Playboy magazines (only for historical purposes, of course) they waited it out for a couple of days in an underground bunker.
Since they didn't felt any shake, it was proven that the meteorite had missed the Earth.
It was further proven that a zillion cans of beer barely lasts a couple of days and that having a million cans of baked beans is pretty useless when you forgot to bring a can-opener
One thing of note is that somehow, 10 years worth of Playboy magazines disapeared without a trace.
NASA Server hit by slashdot asteroid. They didn't see it coming...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Tell me Mr.Politician, what is more important: Survival of mankind or playing the powermonger game with your politician-buddys?
;)
If the asteroid were a political party, you'd find a great deal of people supporting any effort at crushing it.
I think it's time to label asteroids as "liberal" or "terrorist" to get things moving
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Besides everyone knows the world ends in 2017 due to old UNIX Y2K17 bug & embedded NT licence key expiry causing cascade failure of ICBM guidance systems. ;-) lol I will need Lead underpants soon... ha ha ha
Relax, Statically speaking you will probably win the lotto 12 times, get struck by lighting 302 times, and die from stress or cancer 240 million times... likely to happen long before then... ;-)
That's like asking- What's heavier a ton of feathers or a ton of lead? There's an asteroid the size of Texas heading your way. Don't worry it's made from pocket fluff.
NASA uses a Cold Fusion server?
Puny Earthlings! We will crush them!
Nah they just have been hit by an asteroid, and you will be crushed by the waves in some minutes. =)
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Exciting !!
And maybe my neighbours underground bunker would have finally proven to be useful for things other than coding marathons...
This would also be one hell sure way to get rid of windoze once and for all... only something as distributed as open-source software can survive such a catastrophy... wouldnt it be amazing if entire source code of windows was lost. wow !
Now compare that to the linux source present on millions(?) of computers all over the world. Reminds me of the phoenix...
tisk tisk..
(warning: seriousness levels dangerously low)
[all generalizations are untrue except this one]
Typical slashdotter, an asteroid is about to hit earth and all they can do is bitch about a conspiracy in naming the damn thing.
A collision is a near-miss.
*boom* Look. They nearly missed
Appologies to George Carlin
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Slashdotters can continue to sleep comfortably with the knowledge that TCP/IP is designed to withstand such an event; lets just hope there's a backup of the /. backend in case its server(s) get struck, shorted by the tsunami, or looted by the local villagers.
667... the neighbor of the beast.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
I'm waiting for the follow up article: "The Slashdotting that hit without warning."
see tunguska??
Tunguska was Tesla, MAN! wake up and smell the ozone
they never found not one drop of evidence of foreign matter in soilcores from all the expeditions back there since. It was Tesla testing his death ray, i'm convinced
... Much like the server with the article, the Asteroid was slashdotted causing it to malfunction and miss the earth.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Maybe the time travelers from the future are already here.. but when the realize they have traveled back to a time when time machines aren't even invented yet, they are so embarrassed with their stupidity that they just don't talk about it.
I once ordered $6.66 worth of food from the Taco Bell in Cumberland Gap, Kentucky on 25E. The nice enough, yet misguided Kentucky girl working the cash register nearly fainted. She asked me three times if I wanted to buy something else. I wasn't that concerned about the total, actually. She ended up giving me the 10% or 15% senior citizen discount so that she wouldn't be tainted by taking six dollars and sixty-six cents in her hand.
"how the hell are we going to fund a global defense system instead of funding luxury for 10% of the planet."
Someone's been playing an awfull lot of Civilization. Parhaps if we found another type of luxury on one of our contries squares. =)
We were lucky this time, but it is clear that we need to do something about such threats. Here is what I propose:
We build a nondescript isosceles triangular spaceship, controlled by one man with a joystick. Left and right rotate the ship, up thrusts the ship forward, and down, well, down depends upon your configuration. Optionally, it could throw the ship through hyperspace to some other random point in space, or else it could put deflector shields up around the ship.
In addition to the joystick, the ship's pilot should have access to a red button (it must be red). Pressing the button should cause balls of energy to shoot out of the front of the ship, capable of breaking apart large asteroids, and destroying small ones. Pressing the button should also make a "PCHOW!" sound.
It is our clearest and best long-term option.
AL00667 is not the number of the beast; it was off by one. Ergo, it would not be the one to end the world.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Don't forget the tin foil hat to gaurd against the aliens that will likely take advantage of the situation, and an accurate firearm to shoot the ensuing radioactive zombies in the head.
No, 668 would be the neighbor of the beast. 667 would be the guy across the hall. :)
I wouldn't say I'm a bad gambler but the last time I went to Vegas I even lost a buck on the soda machine.
So you're saying that he had a "near-misunderstanding" of the term "near-miss"?
Right. "We had a near miss event last night." In theory, as you indicate, you could assume that "near" and "miss" both modify "event," but it is common in American English to modify modifiers, so that near modifies miss, and "near miss" as a phrase modifies "event."
Either way it is, at best, a near misleading phrase with a near threatening probability of being near misinterpretted. You should stay far away from such a near confusing phrase and stick to straightforward language.
Good enlgish makes for bad headlines, though.
-Adam
Please be advised that we are raising the Asteroid alert to code orange--high from yellow--elevated. This is due to intelligence that there may be big rocks nearby planning on heading in our general direction. Please be on the alert and double-check your umbrellas.
Yeah, if L00667 had hit Washington DC, the rest of the world would point and snicker that America got a smackdown. The rest of the US would point and snicker as well because there would be no Congress left to appropriate eighty ba-zillion dollars to rebuild itself.
But would anyone really, fundamentally change their ways?You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
If it was AL00666 the doomsdayers would've been going nuts about how this is the event that will wipe out all of humanity.
;)
AL00667 reminds me of that "neighbour of the beast" joke
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
Don't know about where you are but around here the Walmarts sell guns and ammo. And there are already a good 30 to 40 employees already inside. Good luck taking over the place.
So in the event of a meteroid strike, I for one will welcome our new Walmart line level employee overlords... As opposed to the Walmart corporate type overlords we have now.
Everybody knows that if you want to stop a killer asteroid, all you have to do is change the gravitational constant of the universe for a few seconds. Trivial, really... Ow, my back!
Reminds me of this time I was sitting in the gate at T.F.Greene airport waiting for a Southwest flight to Tampa... looked out the window, and there it was, an American Airlines aircraft with 666 for a tailnumber.
Now I'm not highly superstitious (tosses spilled salt over shoulder)... but I would think twice about getting on said plane (and still probably board it, damn $250 ticket)...
Given a value of 6378.137 km for the Earth's radius, one would have to divert the asteroid 637,813,700 seconds, or about 20 years and 3 months, before the anticipated impact. Of course, under this scenario, the asteroid would brush Ecuador a little close for my taste, so I would recommend diverting the asteroid at least a few seconds earlier... This does not account for the earth's orbit or the continued trajectory of the asteroid. We would get pretty pissed at those scientists back in the 80's who diverted the asteroid so it wouldn't hit in 2004, only to have it hit in 2006 or whenever. On the other hand, the Reaganite politicians who arranged the diversion in the first place would be patting themselves on the back for making sure the asteroid wouldn't screw up GWB's reelection plans.
"Den som vover mister Fodfaeste et Oieblik; den som ikke vover mister Livet." -Soren Kierkegaard
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
and the process that astronomers went through to determine if the asteroid was or was not a threat.
Scientist: Heads or tails?
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
In January there seems to have been an incident in which it was thought that an object (asteroid) in space might have hit the earth within a couple of days of being spotted. It did miss, though.
No way -- it really missed? I thought I was dead.
Slashdot: facts for hermits, stuff that's obvious.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.