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How We Knew AL00667 Would Miss Earth

Posted by timothy on from the we-already-saw-that-movie dept.

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."

3 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting... by Spazmasta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    that most people didn't hear about the asteroid until long after the near-miss was over. Seems to bring up the old argument of whether it'd be better to inform the public and try to do something about it or keep it under wraps and possibly die in blissful ignorance...

    1. Re:Interesting... by retards · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, yes, I guess you will die blissfully if you happen to be very near impact. Otherwise you can look forward to drowning in a tsunami, starving in the coming 5-year winter or just die at the looting of the local convenience store once the news breaks (duh, saltwater rain, 4 weeks of darkness, complete failure of all infrastructure, etc.).

      It is a totally futile to even discuss what should be done if we are going to get hit, since there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. If the death of 80% of the worlds population and the fall of all governments is nigh, it hardly matters how people die or how the governmenst fall. It only confuses the real issue: how the hell are we going to fund a global defense system instead of funding luxury for 10% of the planet.

  2. Re:Natural diaster... by JavaLord · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mod me down as flaimbait or whatever, but I personally think we need a global cataclysm. We don't need something that kills off the entire human population, but we certainly need something to cleanse our planet. We need something to take our collective heads out of our asses and come together as one people and work together for the common good.

    do you really think a global cataclysm would make people work together for the common good more than they do today? Or is it more likely that resources would become greatly limited so humans would be more likely to kill each other for their own good? While human life is still a struggle for resources, I doubt the red cross was around in the caveman days, helping the guy who got clubbed on the head and had his dinner stolen.