Planetary Defense: Protecting Earth from Asteroids

securitas writes "Space.com has published a feature about developing a planetary defense against catastrophic comet and asteroid impacts. The story arises from the aptly named 'Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids' held in California February 23-26. The article discusses potential methods to prevent an impact, the need for study missions to comets and asteroids, the to-date haphazard approach to monitoring Near Earth Objects (NEOs), and the NASA/US Air Force Spaceguard Survey, which aims to discover and track 90% of 'Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) with a diameter greater than 0.6 miles (1-kilometer) by 2008.' Some ideas for anti-impact technologies to develop include gas blasts, nuclear detonations, ramming microsatellites, lasers, mass drivers and gravitational tractor beams. The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger. Mirror at USA Today."

Comments

Low priority?

[ajiva]

Not sure about everyone else, but humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention. Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention.

Re:Low priority?

[Klerck]

But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision? I'd say this is far more important.

These problems are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?

So an asteroid could actually be the solution to these serious problems! I like your thinking.

Re:Low priority?

[Gherald]

> So an asteroid could actually be the solution to these serious problems! I like your thinking.

Isn't that a bit like curing the disease by killing the patient?

</pulaski>

Re:Low priority?

[Ralph Yarro]

But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?

War would still be a crucial issue. We cannot allow a mineshaft gap.

Re:Low priority?

[YouHaveSnail]

But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?

When, or if? It's probably true that a major impact is a near certainty. But what's the time frame for that kind of certainty? 1000 years? 10,000 years?

On the other hand, the probability for significant famine, disease, and war is 100%. That is, those things are all happening, right now. And it seems that there's a very strong chance that these problems will get worse in the near future.

I don't know about you, but I'll take a 0.01% chance that an asteroid will land on my county over a 5% chance that SARS or HIV or some drug resistant bird flu will do me in prematurely.

Re:Low priority?

[NanoGator]

"Not sure about everyone else, but humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention. Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention. "

Hmm he's right. I was about to drop all the 3D animation I was about to do and work on destroying earthbound asteroids... thanks for pointing me to the light!

Re:Low priority?

[CoyoteGuy]

humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention. Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention.

And how would any of those matter if 90% of all life were to end from one of those rare impacts? Sad but true that everyone would like to think about eliminating war which is almost always based upon religion, racism, territorial squabbles or insane political leaders. Famine and disease are already being worked on. We have seen evidence in the past of what a NEO can do when it impacts the earth.

The truth is, I would like my children and the rest of my bloodline to have a nice, blue planet to live on for another two million years at least. But the odds are against us, and we are at a pinacle in human technology. Why not protect this position from one of the most devastating and destructive forces we know about? I believe that a gravitational tractor beam and better discovery and tracking technology will be a benefit in the long run.

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

"But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision? I'd say this is far more important."

*sigh*

Yes, and it's even more important that we come up with some sort of shield around the earth in case the sun blows up.

While we're at it we should invest in creating an artifical gravity well so that time's arrow doesn't occur and entrophy spreads ever partical into infinity.

Mentaly speaking people, grow up. Think for yourselves and actualy do some real fucking research before you jump the gun and start talking about somthing you really have no idea about.

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention.

That's bogus logic. "There is [x] bad thing happening elsewhere, so any effort towards [y] is misplaced". Society can work towards solving both problems at once you know.

Furthermore, I think that eliminating a small chance of the whole of humanity being destroyed is better than eliminating the certainty of a large number of people dying. I value the human race a hell of a lot more than any particular group of individuals.

Re:Low priority?

[mog007]

It's not really that hard to prevent this sort of thing. We could tell the astroid that it has better things to do than cause a year of darkness for the planet, and it would consider this, then turn around. Another option would be to just get everyone to run in the same direction, Newton's third law would make the Earth go into the opposite direction of the running, and thus the asteroid would miss us by miles.... or feet anyway.

Re:Low priority?

[RogueProtoKol]

Only 90% of the patient though!

Re:Low priority?

[Grey Ninja]

When, or if? It's probably true that a major impact is a near certainty. But what's the time frame for that kind of certainty? 1000 years? 10,000 years? I think you forgot to mention that it could also be next year that the earth is hit with a celestial body. Nobody really knows.

But let's assume just for the time being that there's an asteroid due to hit the earth in 10 years that nobody's seen yet. In all likelihood, I think that someone would probably notice when it was a week, or maybe a couple of days away. If no country in the world has a plan to defeat such a threat in place, how much time would it take to come up with an idea, and implement it. Do you think that the object would hit the earth before anything was actually done about it?

Disease, famine, war or the like will probably kill lots of humans in the near future. But I would have to say that fighting those is like fighting smoke. It's coded into our genes that those things will kill us anyway. I say let's spend some time fighting things that we can actually stop. And let's remember that if a plague wipes out 90% of the humans on the planet, then there's a pretty good chance that the earth itself will be ok, along with its biological life. If an asteroid hits the earth, it's not JUST humans.

In a strictly pragmatic viewpoint, I would think that humans being wiped out from the earth would be a good thing, but it would be a small disaster if all life on the planet was destroyed along with us.

Re:Low priority?

[oddityfds]

The fact is, the Earth will be destroyed. All human life, no, all life, on Earth will be wiped out. It's just a matter of time.

It could be a bad virus that kills all mammals. Or the grey goo syndrome. Or global nuclear war. Or an ice age. Or an asteroid. Or if we're lucky and none of this happens, then in a few billion years, the Sun will expand, melt and disintegrate the Earth, and that'll be the end of it.

So, you see, we humans must (A) protect ourselves and (B) colonize other parts of the solar system or the galaxy.

Or we can just sit here and wait for doomsday and hope for a place in paradise.

Re:Low priority?

[themusicgod1]

you give me three billion well fed minds that are not killing eachother for stupid reasons and i'll give you some anti-asteroid technae.

Re:Low priority?

[WorkEmail]

I disagree, because none of those issues would matter if a huge asteroid destroyed the entire planet. All of the art, and technology, and literature, would be gone forever, our accomplishments would mean nothing.

I think that the most important thing to the world community as a whole should the same thing that is most important to human beings by nature.....survival.

Right now, we do not have the technology to inhabit another planet, so we need to make sure that we can protect ours to the best of our ability.

The social and economic issues that you presented are also very imoprtant, but in the end, the main priority should be the survival of all of us, that way we can continue to chip away at the issues that make up the small details of our existence.

Re:Low priority?

[ScrewMaster]

True, and if our precious bodily fluids were to be somehow, contaminated, we would be in real trouble.

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentlemen, please! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to people with smart reasons for killing each other?

Re:Low priority?

[PingPongBoy]

Maybe we're looking at famine, war, disease the wrong way.

Surely, if we can significantly reduce famine, war, disease through technological advancement, we will come to a collective intelligence able to handle asteroids too. This is like showing that a certain problem is solvable in polynomial time implies P = NP.

Re:Low priority?

[kfg]

The patient is the earth. People are the disease. :)

No, no. I'm not going to go into some silly rant about "Earth Conciousness" or anything of that nature. Within the context of this discussion it's reasonable to model the earth as a big rock. And stupid as one. And posit that rocks are pretty damned stupid.

What I'm saying is something more akin to "There's too many fleas on the dog."

And the dog only has so many choice spots on it. Behind the ears, under the neck, at the base of the tail, maybe around the ankles.

About a billion fleas feels about right to me. Maybe two billion, but no more than that. The only real political solution though, is for the fleas to stop making so damned many new fleas.

And that is not going to happen.

KFG

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pffft sounds to me like a disguise for Bush's StarWars plan
Im sure you could easily turn the satellites around and bomb Washington

Re:Low priority?

[glenalec]

According to Carl Sagan, the cost of full-sky survey (ie, checking what/when is coming, not necessarily doing something about it) is less than the cost of one blackhawk helicopter.

That is a pretty cheap option to be ignoring.

I don't know why the military machine are not getting behind this. If they can convince congress to fund them to blow up the world umpteen times, surely an intensive earth-colision asteroid detection program would be a great opportunity to keep them in jobs and funding until a new credible 'evil empire' can be created for them to justify themselves with!

Re:Low priority?

[jjoyce]

So, you see, we humans must (A) protect ourselves and (B) colonize other parts of the solar system or the galaxy.

Why...what's the long term goal? It's not like we've improved anything on this planet.

Re:Low priority?

[Gherald]

Ok, fine, fine, perhaps it is just what the doctor ordered. But ONLY if it touches down dead center between China, India, and most of the Middle East ;)

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot attracts a lot of outspoken idiots like yourself.

Re:Low priority?

[wideBlueSkies]

>>But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision? I'd say this is far more important.

The remaining 10% will surely not have it easy. Famine and disease will be an issue after the surface of the earth is devistated. Any you know, as sure as anything that they will find something to fight about. So the war is on. Sorry, but it's truth.

wbs.

Re:Low priority?

[NSupremo]

we will HAVE to solve the problems of Famine, disease, war, energy, etc before we can even think of protecting the planet from asteroids

if we can't cooperate that much, which single corporation do you think could really do the job... it wont be in their best interests to do the job.. the board of directors will look at the odds of such event happening and will choose to DECEIVE US ALL.

do it the right way (which is actually Left...)
thanks

Re:Low priority?

[STrinity]

Not sure about everyone else, but humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention. Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention.

I take it, then, that you don't spend any time worrying about petty issues like bills, family, or relationships? After all, they're nowhere as important as war, famine, and disease.

Re:Low priority?

[centauri]

I'm glad you're honest about the fact that you're worried about your own hide, here. The concern about an impact has to do with the whole species. War, famine, and pestilence might kill a bunch of us, might even kill you, but the rest will continue on. An impact would be different. An impact that takes out someone on the other side of the planet still has a very good chance of taking you out too. But that's not even my concern, and shouldn't be yours. You should be thinking about the entire species here, not your own sorry ass. Nuclear war, sure. Military super-bugs, sure. Killer-GM foods, why not? But the only thing we know for sure can take out and has taken out entire species, even stupendously badass ones, is an impactor. We KNOW this. It's not science fiction, starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman. It's a thing that happens, has happened, and will happen.

Look, as I'm sure others will have pointed out already, there's no reason we can't deal with this threat and have as much effect on the other problems - which, by the way, have always been around, have been worse in the past, and have yet to slow our population growth by any measurable amount.

Re:Low priority?

[Free_Meson]

When, or if? It's probably true that a major impact is a near certainty. But what's the time frame for that kind of certainty? 1000 years? 10,000 years?

It will happen -- the question is not whether or not an asteroid will hit the earth and whack us back to rats and cockroaches again, the question is whether we'll still be here when it happens, in some shape or form of an organized society. The risk of dying of an asteroid impact is also very small, but because so many people would die as a result of such an impact the risk in terms of total lives is large compared to other, far better funded projects (like earthquake/volcano prediction and mitigation which, in the U.S., costs taxpayers ~$50M per probabilistic death).

On the other hand, the probability for significant famine, disease, and war is 100%. That is, those things are all happening, right now. And it seems that there's a very strong chance that these problems will get worse in the near future.

Great. any ideas on how to address those problems, or will you just use those problems to make an excuse for not addressing a less likely but much more dangerous hazard? An asteroid is far more likely to put an end to the american way of life than famine or disease. A significant thermonuclear exchange could do the job, as could hundreds of years of economic shifts and global warming, but these are problems that don't effect the U.S. and have no tenable solution.

On Famine: A bunch of people live in an environment where it is impossible to grow their own food and they lack the industrial capacity to be able to afford to import food, so they're starving. It sucks. The U.S. does send aide, but this is not a problem that will be solved by spending -- these people either need to die, move, or find a way to feed themselves because spending billions on some sort of global foodstamps program is not a solution to famine -- just like icing down someone with a fever does nothing to help them defeat the infection that is causing the fever, feeding the foodless will only create more foodless while destroying the global market for food. The problem is not, by the way, that there isn't enough food, just that these people can't afford to buy it and/or won't accept american surplus. It's an economic and distributive problem and, while there is no good philosophical reason to let anyone starve, the economic, practical reasons are the ones that keep you (gainfully employed 1st-world citizen) from starving by keeping the farmers employed.

On Disease: People die. tough beans, that's the way it is. Some diseases are horrendous and terrible, and AIDS in Africa and southeast Asia is horrible, but again there is no good solution to the problem and in many cases these diseases are attacking areas already massively overpopulated, undernourished, and poor. Do the poor deserve to live long, fulfilling lives just as much as the rich? Yes. Should the rich be forced to shorten their lives in order to lengthen the lives of the poor? No. This is the choice -- compell pharmaceutical companies to deliver drugs to third world countries at bottom dollar rates only to have a large portion of those drugs, sold at or below cost (with govt subsidies in the latter case) dumped into the profitable markets. What happens then? Nobody gets the drugs because the ROI disappears. We already give free AIDS medications to many patients in africa, for example, but many of those with the disease sell some of their doses back to american individuals and/or continue to have unprotected sex with uninfected individuals, spreading the disease and allowing it to build resistance to our drugs.

Disease is a fact of life, and seeking to somehow eliminate it is an unrealistic goal. Nevertheless, the U.S. spends massive amounts of money on every sort of disease -- I doubt there's a disease out there that a qualified individual couldn't get federal dollars to research. Medicine has advanced a g

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

cogito cogito ergo cogito sum

your latin is shit

Re:Low priority?

[k_head]

" The fact is, the Earth will be destroyed. All human life, no, all life, on Earth will be wiped out. It's just a matter of time."

Putting aside the sun expanding for a minute...

The earth has been hit with many asteroids. Never once has it destroyed all life. There is always something that survives and perpetuates. After the asteroid that destroyed the dinasaurs the dominant life on the planet was ferns for a very long time and eventually even human beings.

Humans will die (most of them anyway) but all life will not end.

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, we only need tiny little asteroids to land right between the ears of the current world leaders and it'll solve the problem... until the next elections...

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we wait long enough after that, big bang, big crunch or whatever, eventually entropy will win.

Thus, everything as we know it will die, whether or not we colonize anything... ALL we can do is postpone it, the very laws of physics are against us here.

Re:Low priority?

[Gherald]

actually its a joke taken straight from a book called "the devil's dictionary"

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

If an asteroid were going to hit soon, say for example in 3-4 days, people may be more apt to spend time with their families and friends then to go to war against some other country.

Which is more important to you? Waging war and forgetting about the soon to come Extinction Level Event? Or is stopping the Extinction Level Event from destroying everything we love dearly?

Either way you look at it, we can work together, or kill ourselves off with what ever means possible. The choice is everbody's.

Re:Low priority?

[glitch23]

That has never stoppped the US gov't from giving NASA billions of dollars to use for their budget.

Re:Low priority?

[glitch23]

Except that famine, disease, and war are being experienced right now by the world population. We do not currently have an asteroid that is wreaking havoc on the planet do we? Therefore the odds of famine, disease, and war affecting us are 1 in 1 (and they have always affected the earth) when the odds of an asteroid hitting us are 1 in millions maybe (and an asteriod only affects us once every million years possibly)?

Re:Low priority?

[Ironsides]

Maybe we will get lucky and only have a small asteroid strike. You know, like one that will only kill everyone in New York City? Maybe then people might listen without have killed too many people and caused too much damage.

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

I say let's spend some time fighting things that we can actually stop

You mean like disease, famine, and war?

Knocking starvation, along with a couple of major diseases, off of the Top 10 Things That Kill People list would almost certainly save more people in the next 100 years than would be saved by some comedic attempt to stop a few cubic kilometers of rock using nuclear weapons.

If an asteroid hits the earth, it's not JUST humans.

Yeah, because I really care if the mosquitoes go extinct when human survival is on the line. This is a ridiculously stupid argument by all accounts... how can you talk about "pragmatics" and then talk about the welfare of anything AFTER the extinction of humans?

Re:Low priority?

[jandersen]

"Great. any ideas on how to address those problems,..."

Ok, here goes:

Famine: it's not just a question of people 'living in the wrong place' - from which they are supposed to just move away. It is unfortunately a fact that many or even most of the poor living conditions are caused or aggravated by what the rich countries in the West have done and continue to do. I think you know this, or at least, I don't think you have any excuse for not knowing. We in the rich countries can help avert famines in the world by changing our practices - like eg removing state subsidies for farmers and other superfluous industries.

Disease: yes, fact of life. However, something is seriously wrong when the largest part of medical research is about how to repair the ailments that people in rich countries bring on themselves by overeating, or such luxuries as cosmetic treatments. The morally right way to prioritise would be to invest heavily in the big killers such as malaria; this is not profitable, though - which is to say it doesn't help rich people get richer.

War: most wars are caused by social inequality. When people feel that their lot in life is desperately hopeless, they want to strike out; aggression is a natural reaction to being cornered - you want to take your enemy down with you. It is very easy to persuade desperate people that killing somebody else is the right way to go about things. Cure social inequality and most wars will never happen. Again, this doesn't profit the few extremely rich, which is why it doesn't happen.

Finally - trying to stop asteroids from hitting Earth is a dubious activity. There is no reason to believe that we can do it, we just have some very far fetched ideas. Do you imagine that you can sort of push them around with an atomic bomb? Asteroids and comets are likely to be similar to a big pile of gravel, they don't seem to be just big rocks. And using our nukes against one would be like pushing a supertanker with a flyswatter.

On top of that, why run after asteroids and not, say, climate change, which has the same destructive potential and is far more likely to happen? I'll tell you why: fighting the real problems in the world would hurt Big Money, but playing 'Pigs in Space' will occupy the public's mind once they lose interest in the 'war' on terror. And it seems to be a good excuse for extending military power into space.

The fundamental problem is what I call the great capitalist lie: that unimpeded amassing of wealth by a few is good for the world. Don't get me wrong - I'm not against people being able to get richer by working hard and being clever, but the current situation is as far removed from that idea of real capitalism as it can be. What we have now is a huge pyramid game: the person at the top receives money from a number of people lower down, who receive money from a much larger group lower down, who ... - the problem is: there's only a limited number of people in the world, so there is bound to be a huge number of people who end up losing everything. And that's certainly not what the American dream is about, is it?

Re:Low priority?

[Eol1]

Amen ... why rehash the truth.

Re:Low priority?

[ThosLives]

Wow. I could comment on all of this stuff to no end, but here's where I will jump in:

War: most wars are caused by social inequality. When people feel that their lot in life is desperately hopeless, they want to strike out; aggression is a natural reaction to being cornered - you want to take your enemy down with you. It is very easy to persuade desperate people that killing somebody else is the right way to go about things. Cure social inequality and most wars will never happen. Again, this doesn't profit the few extremely rich, which is why it doesn't happen.

How, exactly, do you intend to "stop social inequality"? Saying that "social inequality" (whatever that really is) is the problem is perhaps helpful, but useless. I think this is because, as we all know, there is no way to end "social inequality." You can't stop people from being selfish or greedy (without using force, at any rate) based on the entirety of recorded history. In this I agree with other posters in this thread: all the "social" problems we have are because humans, as a gross generalization, don't care about each other. It's an inevitable outcome of the "selfish gene" theory (for you evolutionists) or the inherent sinfulness of man (for Judeo-Christians).

Basically, war will never stop, persecution and oppression will never stop, because there is no way to stop people from being people. This, I think, is the point of the previous poster: there is no technical means by which we can address such issues as war, famine, and disease because we already have those technical means and they don't work. The problem is not technical for all "human" problems.

However, there is the issue of taking the defeatist view "if we can't solve it then let's not do anything"; such a view is not useful either. Basically the best solution we have to your "social inequality" issues is education, and, sadly enough, force when necessary (because that's the only thing that will consistently get people to change their behavior). (I have not the wisdom, however, to discern exactly what "when necessary" is though, so I have to leave this point somewhat unfinished.)

Pure technical issues, such as stopping asteroids, however, are much simpler for the vast majority of the population to support. After all, the laws of physics are not nearly as fickle as social behavior.

As I said, I could go on, but I think that might be enough to chew on for now, and this thread is getting a bit old anyway.

But, as far as priorities go, I find it odd that I generally guage importance by the following: "If an asteroid hit the planet, would this really matter?" This results in the strange statement for the current discussion:

"If an asteroid hit the planet, would discussing the relative priority of an asteroid hitting the planet and other social disasters matter?"

Re:Low priority?

[ASKINVENTOR]

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Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not science fiction, starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman.

Bruse Willis and Morgan Freeman were in two different films, so you should of said "starring Bruce Willis or Morgan Freeman." and I don't care if an asteroid kills every one on Earth, as long as it doesn't happen in my lifetime.

Re:Low priority?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's exactly this kind of sophmoric posing on the "law of the jungle" theme that makes my blood boil.
Turn the question around and point it at someone "you" love. Now how does this "devil take the hindmost" argument fare?
Your humanity is defined by how you treat your fellow humans, regardless of their circumstance.
The arguments are facile, the treatment trite, the position posed is inhumane by every definition of the word.
Turn in your skin at the door, you don't even qualify as a naked ape with that kind of compassion exhibited.

Re:Low priority?

[oddityfds]

Why...what's the long term goal? It's not like we've improved anything on this planet.

Yes we have. Without us, this planet would be very beautiful, yes. There would be large forests, many animals and clean water. We have destroyed much of that. But we can do something no other animals can. We can think. (Yeah, I know, there are monkeys that can understand spoken english, etc. But that's not rocket science.) We can create art and music. We can make scientific progress. We can do more than just enjoy ourselves and reproduce. So what would the long term goal be? The same as always, be it in a cave in France, a palace in India, a university in the USA or a colony on Mars.

Let's assume that this planet holds the only life in the universe. This planet has maybe ten billion years left. How much time does the universe have? I suppose we don't know, but it's a beautiful place, nevertheless. Do you think that we should stay here and die, leaving the universe uninhabited until it is destroyed too? What would be the point of that?

Re:Low priority?

[jschrod]

Turn your skin in at the door - a wonderful metapher. Why, oh why did my moderation points expire yesterday? I would have moderated you up, fellow.

I worked with young children in South Africa (Oakland, specifically) that have AIDS. It's pure horror there. Help from the US is not visible at all, only from European countries. And the ill persons don't sell their drugs, they are thankful for every bit of help they get. The grandparent poster is only able to make his diatribes because he lives in a sheltered environment. Not even an ape, indeed.

Defense from asteroids?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could we eliminate any risk of being hit by an asteroid by reclassifying everything as a planet?

Re:Defense from asteroids?

[Capt'n Hector]

I think I'd much rather be hit by an asteroid than by a planet.

Look Ma, it's raining planets!

Re:Defense from asteroids?

[Pumpernickle]

You mean like this one? :)

Re:Defense from asteroids?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes.

-1, redundant.

Re:Defense from asteroids?

[FattMattP]

Expertly done. There's a job waiting for you in government.

Re:Defense from asteroids?

[Anonymous Coward]

no shit sherlock

someone's really making an insightful connection here.

Re:Defense from asteroids?

[Disevidence]

Hello, Captain Obvious!

Re:Defense from asteroids?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the moment we make an android, we should name it Marvin. According to that definition, it will have a brain as big a a planet.

Armageddon

[FreewheelinJoe]

*insert random Armageddon joke here*

movies

[pvt_medic]

I think one thing that is interesting is how the movie industry already touched upon this. Quite often the movie industry because of their ability to think outside of the box is able to come up with scenarios that ordinarily wouldnt be thought of or addressed. A quite clear example is how the US government after sept 11th hired some movie writers to help look at security holes or lapses that could potentially be exploited. I guess the question remains though are we going to then follow hollywoods ideas on how to address such threats?

Re:movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because if you're not a writer, working out how you might get around xray scanners at an aiport may be considered a bit "odd", but it's ok if you're just some crazy movie writer.

Re:movies

[HD Webdev]

I think one thing that is interesting is how the movie industry already touched upon this. Quite often the movie industry because of their ability to think outside of the box is able to come up with scenarios that ordinarily wouldnt be thought of or addressed.

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle.

It's a good read. Hollywood tends to regurgitate things that taste better when eaten fresh.

Re:movies

[tinkerton]

It's also interesting that movies pick the spectacular approach, even if it's wrong. Blowing up an asteroid with nuclear bombs does little to change the direction(lots of energy but not much momentum), and it multiplies the projectiles.

The current approach (and the above argument against nukes)was described by Freeman Dyson in 1995. Send out mass drivers to intercept the asteroids as early as possible. The earlier you start pushing, the less power you need(Quote: it's proportional to the inverse square of the warning time). Could well work- if you invest a lot in early warning systems, but for a movie, it's boring.

Re:movies

[AmPz]

Well, the movie industry did actually touch on the sept 11th thing before it happened.
About half a year earlier, in an episode of "the lone gunmen" a plane is wired to crash into the New York tradecenter.

Yep.

[Black Parrot]

> The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.

Just like every other problem?

And even then, it isn't so much likely to be "meaningful" as to be "just enough to convince the public we're doing something about it".

Re:Yep.

[pvt_medic]

dont you just love how everyone in the world only concerned with themselves. I mean this is a clear example of why Earth should be more united because our petty differences wont mean anything when a big ___ rock is hurling at us. Of course people first reaction will be well, poor (put countries name here) they should have done better to protect their people. When instead we should be like we failed mankind by letting that happen. Ok my 15 seconds are up, and I am now stepping off my soap box.

Just my 3 cents worth (damn inflation).

Re:Yep.

[pizza_milkshake]

dont you just love how everyone in the world only concerned with themselves. I mean this is a clear example of why Earth should be more united because our petty differences wont mean anything when a big ___ rock is hurling at us.

don't worry, the U.S. military is working on the ability to take a huge asteroid and redirect it so it hits the Middle East.

Unfortunately someone has to say this...

[Yoda2]

With Bruce Willis getting older and Ben Affleck not as tough as he used to be, its good that we're researching out other options. Yuck. Yuck.

Re: Unfortunately someone has to say this...

[Black Parrot]

> With Bruce Willis getting older and Ben Affleck not as tough as he used to be, its good that we're researching out other options. Yuck. Yuck.

Don't forget Sean Connery.

Tractor beams

[Amiga Lover]

gravitational tractor beams.

Personally I don't know why this wasn't thought of first before all those silly ideas like just blowing something up

A nice large tractor beam from a high orbiting satellite to repel or attract any asteroid or other thing that's going to hit the planet, and problem solved.

Of course, there's the technical side...

Re:Tractor beams

[Ralp]

Because, blowing things up is not only something we are already very good at, but it's also a lot of fun.

Re:Tractor beams

[aelbric]

The problem is mass.

Think of each end of the tractor beam being a living object. If you used a satellite to tractor an asteroid, it would be a little like a chihuahua trying to win a tug-o-war with Jabba the hut. I'd hate to be the chihuahua.

Re:Tractor beams

[evvk]

RTFA. The so-called "tractor beams" discussed in the article are not sci-fi tractor beams at all. What they're proposing is flying by the asteroid with suitably heavy spacecraft that would attract the asteroid and nudge it off course.

Re:Tractor beams

[Anonymous Coward]

Ed Lu probably has a point; he's a smart guy.
Still, one has to send a spacecraft to the
impactor. With enough warning, even the Arecibo
radar could change an orbit enough to avoid
collision, so I'd concentrate first on Earth
based methods tuned to the space watch program
since this is where data exists.

Re:Tractor beams

[rabel]

Here's a link to Ed Lu's notes from when he was on the space station. He has some great essays about life on the ISS including some notes on taking photos of earth, exercise, life in zero-g, etc. Some of it is very basic if you've got a Physics degree, but for the rest of us it's fun writing and he has a friendly writing style.

For the more on-topic note, check out letter #2, flying. Gives a good basic explanation of how propulsion works in zero-g and could give the layman (like me) a basic understanding of his proposal.

Re:Tractor beams

[Wellspring]

Tractor beams also work wonders with The Ladies.

Re:Tractor beams

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you get enough material to build this
space craft, the energy to change it's position,
and the financing to build this monstrosity?

Re:Tractor beams

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of an hours flyby, you stretch it out over ten years or so. That way it's suddenly alot cheaper, it's not all quite that simple though and I'm far from sure this is the most practical method, but oh well. I assume this might work a bit better for asteroids that arn't solid blocks though.

Quickshot

Re:Tractor beams

[That_Guy_Again]

So now we're going to ping it into oblivion?

Re:Tractor beams

[Anonymous Coward]

People tend to start mysteriously finding money out of their pockets when the alternative is extinction bit later.

You know, redirect all the billions from "defence" against other humans to defence from asteroid impact, seize Microsoft's accounts, etc.

This is a non-story

[tarzan353]

Come on, editors- this is news? We have already researched laser technology, so SDI defense is available. It should only take 2 or 3 turns to equip all of our cities with this technology.

Re:This is a non-story

[BobTheLawyer]

Thus spake George Bush.

Re:This is a non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

We should ask the Zulus to do it.

The Greeks told me their words ARE BACKED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Re:This is a non-story

[anakin876]

heh heh Which game is this from? Civ 3? Command and Conquer?

Re:This is a non-story

[Grey Ninja]

Not to mention that we also have enough trained operators to protect every outhouse and toolshed on the planet. ;)

Re:This is a non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you laughing if you don't know the reference?

For the record, its Civ 2 or Civ 3.

Stick with what works.

[Dr. Bent]

I think we should simply rely on older technology to solve this problem. Don't fix it if it ain't broke...

Take over

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the Xindi don't have to build a weapon of mass destruction. They can just take over our station.

Famine, Poverty, Disease...

[jim_deane]

None of our earth-borne problems are going to make one whit of difference if an asteroid hits us.

There won't be a welfare problem anymore, because there won't be anyone left to be on welfare.

Jim

Re:Famine, Poverty, Disease...

[glitch23]

because there won't be anyone left to be on welfare.

That is not a guarantee. Just b/c an asteroid hits us does not mean it is going to be one big enough to kill everyone. The odds of that are even bigger than asteroid hitting us altogether.

Re:Famine, Poverty, Disease...

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming it's a globally significant impact (1 mile diameter or larger), any survivors that were previously on welfare would either learn to survive on their own or die. It's blunt, but it's the truth.

Bad idea?

[jaysedai]

Shortly before Carl Sagan died, he wrote an article in Parade Magazine about how he felt this was a bad idea. His premise being that a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this to turn a "near miss" into a direct hit. Which could be potentially far more destructive than a nuke. Obviously he's looking well into the future. But I think he has point.

Re:Bad idea?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this t

The Soviet Union's collapse discredited Red governments forever, and rouge ones got caught in the riptide too. So there's no need to feel blue about rouge governments, even if you're a Green yourself.

Re:Bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rogue governments that are so veil as to do something like this against humanity won't have the power to actually do this.

If they had the power to do it, another more powerful country would know about it, and be on their watch to launch countermeasures against such an attempt.

And if that evil government would be the most powerful country in the world, we would all be doomed anyway.

Re:Bad idea?

[lommer]

thanks - you made my day

Re:Bad idea?

[SuperBanana]

His premise being that a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this to turn a "near miss" into a direct hit. Which could be potentially far more destructive than a nuke

An absurd premise. You'd have to be colossally stupid to do it. Anyone smart enough to carry it out would understand that they'd be wiping themselves out too. If they're severely mentally ill and hence willing to try, they're going to find themselves hard pressed to come up with people willing to give them weapons, supplies, money and know how to wipe out most life on the planet(not just humans); an awful lot of people will be freaked out and run to various intelligence agencies("Look man, this guy's giving us terrorists a bad name, you know?"). Who will promptly blow you to little itty bitty bite sized pieces.

Terrorists aim to change policy via terror...not to wipe everyone out, and just because they're terrorists willing to die for a cause doesn't mean they want to die for YOUR cause.

Re:Bad idea?

[jafiwam]

I respect the man and all.... but didn't Carl think that the rouge governments could just make bombs and missiles... much cheaper and an easier technology to use.

Any government that would do that type of thing, would have cheaper means with conventional warfare....

Re:Bad idea?

[GoofyBoy]

>Anyone smart enough to carry it out would understand that they'd be wiping themselves out too.

Of course about Same thing could be said about nukes. Yet "sane" governments were willing to use them.

And thats just for policical idealologies, there wasn't even a promise of virgins in the afterlife. (Personnaly, there is a lot I would do for a couple of really good professional-non-virgins).

>If they're severely mentally ill and hence willing to try, they're going to find themselves hard pressed to come up with people willing to give them weapons, supplies, money and know how to wipe out most life on the planet(not just humans);

Thats why they are called "Doomsday cults".

Re:Bad idea?

[Alien54]

An absurd premise. You'd have to be colossally stupid to do it. Anyone smart enough to carry it out would understand that they'd be wiping themselves out too.

Let's say I'm a kook who wants to wipe the earth of humanity because we are destroying mother nature. Kill off humainty, and Mom will heal up everything else.

Or imagine I believe in the end of the earth and that My Favorite Diety (tm) will sort it out with all of the corrupt and disbelievers after they are all wiped out.

there are many other corny movie plot ideas, I am sure, that would possible, if unlikely.

Re:Bad idea?

[HD Webdev]

An absurd premise. You'd have to be colossally stupid to do it. Anyone smart enough to carry it out would understand that they'd be wiping themselves out too.

Be careful. We don't want to upset those really smart people who helped develop our huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Intelligence and Wisdom are two very different things.

Re:Bad idea?

[Wellspring]

Be careful, people take their opinions very seriously, and sometimes lash out. I'd hate to see this thread turn violet.

Re:Bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Carl Sagan is probably the only "scientist" who would bother answering the question. Sagan was a crackpot and a pothead.

Re:Bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to think that the mass starvations, mass killings, and human rights abuses that occurred well before the collapse of communism was enough to discredit most sane people who didn't have to live under that system.

Re:Bad idea?

[frostman]

a rouge government or terrorist organization...

Hmm, North Korea is pretty close to being both...

If you buy into that whole color scheme, anyway.

Re:Bad idea?

[Eccles]

Enough of this off-color humor, you shady characters!

Re:Bad idea?

[Eccles]

Whoops, responded to the wrong message. Ignore the above...

Re:Bad idea?

[LionMage]

Carl Sagan also expounded this idea in lectures before he died -- I attended one of these lectures at RPI in 1993 or thereabouts. He also condensed his arguments into a book, entitled Pale Blue Dot.

Sagan used an interesting analogy... the swamps of Camarena. The story goes that an ancient city-state (one of the colonies of Syracuse, if I remember correctly) had a major malaria problem, and they sought to alleviate the problem by draining the nearby swamps. (Presumably, these people saw a correlation between swamp land and malaria, but probably didn't understand that mosquitoes were the disease vector.) Every civic leader of this city state was in favor of the plan except for the Oracle, who warned that there would be dire consequences.

The swamps were drained, and the incidence of malaria tapered off... and then a neighboring city-state invaded. It turned out that the swamp provided a natural barrier which made military invasion difficult.

Sagan argues that by tracking NEOs, we could be setting ourselves up for some nefarious figure (he suggested the leader of a rogue nation, but I think today we'd probably suspect a terrorist cell as a more likely candidate) using knowledge of NEOs to redirect one -- not to save Earth, but to deliberately hit targets on Earth. The idea is, in solving one problem, we might create a worse problem.

In all fairness, though, it seems that Carl Sagan's argument was mainly a justification for human colonization of other planets. That way, we don't have all our eggs in the same proverbial basket. While Dr. Sagan's argument might well be valid, one should bear in mind that his argument was motivated by a desire to promote human spaceflight and colonization of Mars. This point was driven home repeatedly in his lectures and in Pale Blue Dot. While I agree that it's a good idea to get our species off of this ball of rock and spread out a bit, I am not sure that any terrorist state would have sufficient means to hold the world hostage with ballistic NEOs.

Perspective

[BoldAC]

Risks of dying in car: 1 in 100
Risks of dying in plane:1 in 20,000
Risks of dying from asteroid 1 in 20,000 to 100,000

Source

May I just get somebody to help me pay off my student loans and make sure that there is enough social security to cover my health when I get old?

AC

Re:Perspective

[beeplet]

Yes, but in any given car crash, only a few people might die. In any given astroid collision, many people, if not everyone, will be dead.

Also... what does the 1/100,000 statistic mean? That I have a 1/100,000 chance of dying from being hit by an astroid during my lifetime? (Seems rather high to me!)

Re:Perspective

[JoeBaldwin]

I dunno. If your definition of "car" is loose enough to include "convoy of ICBM launchers" then the probability goes significantly higher...

Re:Perspective

[ratsnapple tea]

Can you back up your claim that we'd be driven to extinction by an asteroid hit?

Re:Perspective

[NanoGator]

"Risks of dying in plane:1 in 20,000"

The chances of boarding a plane with a bomb aboard are approximately a million to one. The chances of boarding a plane with two bombs aboard are a million x a million to one. Reduce the risk, bring your own bomb!

Re:Perspective

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

1. Meteorite hits Earth. It hits an empty lot, so nobody is hurt or killed.
2. Unfortunately, the empty lot is in downtown Islamabad. Pakistani government mistakes it for an incoming nuclear strike from India, and retaliates with missile strikes on Bangalore and Calcutta.
3. Indian government sees incoming missiles, retaliates against Pakistan.
4. Lather rinse repeat.
5. One of the missiles goes off course and hits North Korea.
6. North Korea thinks it's from the US, and hits Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.
7. Bush assumes the missiles are coming from France, and orders nuclear strikes on Paris.
8. World War III goes on like this for 24 more hours.
9. Human race (and everything else except cockroaches) extinct.
10. ???
11. Profit!

Re:Perspective

[itbwtcl]

The End of the World

Re:Perspective

[HD Webdev]

Can you back up your claim that we'd be driven to extinction by an asteroid hit?

Well, I can't prove that person's claim, OTOH, it's impossible to disprove it.

So, um, "there!" or something!

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Risk of US government defaulting and economy tanking when social security, war on terror, medicare, medicaid, war on drugs, and student aid costs get too high: about 1 in 1.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're young and you think social security will be around when you get old, you'll be wrong on both counts. No one that naive could possibly make it to old age.

Re:Perspective

[centauri]

Sure, but when a car or plane crashes it doesn't take out 20,000 or even 100 other people. When an asteroid hits it could take out 1,000,000 people before it even hits the ground.

Whenever I hear statistics like this, I imagine going up to every person and rolling a set (or two or three sets) of percentile dice, a la D&D. If I roll a one for that person on one set, they'll die in a car crash. If I roll a 1 for a person on two sets, they'll die in a plane crash. If I roll a 1 for a person on three sets they'll die in an impact. But if the last one happens I can put my dice in my bag and fly 10,000 miles away, because rolling for anyone else in that area has become moot.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

7. Bush assumes the missiles are coming from France, and orders nuclear strikes on Paris.

err, dontcha mean?:

7. Bush assumes the missiles are coming from France, and orders nuclear strikes on Berlin.

Re:Perspective

[forkazoo]

So, 1 in 100,000 people die in asteroid attacks. For the sake of argument, lets round up, and say that there are ten billion people on Earth. Thus 100,000 people will die in asteroid attacks. Assume that it takes about 100 years for those 100,000 people to die off. Thus, we are going to be averaging 1,000 people dead from asteroids every year.

Side note : When a large killer asteroid strikes the Earth, killing someone... It may tend to effect additional people in the area, especially in the case of Texas-sized asteroids.

Side Side note : What's this? Asteroids don't attack people? Maybe my numbers are off, then...

Re:Perspective

[Happy Cramper]

Risk of an American dying in a car 1 in 100. Doesn't anyone else find this number really inflated. Lets use round numbers: 300M people, divide by 100, = 3M dead Americans. Now lets divide that by an average life span of say, 75 years = 40K dead citizens per year. YIKES, jibes with stats normally thrown around.

Come to think of it, a truck travelling well over 100 MPH missed my fully loaded family van by a couple feet tonight. Of course Earth experienced something similar not long ago. How come that doesn't seem to make me feel more secure? Drunk driving should be a capital offense and we ought to spend a little to track near Earth object as well.

Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[handy_vandal]

Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention.

Famine, disesase, and war could all be ended in a moment -- by a sufficiently large asteroid.

Gallows humor aside, I'm sorry to say it but: why should we realistically expect an end to famine, disease, war? They've been with us throughout history. Man has always wished to eliminate these woes -- yes they keep getting worse and worse.

At least there's the possibility that a technological fix might save us from asteroid impact. Give me some reason to believe that there's any kind of fix for war etc.

-kgj

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[Saeger]

Give me some reason to believe that there's any kind of fix for war etc.

The fix for war mongering would require genetic fixes, but in order to get a handle on the unintended consequences we'd need more intelligence first.

The fix for famine & disease is much simpler, and much closer: decentralized molecular manufacturing, and artificial immune systems / cell-repair.

--

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[kamapuaa]

why should we realistically expect an end to famine, disease, war?

Alternatively, why should we realistically expect an asteroid to hit the Earth and destroy 90% of the population? How many millions upon millions or years will it take before this happens? And yet, Slashdot can't go a month without posting another "asteroids are about to hit us all." Is there anything more obscure that slashdot can be afraid about?

There's real things out there that people should be concerned about, and a 1/50,000,000 chance of a catastophic asteroid collision isn't one of them.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[useosx]

why should we realistically expect an end to famine, disease, war? They've been with us throughout history. Man has always wished to eliminate these woes -- yes they keep getting worse and worse.

This is an idiotic, self-perpetuating argument. Just because something is, and has been for a long time, does not mean it is an unchangeable truth.

In this particular instance, consider this: the world is rapidly changing and is not the same as, say, during the Roman Empire, yet there is a lot of residual ideologies and beliefs left over from those times. They are not set in stone, however...do not mistake them for "human nature." There have been a lot of improvements to the world that should not be overlooked (civil rights movement, etc).

There are some people who are interested in actualizing change in the world. Some have even written down their thoughts about it.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[Anonymous Coward]

Man has always wished to eliminate these woes -- yet they keep getting worse and worse.
What? Maybe war has been getting worse and worse (although Genghis Khan sure did quite a number, and the threat of global nuclear annihilation seems to have receded) but famine and disease have been, with a few hiccups, declining steadily for hundreds of years.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[blincoln]

This is an idiotic, self-perpetuating argument.

No more so than the "we should feed the entire planet, cure every disease, and end war before we work on anything else" argument that the original post regurgitated.

That argument is a tar baby - it's designed to attract people in and then get them stuck working on things that haven't been resolved for, what, six thousand years of human society?

Obviously all three of those things are noble goals, but as I've said before, putting other things (like asteroid defence, or space exploration in general) aside until they are taken care of is like me saying "I'm going to wait to have kids until I've got a seven-figure salary, three cars, and a mansion." It could happen, but the probability is so low that it's not worth considering. I will probably be dead of old age before that happens, just like the human race will probably be dead by asteroid impact (or other cause) before we resolve the three issues someone always mentions in this type of discussion.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[Nicholas Q Name]

Damn right!
Grandparent's attitude is completely baffling to me but it is so prevalent in society that I often wonder how anything gets changed.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[jdunn14]

Give me some reason to believe that there's any kind of fix for war etc.

I know, I'll create a weapon of such destructive power as to make war unthinkable. I'll call it the machine gun (Gatling sincerely believed his invention would end war by making it unthinkable to use due to the horrific carnage possible by his weapons). Oh wait, we'll split atoms on a battlefield destroying everything, then no one will ever want to wage war again. Oh wait, ....

I'm with you on this one, disease, famine, war, all should be worked on, as they have been, but you can't stick your head in the sand about other problems until those are resolved (if they ever are).

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[fredmosby]

But the problem is that whenever we solve a problem our standards for what the world should be like increase. So we keep finding more problems. If we wait until we have solved all of the problems on earth before developing space technology then we never will.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[loconet]

This is an idiotic, self-perpetuating argument. Just because something is, and has been for a long time, does not mean it is an unchangeable truth.

What small bubble are you living in? He is right, it might not be an unchangeable truth, but It is far easier to achieve protection from an asteroid that is about to hit us than protection from War, Hunger, Povertiy which basically is protection from ourselves.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[smallpaul]

Wha makes you think that famine, disease and war are getting worse and worse? Most of the largest countries like India and China are relatively prosperous, relatively healthy and relatively at peace compared to (let's say) the period from 1910-1960.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[handy_vandal]

What makes you think that famine, disease and war are getting worse and worse? Most of the largest countries like India and China are relatively prosperous, relatively healthy and relatively at peace compared to (let's say) the period from 1910-1960.

Well said. Thanks for the insightful comment.

-kgj

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[k_head]

Ask yourself this.

Why am I trying to prevent an asteroid from hitting the earth? Chances are that you want to

1) Prevent a lot of humans from being killed.
2) Prevent a lot humans from suffering badly.

You can accomplish that right now and by spending less money!. It's a matter of priorities. Do you want to spend a 100 billion on something that has a .01% chance of happening? Why not spend that money now to help the dying and the suffering people of the world.

sure you won't help all of them but lets face it you may not save all humans when the asteroid is coming either.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[glitch23]

Gallows humor aside, I'm sorry to say it but: why should we realistically expect an end to famine, disease, war? They've been with us throughout history. Man has always wished to eliminate these woes -- yes they keep getting worse and worse.

Tell the US gov't to quit giving NASA billions of dollars to use within their budget and the famine problem might actually go away. The famine and disease problems keep getting bigger b/c people for some reason think that we need to find if there is life on Mars when there some of the lives that we already have on Earth are dwindling away. So more and more money is spent on stupid things instead of on what is needed.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[natophonic]

putting other things (like asteroid defence, or space exploration in general) aside until they are taken care of is like me saying "I'm going to wait to have kids until I've got a seven-figure salary, three cars, and a mansion."

it's really more like saying, "i'm going to wait on buying the quad ATV, and the denon 5.1 home theater, until i pay off my five-figure credit card debt and feed and clothe the kids."

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[blincoln]

Chances are that you want to
1) Prevent a lot of humans from being killed.
2) Prevent a lot humans from suffering badly.

No, I think we should prevent all of ourselves from dying. There is nothing in the world right now apart from a global nuclear war and a large asteroid that can do wipe out the entire human race.

Why not spend that money now to help the dying and the suffering people of the world.

People already are spending money on that. It will never "solve" that problem, because it's one that will always be with us.

sure you won't help all of them but lets face it you may not save all humans when the asteroid is coming either.

If it's a big enough asteroid, either everyone survives, or no one does. Everything we've done since the dawn of civilization would be wiped out. I think that's worth spending money to prevent.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[master_p]

Man has always wished to eliminate these woes

Man has never wished to eliminate these problems. Man wished that they never existed in the first place. It is a subtle difference, but quite a significant one.

If man wished to eliminate these problems, they would have been eliminated long ago. But man is greedy, and when he comes to power, the only thing he eventually does is to satisfy his greed.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[k_head]

So you want to spend tons of money on the .01% chance that we will all die from an asteroid.

In the mean time you don't mind that you are condeming milllions of people to further poverty and misery. Throwing up your hands and saying "we'll never rid the world of poverty so lets spend our money on frivolous pursuits" seems silly to me.

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[Anonymous Coward]

World humger and world peace are not "idiotic arguments". Hunger could be avoided with very few resources. Most people have something to eat, actually most people live in abundancy and peace.

With very little effort, peace and food could be delivered everywhere, but certainly not by invading other countries.

What would you think if other countries invaded yours to "show you some light". Of course that doesn't work, it will never work in fact.

Respecting each others cultures is the only way. Some things are better, some things are worse, but overall each culture has been designed to resolve human problems.

Famous last words

[plams]

How many times in history has a meteor caused massive damage on earth? How many percent of the earth is covered by water? I would think peak oil poses a much larger threat.

Oh, and I've also always wanted to see a big ass meteor plunge violently through the atmosphere. Now they're ruining the fun.

Re:Famous last words

[imsabbel]

Hm.
1. Quite often (in geological proportions)
1b) There was this little explosion in russia 1907 (iirc). If it had hit somewhere else, it could have killed 100000s...

2. Do you want to suggest a hit into water would be better than a land hit? Think again. There are such things as Tsunamies, and massive water vapour can mess up climate as well as dust/ashes.

Re:Famous last words

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

A water impact would be far worse than a land impact, according to the people who've tried to make estimates. A land impact would glow white for a long time and radiate much of the impact energy back into space. A water impact would dump much more energy into the atmosphere.

Though realistically, the most damaging place for an Tunguska-sized impact would be in the India-Pakistan area during a crisis, or just about any time in the Middle East. It could easily be mistaken at first for a nuclear explosion. All it would take would be one decision-maker jumping to a conclusion without waiting for the radiation readings, and even a small impact could trigger a horror that would make the twentieth century look good by comparison.

Re:Famous last words

[Anonymous Coward]

The last 'major' extinction event took place at the end of the cretaceous period...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/darwin/exfiles/la st intro.htm

The siberian explosion didn't actually hit land, but exploded in the atmosphere...

http://www.psi.edu/projects/siberia/siberia.html

My 2c is that if it's going to happen (being hit by an asterioid big enough to cause an extinction event) it's going to happen no matter what we do, at least for the foreseeable future. Maybe it's just the biologist in me, but I simply accept that the extinction of humankind/mammalian life is quite possible, even probable on a geological timescale. After all, whatever religious viewpoints/beliefs the individual holds aside, we ARE just one of a species, no more exempt from extinction events than any other species on earth.

Re:Famous last words

[matt4077]

Thats total BS of course. What would happen? Let's say there is an impact in Jerusalem and everybody thinks its a nuke. Israel has WMDs, but what are they gonna do? They have no target.

Let's say the impact is in New Delhi. India might blaim Pakistan and both of them have Nukes. They might even use them, yes, but it would still be contained on the subcontinent.

There is no szenario that would cause a real global war. Thats simply because all the superpowers are more or less on the same side now, and none would risk all that for a local conflict.

Re:Famous last words

[BrianMarshall]

The twentieth century already looks good by comparison.

Geo (or larger) Politics and the human condition

[Space cowboy]

Back in April 2002, the UK government started to fund a centre studying both the near-earth-orbit rocks we know about, and ways of increasing awareness and detection rates, as well as investigating possible protection strategies.

Personally I think it's just playing at people-politics, at least in the form the UK has done it $600k isn't going to go very far, but it's a relatively cheap purchase of public goodwill... On the other hand, at the moment I'll take what we can get.

There's a tiny chance of life as we know it being destroyed. A really tiny chance, and one thing humans aren't good at is disaster-planning - even when the potential result is extinction, the "gut-feeling" is to say "it'll never happen", because none of us have any experience of it happening. This is short-sighted, we should be doing something.

Although I don't think there's any reason to panic about it, the last great ecosystem was destroyed by (perhaps two, perhaps 1) asteroid, as far as we know. Researching, thinking, creating plans would probably be a good idea, at least IMHO.

Simon

A few related sites.....

[Scrab]

http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyN ews/asteroid0107.html

http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/I7.htm

http://home.att.net/~thehessians/asteroidstrike. ht ml

http://www.sandia.gov/media/comethit.htm

http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/crater.ht ml

The Tin Foil Hats Say

[Alien54]

As seen in this article featuring the testimony of Dr Carol Rosin. Dr Carol Rosin was the first woman corporate manager of Fairchild Industries and was spokesperson for Wernher Von Braun in the last years of his life. She founded the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space in Washington DC and has testified before Congress on many occasions about space based weapons. Von Braun revealed to Dr Rosin a plan to justify weapons in spaced based on hoaxing an extraterrestrial threat. She was also present at meetings in the '70s when the scenario for the Gulf War of the '90s was planned.

• As practically a deathbed speech, he educated me about those concepts and who the players were in this game. He gave me the responsibility, since he was dying, of continuing this effort to prevent the weaponization of outer space.

  When Wernher Von Braun was dying of cancer, he asked me to be his spokesperson, to appear on occasions when he was too ill to speak. I did this. What was most interesting to me was a repetitive sentence that he said to me over and over again during the approximately four years that I had the opportunity to work with him.

  He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics That was how we identify an enemy. The strategy that Wernher Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered to be the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had "killer satellites". We were told that they were coming to get us and control us-that they were "Commies."

  Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country "crazies." We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons.

  The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it.

  Asteroids- against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons.

  And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card.

  "And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie."

  I think I was too naive at that time to know the seriousness of the nature of the spin that was being put on the system. And now, the pieces are starting to fall into place. We are building a space-based weapons system on a premise that is a lie, a spin. Wernher Von Braun was trying to hint that to me back in the early 70's and right up until the moment when he died in 1977.

Be sure your Tin Foil hats are well grounded

Too big to handle

[fembots]

The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.'

Maybe this is the answer to such threats, I.E. Do nothing, and if we got hit, it is probably do late to do anything anyway.

I wonder with our current technology and understanding of the outer space (left alone our 'inner' space), can we really, reliably, detect a human-wiping asteroid?

For example, if we can only detect an object from 1,000 LightYears away, what if that thing is moving at 1 million LY? Wouldn't we be hit seconds after we 'saw' it?

Re:Too big to handle

[Alien54]

For example, if we can only detect an object from 1,000 LightYears away, what if that thing is moving at 1 million LY? Wouldn't we be hit seconds after we 'saw' it?

Natural objects cannot move fast than the speed of light, and substantial size stuff like planets or asteroids cannot move at relativistic speeds (i.e. - substantial fraction of the speed of light) because the stresses when render them to powder.

Therefore the fastest something fairly large could move to get here, starting 1000 LY away, would mean an arrival date of 100,000 to a quarter of a million years from now. I think we have time.

Moving at light speed, it would still take 1000 years to get here. Moving at 99% of light speed, we would see it ten years in advance.

Probably it would stand a fair chance of punching a small hole straight through the other side of the earth due to momentum alone (not a serious suggestion, but stranger things have happened)

Plus, 1 million LY is never a speed. It is only a distance, about a third of the way towards the Andromeda galaxy, as an example.

The trully big hassle are the small rocks which are big enough to do serious damage like wiping out a city, but not big enough to wipe out a province or country. These are hard to spot in advance.

Re:Too big to handle

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Light years aren't a unit of speed. It can't be moving at 1000000 LY/hr, or even 1MLY/y, unless it's light, in which case we don't have much to worry about....

Asteroids don't travel very near C. If we could detect one 1000 LY away, as you propose, we'd have millions of years to react.

Re:Too big to handle

[mynameis (mother ...]

For example, if we can only detect an object from 1,000 LightYears away, what if that thing is moving at 1 million LY? Wouldn't we be hit seconds after we 'saw' it?

Im gunna be nice. I promise.

Arggggnnnnnnnnnnn. so-hard-to-maintain-decorum

[Calmness Grasshopper]

If it is 1000 LY from us,

f(x)=Time-to-impact
> HS physics says f(x)=1000LY / x
1 of Uncle Al's theories points out that:

As lim(speed ->infinity] the function becomes divergent around f(c)

For the more dense: The minimum possible real time-till-munging cannot be less than 1000 years

Tounge so firmly planted in cheek...

Re:Too big to handle

[RetroGeek]

Natural objects cannot move fast than the speed of light, and substantial size stuff like planets or asteroids cannot move at relativistic speeds (i.e. - substantial fraction of the speed of light) because the stresses when render them to powder.

Do you mean the force required to accelerate the object, or the mere speed itself?

How can mere speed (especially in vacuum) be a facter?

Yes I know there is no such thing as an ideal vacuum. Is that what you mean, that the 1-2 molecules per cubic meter are sufficient to cause problems to a planetary size object?

Re:Too big to handle

[fembots]

My apology for the wrong use of LY, I should have said something like "what if that thing is moving at 1 million times the speed of light".

And all this goes back to my original point, which questioned our understanding on how things work beyond our environment.

Yes, everybody knows nothing can travel faster than light, that's our understanding, but that doesn't not necessarily mean that is how things are working on the other side of the universe.

The key point is, we didn't know anything else. It's pretty much like searching life on Mars, we are searching for water as that's the most commmon element found in life, and that's all we can do, but that doesn't mean water is the only thing that supports life.

And this lack of understanding may well render our technology useless.

Re:Too big to handle

[rcw-home]

For example, if we can only detect an object from 1,000 LightYears away

The Solar System is, for all practical purposes, only about one light day across. Just about any object that could cause us harm is within the heliopause.

what if that thing is moving at 1 million LY? Wouldn't we be hit seconds after we 'saw' it?

One million light years is not a speed. Granted, some people say they were "going 60 miles" when they mean "60 miles per hour", but any implied time measurement would have to be at least 1 million years. Otherwise your killer asteroid would be travelling faster than the speed of light.

Most asteroids near earth's orbit are moving in (very roughly) the same orbital speed range as earth - 15 km/sec. The more elliptical the orbit, the closer the asteroid will be to perihelion (its maximum speed) as it crosses earth's orbit, and the faster it will be moving in comparison with earth.

The problem is, in order to see something, it has to produce or reflect light, or get in the way of something else that does. We're pretty dependant on the sun to light them up, so it's especially tough to see the ones coming back from the sun towards us (it's like seeing a very tiny new moon).

Re:Too big to handle

[S3D]

While natural macroscopic objects rarely could move at relativistic speed , artificial objects can. Even with near-modern technology Orion spacecraft (spacecraft pushed by nuclear explosions) could be accelerated to about .1c Even quite small relativistic impactor hitting the planet is a fearsome weapon, capable completly exterminate humanity. There is no foreseeable technology, capable protect planet from relativistic impactor, but it's quite possible that weapon itself will be technically possible in the nearest one-two hundred years. Orion spacecraft at .1c possible even with existing technology, though economically not feasable. There is an article in wiki about relativistic weapon: science fictional(for now) weapon -RKV

Re:Too big to handle

[betelgeuse-4]

You appear to be challenging Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Unless you can come up with some substantial evidence that Einstein was totally wrong, I will continue to assume that macroscopic objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light, no matter where they are in the Universe.

Re:Too big to handle

[Alien54]

Do you mean the force required to accelerate the object, or the mere speed itself? How can mere speed (especially in vacuum) be a factor?

Well unless accelerated slowly, the stress would cause the object to breakup

Plus space is never truly empty. Even in Deepest space, there are many atoms per cubic meter, and thus there are enough over the light years to cause enough friction to melt the asteroid away long before it reached us.

How many atoms exist over the lightyears to impact on a body moving at such a speed?

A planet at that size and scale is best considered and modelled as having the solidness of a ball of water suspended in weightlessness, at least as far as the dynamics of altering it's course. Planets are truly fragile things. On the scales involved, they have no real strength.

Imagine yourself as a diety with the planets the size of basketballs, etc. The analogy of a ball of water is pretty accurate as far as you ability to move them arround.

Re:Too big to handle

[fwarren]

It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs." - Han Solo,

Re:Too big to handle

[Anonymous Coward]

As objects approach the speed of light, its mass increases, which requires more energy to accelerate... so on and so on... so basically you can never get to the speed of light. To do so you would need infinate enegy and the planet would have infinate mass (which is why it would tear itself apart/black hole/something...)

Re:Too big to handle

[BubbleNOP]

Why can't we just use radar?

Re:Too big to handle

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the .1 c orion isn't feasible economically. But I question you on how a more normalish orion wouldn't be feasible, even if it only had .01 lightspeed, the impact power would be incredible, and if you meant launch costs, well if your shooting at the planet anyway, you might as well just use it's nuclear drive to launch from the planet. (orion drives have incredible thrust afterall) I mean, it's not like there's going to be much left after you come back.

Quickshot

Re:Too big to handle

[rcw-home]

Why can't we just use radar?

We use the sun as a giant 400000000000000000000000000 watt radar gun to "light up" the targets.

We could use something besides the sun, but unfortunately our AWACS planes just don't have the resolving capability at that range. Unfortunately we're limited by international treaty here - google search for "inverse square law" for more on that.

I'd say it's overblown except

[Daniel Quinlan]

that almost nobody is really taking this seriously, so the lack of interest in space defense seems about right to me. The human species has survived 2 million years without going the way of the dinosaur. It seems like there are many reasons to not stress out about this:

• Low risk/reward ratio, public money is much better spent elsewhere. If someone else wants to spend their money on this, more power to them.
• Our technology is very rapidly advancing, especially relative to the amount of time that passes (on average) between significant asteroid hits. 100 years ago we were completely helpless. 50 years ago, we had nukes, but no missles that were even close to being able to deliver them, in another 50 or 100 years, this may be a yawner due to general technology advances.

To be completely flippant (and yes, I do realize there is a risk, I just think it is relatively low) ... boring! I just hope this doesn't turn into another cause where misguided celebrities drive us into spending money on it disproportionally like certain trendy diseases.

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[beeplet]

The human species has survived 2 million years without going the way of the dinosaur. It seems like there are many reasons to not stress out about this.

Except the dinosaurs survived 100 million years before going the way of the dinosaur...

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[lommer]

I'd agree with you in that money spent developing defense systems is largely wasted, but I do think we need to put MUCH more effort into detection systems. If we can detect an asteroid 10 years before it hits us, I'm pretty confident that it'll get handled. But if we don't even know it's there - we're fucked.

As well, detection systems have other benifits (think advances in optics or radio-imaging, and the discovery of other inner-solarsystem bodies that may be scientifically interesting).

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[GileadGreene]

If we can detect an asteroid 10 years before it hits us, I'm pretty confident that it'll get handled.

I'm not. I worked on a study where we examined what the options would be for dealing with an asteroid due to hit in 10 years if we detected it today. The bottom line was that it would be really hard to stop. And we could only say it wasn't impossible if we made some convenient assumptions about the composition of the asteroid.

Who knows, maybe an Apollo-scale effort could be mounted to stop the impact. But I wouldn't count on it. It is a hard problem, and sheer manpower dollars may not be enough.

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think the tech is pretty much available now, just that the political will simply isn't there.

There also lies a problem that these things have to be discovered before anything can be done about it. Finding and tracking 1km+ objects isn't necessarily easy, often potential close calls aren't known until a few days before (or even after!) the fact, and some of the means of preventing hits take time to set in motion even after developing them.

You are correct, the risk of dying due to an asteroid hit is small. It is high enough to justify paying a few researchers to track down the objects, but not yet enough to justify a defense unless a viable threat is found.

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[Anonymous Coward]

True, I suppose. But if you really think about it. The most efficient possible solution would be to forget about conventional rockets and simply implement a nuclear drive, specifically the most easiest type to make, a orion drive. Not that doing this would be easy either, but you'd have the ability to launch alot of mass at a real high speed. I figure a proper application of this might do the trick.

Quickshot

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[potat0man]

If someone else wants to spend their money on this, more power to them.

Brilliant!

1. Build asteroid defense system
2. Wait for asteroid to come threateningly close (or make people think one is)
3. Extort the world.
4. Profit!

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[Anonymous Coward]

homo sapiens hasn't been around for 2 million years- the oldest fossils are about 100,000 yrs old.

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[bigpat]

"The human species has survived 2 million years without going the way of the dinosaur."

2 million years? Human history spans about the last 10,000 years. And only the last 1000 - 3000 is documented with any regularity. I would say that Human Civilization has been good for people, but has not nearly the track record you suggest. More often we have seen that human civilizations have been fairly vulnerable to environmental disruptions.

I am fairly libertarian, so I see a limited purpose for government, but defending civilization certainly includes defending us from our most deadly enemy, mother nature and time, in all there insidious guises.

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[imaginate]

In this case, getting there is less than half the fun. The real trick is moving and/or destroying enough of the asteroid to prevent it from doing serious harm. The hard thing to realize is just how *much* mass could be involved in a large asteroid.

From what I've read, destruction is basically impossible; the little pieces that were left could do as much or more damage than the whole rock. Moving it requires absolutely enormous amounts of energy (presumably applied at a point in its trajectory when only a "nudge" is needed) It's just a lot of momentum to divert, and I've heard that even the application of a whole lotta nukes is not much energy in comparison.

T'would be a fun engineering project though, I have to say. To have the resources of the entire unified population of humans at your disposal could allow for some damned cool machinery.

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[Anonymous Coward]

HEY ...just because something hasnt happened in the past 2 million years does not mean that it wont happen in next 5 10 or 100 million year. Ok if it is about 500 years from now, it wouldnt matter because if we survive for that long, we will have sufficient tech to counter it. But what if it happens in the next decade ? better prepared than sorry. And comapred to the war in iraq, this spending would be trivial. Its not as if humans always spend money usefully. Its a small amount to waste as insurance when the human species is at stake.

Re:I'd say it's overblown except

[kabocox]

This makes sense. In 100-200 years, we could have lets see self reproducing mining/manufacturing robots, better solar cells, or any general nano tech. We already have the tech to identify and track every asteriod in our system. We just don't put the effort into that direction though. We are too busy looking for aliens or the edge of the universe. I'll give you a hint: the asteriod that hits this planet won't be coming from out several light years out. We could have any asteriod threat mined or moved if identified early enough.

Will they ever learn?

[polemistes]

Just to be pessimistic; I'm sure if anyone ever manage to agree on some way to protect the earth from celestial bodies, it will be in the form of some weapon that is capable of destroying the whole planet before anything else can hit it.

Ruthless men control the weapon's industry, and the weapon's industry controls the money that goes to persuade the desicion makers.

It would be better, at least more senisble, to let the heavenly bodies decide our fate, than these fellows.

Hasn't he done well?

[Tim Ward]

For anyone who doesn't know, Lembit Opik[1] (Google will tell you all you want to know about him) was very largely responsible for getting this issue onto the political agenda.

Last time I was in the same room as him he was asked "OK, now you've got the politicians taking this seriously, when we spot one of these beggars coming towards us what do we do about it?"

His reply was that that wasn't his area of expertise; once politicians were taking the threat seriously they'd allocate money to the scientists and engineers, and a solution, if one were possible at all, was a done deal.

His lecture on how he got the politicians to take him seriously is well worth listening to; but actually I've found him rather good as a comic lecturer on several other subjects as well.

[1] Oh, and I'm sure slashdot geeks knew already that the "Oort cloud" is just shorthand for the "Oort-Opik cloud".

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Rendezvous with Rama, anyone?

[proverbialcow]

Man, that Arthur C. Clarke is portentious - first we run out of Greek and Roman mythology to name astronomical bodies after, and now we're discussing building a planetary defense against asteroids?

It's all there in "Rendezvous with Rama." Just remember, the Ramans do everything in threes.

Hmmmm...Top Raman...

Need protection against ourselves

[Saeger]

The odds of our civilization being destroyed by asteroid impact in the next few decades is really insignificant when compared to the odds that our advancing technology -- in the hands of still primitive minds -- kills us off first.

It would be a cosmic joke for us to have made it these past hundreds of thousands of slow years, only to be wiped out by a dumb rock in the next ~30 years or so that matter most in our evolution to post-humanity.

--

Re:Need protection against ourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

The joke has always been on us, but so far I know of no other race in the universe that has a sense of humor to begin with.

Colonize Mars!

[schnarff]

The ultimate defense for humanity and all the rest of the life on this planet, of course, is to terraform and colonize Mars. That way, even if a planetary defense system fails and Earth gets pulverized, life lives on on the surface of Mars.

Re:Colonize Mars!

[snarkh]

What sort of catastrophe would pulverize Earth? And why would not Mars get pulverized in that case?

It seems very unikely that the humanity would be completely destroyed even if a disaster on the planetary scale occurs.

Famous actors with family attachments

[Operating Thetan]

AFAIK, it's been scientifically proven that they can stop asteroids, although they sometimes die in the attempt. Perhaps a reserve of actors could be established, similar to the national guard?

I, for one, welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.

...our more proactive and responsive to the electorate cockroach politician overlords.

Great....

[fataugie]

I love this line:
'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.

Well, I'm sure anyone left after the "big one" hits will have other things on their mind (food, shelter, etc) besides setting up a freakin laser beam to shoot the next one down.

Why not just say, if we don't get on the stick and get something in place, we're all f*cked if the "big one" hits earth?

Focus on the more iminent?

[Loconut1389]

Hopefully it'll work better than our missile defense system... Maybe we should make that work better first..

Well...

[HarveyBirdman]

I, for one, root for the asteroid.

Re:Well...

[polemistes]

You're right. I'm sorry. It's wrong of me to accuse individual people of being ruthless, without even having met them. I think there are very few ruthless, and no purely evil people around. And I don't really belive weapon makers are worse than anybody else. We are all the victims of fear and greed, and we all try to find ways to cope with this. Everyone does that differently. Nobody can tell anyone what is really right. The rule I try my best to follow is that submitting to my fears will only bring me more fear. Therefore I hope I can choose trust rather than violence, even when I risk getting hurt.

Therefore I still mean we should have trust in the skies, and not submit to our fears and build protections that could destroy us.

Re:Well...

[gnu-generation-one]

"I, for one, root for the asteroid."

Do you think the people on the asteroid are preparing their earth-defence systems, and making charts of the planets that're likely to hit them?

"Just a really big nookular bomb on one side of that planet ought to do it" one alien on that asteroid is saying to another...

Re:Well...

[GarryOwen]

What about food and shelter? Would you rather trust that those will be provided then have guns in the world to actually do so? Distruction is not always evil, it is how it is used that determines whether or not it is evil.

Re:Well...

[polemistes]

I hope I can trust the world to provide me with the means to get everything I need. Then I have to trust myself to use those means. Very few people need guns to get either food or shelter.

But I didn't say I was against guns. What I meant was that I don't belive in violence as an answer to our fears. If I would take my gun out hunting, it wouldn't be because of my fear of starvation, but in hope of getting a good meal, and an exiting weekend in the forest. At least that is how I think it should be.

Re:Well...

[GarryOwen]

Thanks for the reply, I guess it is different POV. I'm alot more militant than most people :)

Nerdliness aside...

[bigberk]

I will admit that as a general nerd and space geek (I own a telescope) I am concerned about the possibility of the human population getting wiped out by a large space-borne impact.

But isn't it sad that governments throw billions of dollars towards defense (from other humans) yet nobody is willing to invest in defense of the earth at large?

This is the kind of shit that makes us look awfully silly when the aliens come inspect the rubble after the impact.

Re:Nerdliness aside...

[Grey Ninja]

Hey Grog, look at this one... he seemed to be firing lead pellets at the asteroid when it hit. I wonder what ever convinced these people that such a device could protect them?

First Target

[CuriousKangaroo]

The first thing they need to do is shoot down Sedna so that our textbooks don't need to be changed.

Re: What we will do

[Black Parrot]

I am a MUFON field investigator. I happen to know that "stargate" technology is real, and our government has been using it to travel to other planets since the mid-70's.

The reason it isn't being addressed is because those in power already have a means of escape - the stargate.

No, this isn't an attempt to be funny or some unfounded conspiracy theory. This is real.

I am withholding my name and posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I would suggest that anyone who responds do the same.

I see that you're spilling the story we 'leaked' to the janitors.

1 big astroid

[j_sp_r]

could wipe out all our problems: Disseases, over-population, poor people etc etc. And who is left to bother that everyone is dead. No one to complain. I do mind al medium-sized astroid, that could give serious problems (people survive & moan, must build shelter, rebuild our world etc etc) And in a few billion years new "humans" will live the earth! Don't look only 100 years futher!

I personally believe...

[PovRayMan]

...that there is very little to fear in these cases of asteroids destroying the planet. Sure it has happened many times in past earth history, but with movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, we're only reinforcing a fear because of our more recently knowledge of the universe. Decades to hundreds of years ago people were ignorant of how much goes on in outer space, but with modern space technology and understanding we realize just how violent the universe/galaxy is. The fact that remains on top is that we've (life on earth) been here for millions of years and the likelyhood of mankind being wiped out in the next year, or decade, or century is extremely slim.

However, if such a EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT (Hey, I liked the movie Deep Impact! Frodo was in it!) were to occur, we could send up a team of rag-tag meatheads who would undoubtably save us all by blowing it up, but not before sharing a heartfelt moment about family (Arwen was in Armageddon!).

So really, just relax because someway or another a cast member of Lord of the Rings will save us.

Well...

[HarveyBirdman]

Well, I've met the CEO of the weapon maker I work for, and he's hardly ruthless. Good pool player, though.

chicken! ...good!

[pizza_milkshake]

where's lilu when you need her?

Re:Imperial Measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also posting anonymously, for obvious reasons. If we're not in England, then why the fuck do you spell it "programme"? If we're in America, then why the fuck are you concerned that a general-interest website uses the common measurement term of the American people??? If you love jolly old England so much, get the fuck out of the US. You can eat tea and crumpets while chatting away about the queen and shagging your sister, or whatever ther fuck they do over there.

Getting hit by rocks - old fashioned!

[NotQuiteReal]

There are plenty of cosmological dangers to worry about, such as gamma rays wiping all life off the planet in a second.

What SPF do I need for that threat?

In this modern age, it is good to be reminded that you should look out for the simple stuff - like rocks falling on you.

Re:dumbass

[Maskirovka]

I can't imagine being caught in a mind where my bottomless hate for some politician overrides all other concerns.

You this sort of thing too seriously. Try to think of it as humor fueled by a healthy cynicism 99% of politicians create that makes the other 1% look bad.

We need to upgrade our citadel...

[drenehtsral]

and include a Quasar Cannon! Yeah, that's it =:-)

I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that a giant rock does hit the planet. That way everyone short sightedness will be aptly rewarded.

I for one (if I am left) will welcome our new roach overloads.

Space.com is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Risk of dying from asteroid based on what?

No one has ever been killed by an asteroid that I've heard of... I'm pretty sure it doesn't show up on any mortality list I know of...

Re:Space.com is bullshit

[Troed]

Tunguska, 1908.

I tried to google for some numbers, but all I found was The human death toll was small - nothing really concrete.

less competition

[pizza_milkshake]

getting hit by an asteroid might not be so bad... for those left it will be much easier to get "first post", for instance.

Gameplan

[Muttonhead]

Here's the gameplan: control Earth from space. How to do it: pretend to protect against asteroids while developing an offensive strike capability. Explore near earth asteroids. Capture one. Guide it around the sun. Hurl it back to earth and drop it on your enemy. Instant population control.

Time to start practising then

[cliffski2]

Maybe if we all spent a few hours DOING THIS Then things would turn out ok?

To those who think money could be better spent...

[Ironsides]

News Flash:
An asteroid has just hit Affrica and wiped out 90% of it's population. (There goes famine.) The impact has also spewed massive ammounts of dust into the atmosphere and Global Tempertures are dropping (so much for global warming) and we are expecting winter to last for several years. () We are expecting most plantlife on the planet to die off due to lack of sunlight from the dust, and a mass extinction of animals from starvation after that. (ah well, no more animals, no more animal rights activists.) Humanity is expected to follow suit being unable to feed enough of it's population due to not being able to grow anything. Wars develope over the remaining food supplies and total anihaltion results, or some survive and we are back in the stone age.


Water Impact:
An ateroid hit the (Pacific/Atlantic, your choice) today causing 1,000 foor (300 meter) tidal waves along the coastlines of all the continents (unless it was in the atlantic, in which Australia is safe). Millions of people were drowned as the water went 10's (100's?) of miles inland causing flooding and destruction of everything in it's path. Need I go on about what a 30' (10 meter) Tsunami can do? Much less one 30 times taller, occuring all over the ocean at once? Entire Islands would go under, possibly entire contries (Carribean, New Zealand, Japan, etc...). The only place that would be safe would be the mountains (Like the Rockies the Andes,and the Alps). Plus what all that water vapor would do.

this whole thing's blown out of proportion

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what's insignificant in the grand scheme of things? The amount of time humans have been on this planet. So far, the earth hasn't been destroyed by a planet-killing meanie, and neither have any of the other planets in our solar system. Assuming we'll be around another 10 or 20 thousand years, do you really think there's that much danger we're going to be hit with something in the next 50 years when we haven't been hit with something in MILLIONS of years?

Jesus H Christ. Leave it to humans to think the world would end as soon as they came into existance. And leave it to their egos to think they could do anything about it.

Re:this whole thing's blown out of proportion

[Planesdragon]

And leave it to their egos to think they could do anything about it.

You think we can't.

Odd, when we can do so much else.

Re:this whole thing's blown out of proportion

[Jim Starx]

Earth has been hit by large asteroids before, not large enough to decimate the planet, but that doesn't mean it won't happen ever. Comets hit us and every other planet all the time; big ones too. In 94 Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter, that one was suposed to be over a mile wide before it broke into pieces. Earth has had close calls before, in 89 an asteroid a half a mile wide came within 400,000 miles of us. Seems like a large distance, but considering the whole of space, pretty fucking close. It's not a very likely situation, but at the same time it's not unreasonable to believe it could happen within our lifetime. Earth doesn't even have to be all out destroyed for an impact to be a signifigant problem. There are enviornmental repercussions, to say nothing of whoever happens to be under it.

Given the immense damage possible, how is a couple nasa guys brainstorming, or a study being done, constitute being blown out of proportion? Knowones panicing about the what ifs, just trying to answer them.

Large asteroids aren't the only ones

[Azureflare]

There are small asteroids too, ya know. Most of the time small asteroids DO hit the planet, though they are mostly blocked by the protective layer we've got on our planet (i.e. they burn up). There are plenty of sightings of meteors hitting the earth though. So I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that a person getting killed by an asteroid means extinction of the whole planet. What if said asteroid is as big as a car? That's not going to do much in the big picture.

What should be considered is the probability that an asteroid large enough to destroy the human race will hit the earth. I think such a thing is, needless to say, pretty astronomical. (When was the last time a big one hit? Back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth maybe?)

Re:Large asteroids aren't the only ones

[Nicholas Q Name]

"Back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth maybe"
And look what happened to them.

Umm...

[Jexx Dragon]

The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.

Everyday something hits earth, comets, mini asteroids, space dust. Most burns up in the atmosphere, but every so often something makes it through (meteorites) and hits the surface. True most of these meteorites are about the size of a golf ball or smaller.

Re:Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Celestial body" usually tends to refer to something big enough to see, not specs of space dust.

Re: What we will do

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh crap. Those Goa'uld are some nasty buggers. Now we're in for it.

Waiting will solve the problem!

[antarctican]

But once one hits we'll be safe again for another 100,000 years, right? ;)

Remember basic lessons in probability

[YouHaveSnail]

All these articles about impending doom -- asteroids, earthquakes, pandemics, etc. -- give one the idea that because we've gone a long time without one of these things happening, the chance that we'll have an occurrance is increasing. That shows a basic misunderstanding of probability. If you toss a fair coin and get heads 50 times in a row, the probability of getting heads the next time is still 50%.

We're not 'running out of time' just because we've gone a long time without a major impact. The chance of a major impact this year is exactly the same as it has been in each of the last million years.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[Grey Ninja]

That shows a basic misunderstanding of probability. If you toss a fair coin and get heads 50 times in a row, the probability of getting heads the next time is still 50%.

That's a basic misunderstanding if I've ever seen one. Each time something DOESNT happen, it increases the odds that it WILL happen next time, because nature will tend to balance toward equilibrium.

If you flip a coin 50 times in a row, and you get heads every time, I would first check and see if the coin was loaded. Then I would promptly bet you $50 that it would be tails the next time. I am a little drunk to be doing the math right now, but think of it this way. What you are suggesting is that it's equally likely to throw 50 heads in a row, than it is to throw 25 heads and 25 tails.

What does common sense tell you the result will be?

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[Nicholas Q Name]

I would promptly bet you $50 that it would be tails the next time
And you would have a 50-50 chance of winning/losing.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[Grey Ninja]

true, but statistically, my chances of losing would be about one in 1x10^15, assuming that the odds of throwing heads/tails was exactly 50/50.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[fredmosby]

What you are suggesting is that it's equally likely to throw 50 heads in a row, than it is to throw 25 heads and 25 tails.

No. What he means is that the odds of getting 50 heads in a row given that you have already gotten 49 in a row is 50%.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[claar]

I know it sounds right, but unfortunately you're wrong.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus. Even small children know that flipping a coin is random, and your past 50 flips don't influence the result of your next flip.

If you don't understand why 25 heads & 25 tails is more likely than 50 heads, you shouldn't bother posting to a technically oriented site.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[cpuffer_hammer]

With you coin (lets not get into the coin toss problem). There is nothing of note changing in the environment. In the case of asteroids, earthquakes, and pandemic the conditions it the environment are changing. New rocks are getting nearer to earth, stuff is getting pushed around in the Kuiper belt. Faults are locking and stress is building. New viruses are being mutated, and genetic material is moving around. All these types of changes change the chases of things happening.

(yes I reposted this in the correct place)

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[kmcg83]

NO NO NO NO.

It doesn't work that way. It just doesn't. I suggest you sober up. Look, coins don't know what their last flip was. There's no mystical force of nature causing equilibrium. The only thing at play is random probability. And the 50-heads-in-a-row vs. 25-25 argument is just silly. The reason it is more likely to get 25 heads than 50 is combinatorics; it's irrelevant to what the next flip will be.

I hope for your sake you don't ever gamble on coin flips.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[Happy Cramper]

The surface of the moon is covered with the evidence of your astronomical odds. All we are asking for is the amount of money a single McDonalds hamburger stand makes, to fund improved detection and tracking of these objects.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[master_p]

But reality shows that if you get heads 50 times in a row, the probability of getting tails in the next toss is very high.

The above does not mean that what you said is wrong. Mathematically, the probability of heads or tails is 50%. But within a finite number of tries, probability takes sides.

For example, we are perfectly able to 'predict' when an NBA team will loose their first game...after a long series of wins, the probability of loosing increases and the probability of wins decreases (but it is still 50% win and 50% loose, if the set of tries is infinite).

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[Anonymous Coward]

NO!!!! The probability remains 50% REGARDLESS of past results. The odds of getting a specific series (in this case, 51 heads) reduce with each experiment you add to the series but the probability of an individual experiment is CONSTANT!
And your NBA example is just stupid. If you can perfectly predict when the team will lose, how come you ain't a millionaire? In fact, if a team has just won a long series of games, it's because they're better than the opposition - so it's not 50/50 at all.
For goodness sake...

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[master_p]

I don't gamble, that's why. But, most of the time, I guess correctly about which team is gonna win.

Re:Remember basic lessons in probability

[YouHaveSnail]

No, statistically your chance of losing would be 1 in 2. The 50 straight heads already happened. Yes, that part is unlikely. But once you've got 50 heads in a row, the chance that the next toss will yield a head is 1/2.

Look at it another way: the chance of getting 51 heads in a row is exactly the same as the chance of getting 50 heads and then a tail. In either case, the chance is 1/(2^51). Also, the chance of tossing 9 heads, then 3 tails, then 17 heads, then 24 tails is the same. Indeed, the chance of any single outcome is the same.

There's absolutely nothing special about a long string of consecutive heads, except that when it happens your brain recognizes that particular pattern. Try tossing a coin 30 times and jotting down the outcome. Smack your forehead and exclaim to the nearest person willing to listen "Great Gatsby! Do you know that the odds of this happening are approximately one in a billion?!"

Star Trek has the answer

[CrackedButter]

GEORDI: You have a better idea... ?
Q: I would certainly begin by examining the cause and not the symptom.
GEORDI: We've done that, Q... and there's no way to determine...
Q: This is obviously the result of a large celestial object passing through at near right angles to the plane of the star system...probably a black hole...
DATA: Can you recommend a way to counter the effect?
Q: Simple. Change the gravitational constant of the universe.

Prevent a small collision...destroy Earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always wondered why nobody ever mentions this:

Clearly the solar has reached a level of equilibrium regarding celestrial body impacts. Collisions (large and small) used to be far more prevalent in our solar system.

Is it possible that altering the orbit of a realtively small asteroid might disturb this equilibrium (be it mechanically or gravitationally) , and cause a possible planet killer to be nudged into an Earth crossing orbit?

Just asking (I wonder if "they" do).

You don't understand stats

[SmallFurryCreature]

The probability that an impact will occur within the decade is 50%. No more no less. It either happens or it doesn't happen. Saying anything else you are just the kinda person who plays the odds in the lottery. You either win or loose. All the other odds are only of intrest to the lotto company.

Anyway saying there are more important issues suggest you have a rather naive view of the world. We can put a man on the moon so why has noone stood on the bottom of the ocean? We can grow oranges in sweden so why can't we grow grain in the sahara?

Because we can do one thing doesn't mean we can do something else even if it sounds similar. And this is just with technilogical changes. Your disease example is just like that.

Hunger is a completly different problem from stopping a piece of rock (or indeed curing a disease). Most people here could probably draw up a plan or two to stop a small asteroid. Now try to do the same thing with hunger.

Smart people, caring people, good people have tried and failed. There are countless farming projects that have failed miserable. Hunger is a problem of human nature. And so far noone has been able to change it. Simple fact is that there would be no hunger in africa if africans learned to work together. They don't, each time a country slightly gets up it starts a war or is dragged into one. Europe did the same but we had better climate that allowed us to feed ourselves even when fighting a war. Africa and other hunger stricken regions do not have that luxury. They need constant peace to bring enough food in. We all seen farm aid. Do you know people are still starving in ethiopia? Why? Lack of food? WRONG. There is food. Plenty. Africa exports food. Until you solved that puzzle you can't even begin to think of a solution to solve hunger.

Stopping an asteroid is simple a tech and money problem. You can draw blueprints for the first and taxation for the latter. Stopping hunger requires us to change human nature. Tech has come a long way in the last few thousand years but are we as people really all that different from 5000 years or more ago?

Re:You don't understand stats

[jdunn14]

You don't understand stats
The probability that an impact will occur within the decade is 50%. No more no less. It either happens or it doesn't happen.

Excuse me? Who doesn't understand stats? Just because an event can happen or not happen in a given time frame does not make the probability of that event 50%. By that reasoning I could say that either I'll win the lottery next week, or I won't therefore my odds are 50% (I wish).

An event with a 10% probability still happens or doesn't happen. Maybe I just don't understand what you're trying to say.... Like the rest of the post though.

Re:You don't understand stats

[Anonymous Coward]

The probability that an impact will occur within the decade is 50%. No more no less. It either happens or it doesn't happen.

Does it bother you that you are a complete fucking moron?

Re:You don't understand stats

[Jim Starx]

We can put a man on the moon so why has noone stood on the bottom of the ocean?

Actually in 1960, the US Navy sent the Trieste with 3 Navy personel to 'Challenger Deep' at the southern end of the Marianas Trench. At 10,920m (about 7 miles) deep it is the deepest known point on the planet.

Also what do you mean it's a simple tech problem?? Are you nuts? It's a fucking immense tech problem. Your talking about changing the trajectory of a piece of rock that could concievably be the size of a fucking state. In space where there's no stabilizing solid like the earth to exert on it's a serios problem. And why is this all of a sudden an either/or type thing? Do you think the people that know astrophysics are the same people that understand world economics??

Statistically it's gonna happen eventually. When it does what do you want the reaction to be, "hey, didn't they build something for that a while back..." or "uh....fuck". Knowones saying if we don't do this right now were all gonna die so throw your arms in the air and run screaming it's the apocylipse blah blah blah. But it's something to think about. Were not the first species that reigned supreme on this planet, but I'd certainly like to be the last.

Re:You don't understand stats

[Jim Starx]

Yea... kinda forgot that end tag for italics.....my bad.

Re:You don't understand stats

[Dogers]

So.. the chance of an asteroid hitting in the next year is 50%..
no wait, the next month is 50%
no wait! the next week is 50%
HEY!

The next DAY!
OH MY GOD WHERES MY ASTEROID BUNKER
*covers head and hides under table*

Nothing to fear

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I smell a lawyer!

[SmallFurryCreature]

You honor I claim my client is innocent of manslaughter and instead wish to claim that this so called victim is charged with delibaratly and maliciously dirtying my clients knife with his blood.

Anyway the latest planet is 2000km is diameter. I think if such an object is coming our way then there is nothing we can do.

51% same as it started out

[dougnaka]

remeber the recent article, Bias in Heads-or-Tails

Next project...

[arose]

Destroying black holes by pouring money into them.

Take a look at the moon

[SmallFurryCreature]

See the craters? What do you think caused them. I give you a hint. It isn't giant mice digging for cheeze.

Earth to has been pelted with rocks. Just that we got this thing called an eviroment wich tends to smooth everything over. There are still plenty of craters however. Ask the dinosaurs about the one they had hit. Oh wait. They died out didn't they. Mmmm.

upside-down priorities

[Doc Ruby]

Putting up a space elevator, or any permanent platform for solar system exploration/exploitation, driven by the 100% certainty of international competition for space resorces, is more important than spending our bankrupt budget on defending from the minimally probable asteroid strike in the next decade. Of course, the "Star Wars" SDI contractors, who are screwing their failed "missile defense" budgets through Congress, see it as buttering their bread on both sides, pointing the lasers both ways for double the corporate welfare.

subcontract Al-Quaeda to blow up asteroids ...

[porky_pig_jr]

since like they have a good experience in doing this kind of things lately ...

yes, this is probably a joke in bad taste. I'm not sure.

Re:subcontract Al-Quaeda to blow up asteroids ...

[sadler121]

Simple, just tell them theres zionist's up their on that rock that want to take over the world and subvert Islam, and we'll have Jyhad declared instently! Hunderds of people will ge jumping for the change to blow them selves up so the infidel astroid will not destory the will of Alah!

Ehm missed your change then

[SmallFurryCreature]

Shoemaker-levy 9 was a piece of space rock that hit a planet (jupiter) a few years ago.

Google for it.

I think Terry Pratchet had a bit in one of his books about. Talking about probabilty and how everything can exist somewhere. "Apparently there was an civilization that one day saw several thousand tons of rock collide with a planet nextdoor and then did nothing about it. It is however considered that is to unlikely to have really happened as any species that dumb would never have discovered sloot in the first place".

Re:Geo (or larger) Politics and the human conditio

[Nicholas Q Name]

You're talking about Lembik Opik, aren't you?
Guy is mad as a monkey on crack.

Great, but lets start with a new energy source

[Marrow]

We need to concentrate on new sources of energy to power our life on earth and space based efforts. If we build the power generation systems first, then we will not only make our world safer, but a major source of confrontation on this planet will be eliminated.

No, YOU don't understand stats

[NoData]

To say that probability of something uncertain happening is "50% No more, no less" is a classic trap in misunderstanding the meaning of probability. Because an event has two possible states (does occur, does not occur) does NOT mean the probability of it occurring is 50%...This is degenerate and wrong thinking in probability. The best estimate of the probability of something happening is exactly equal to the rate at which that event occurred previously. This is called the base rate or prior probability and is integral to Bayes' theorem (please see this). Thus, if you flip a coin (of unknown fairness) 100 times and 41 of those flip come up heads, what's the best estimate of the probability that the next flip will be heads? 41%. [Side note: There are tests to determine if this rules out the coin being fair or not, but even these assume some a priori criterion for ruling out chance effects (i.e., "I'll call it unfair if the coin's pattern is likely to happen by chance less than 5% of the time"...this is called the "alpha level" of such tests).]

Anyway, there is a special distrubtion to describe the occurrence of random events in time (the Poisson distribution), but suffice it to say, the probability of an asteroid hitting the earth in the next decade is NOT 50%. This would only be true if, in the past, an asteroid has hit the earth (on average) once every other decade.

Re:No, YOU don't understand stats

[Ruie]

Actually it is even more complicated because the meaning of "best estimate" depends strongly on the problem.

You see estimating probability from prior events always results in some error - you may overestimate it or underestimate it.

If you are relatively insensitive to the direction of the error than it is usually best to use maximum likelihood estimator - which is indeed the prior rate. This can be used, for example, to analyze the distribution of craters on Mars.

However, in our case (Earth) underestimating probability is much worse than overestimating it. A typical way to deal with this is to construct a risk function that depends on existing data and your future probability estimate and then try to minimize it.

As you can expect in our case this results in the probability estimate being larger than the observed rate, so it is not impossible that the estimate is 50% in next 10 years, even though no large asteroids or comets collided with Earth in the previous 95 years (remember Tunguska ?).

Re:No, YOU don't understand stats

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is, if the chances of an astroid hitting the Earth is a million to one, we should deflect a small harmless astroid to hit the Earth, thereby reducing the the chance that another one will hit. A million times a million.

Re:No, YOU don't understand stats

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa... PWNED!

Re:No, YOU don't understand stats

[hackus]

Your both wrong actually.

Stats although a purely mathematical concept of probability, is very different when measuring a event such as an asteroid strike.

Probaility of an event is only one issue.

True, we have wars constantly going on, and will continue, but they do not wipe out humanity or even 90% of life on earth.

I think, very few people understand what we are talking about really when we talk about asteroid impacts.

Why? Well, because the event unleashes energies we have no experience with. Energies that by there very nature represent the hand of God in many ways.

Even if we were to build 10,000's of SS20 missiles, widely known as bastards of human minds ability to detroy, and detonated them all at once. It would pale in comparison to some of the impacts that have happened historically in the fossil record.

So when we talk about mathematical probability, with respect to action, it is foolish to think that a x in x chance over 10000 years represents an asteroid impact and it is very low on the risk scale.

True, probability tells us, and so does the fossil record, that this risk is low from year to year.

But unlike a full nuclear war, which has never happened by the way, this probability is deavious in its ways that calm the mind, into complacency.

Unlike nuclear war, we actually do have proof of no less than 4 major events that have hacked the tree of life on this planet to its stump.

We know it is a singular event, and once it happens 80-90% of all life stands no chance against it.

This kind of probability is different than plane crashes, nuclear war or even floods or earthquakes. We have nothing really, to compare it too.

So, you cannot weigh the outcome of such an event simply by talking about the numbers, you need to look at the evidence, fossil records, you need to look at the mathematics or stats.

I would fly in a plane with a 1 and 10,000 chance that it would crash, but I would NEVER bet my species survival in a 1 10,000 bet with ANYONE.

In fact, that is something I would NEVER bet with ANY ODDS, not even a 1 in a googleplex.

I hope I am making myself clear.

-Hack

Re:No, YOU don't understand stats

[NoData]

I would fly in a plane with a 1 and 10,000 chance that it would crash, but I would NEVER bet my species survival in a 1 10,000 bet with ANYONE.

In fact, that is something I would NEVER bet with ANY ODDS, not even a 1 in a googleplex.

Really? Then what if someone was to approach you with the proposition that you tithe 75% of your income for the remainder of your life to NASA for tracking near-earth objects? No? 50%? How about 25%? Surely you will commit 10% of all your income to hedge against an outcome you said you would never, ever bet against because the stakes are so high.

You have confused outcome with probability.

The magnitude of an outcome does not affect the best estimate of its probability.

It might, of course, affect your behavior and your tolerance for risk. If I was to ask you if you'd be willing pay $1 to play a game where you have 1/100 chance of winning $1000000, you're likely to say yes. If I was to ask if you'd be willing to pay $1 to play a game where you have a 1/100 chance of winning $10, you'd probably laugh at me.

Invert the behavior over for bad outcomes. (Play a game where I pay you $1, but there's a 1/100 chance that you will owe me $10000000 vs. play a game where I pay you $1, but there's a 1/100 chance that you will owe me $10).

None of this make me "wrong" when I say the original poster is silly to think there's 50% chance of asteroid impact this decade, because it either "will or it won't." The consequences of the impact do not change how we go about determining its probability. Only our tolerance for risk.

Furthermore, you make some overtures about the paucity of information in determining the rate of impacts. That's fine.
The best estimate of an outcome's probability may not be reliable. By that I mean how confident you are in your estimated probability. But you can quantify that confidence as well.

I will go out on a limb here and guess that there is better than 99.9999% confidence that the probability of an asteroid strike in the next 10 years is less than 50%. In fact, I'd bet the same level of confidence can be expressed at a probability of less than .0005%. This does not preclude it from happening. But you will excuse me if I don't change any of my life plans around that eventuality.

Re:No, YOU don't understand stats

[hackus]

Confusion of outcome and reality of the mathematics that drive it....OH REALLY NOW...who is truly confused?

There are some things you shouldn't bet on no matter what the odds. They represent certain pieces of our framework for existing, and trying to live our lives with some sort of certainty.

Do not attempt to gamble with those things.

You, I, WE have been warned. The bones of beasts long ago are buried deep in the earth and they are a sign, a warning. The dark layer or KT boundry seperating us from THEM tell us the outcome has nothing to do with probability of the event.

It has nothing to do with mathematics.

For a better term...who cares what the probability of Shiva God of Creation and Destruction or the Lord of Chaos Abraxus actually exist? When the outcome for provoking their wrath is the same?

Why worry about the math?

Just don't do it, Don't bet on it, and do everything you can to avoid it.

What I suggest is that we as a species define what that certainty is, and it has nothing to do with the mechanics of probability.

If we choose to not address some of these issues and live our lives as beasts of the field, then we shall suffer the same fate.

There are certain risks to our existence we are talking about here that make your 9-5 job meaningless, Einsteins work irrelevent and my book I am writing a waste of time.

I won't bet these things at ANY ODDS.

There are not very many of these kinds of special risks, but they do exist. Asteroid Impact is one of them. My point I was hoping you would see is that those risks that doom us must be addresses in SOME WAY, regardless of the mathematics or probability of outcome.

Certain stakes in the game, we could rationalize the outcome of a plane crash, or sky diving...by all means live your life and fly or sky dive.

But if you fall and you die, I am comfortable with the outcome of the event. (Although you may not be or your loved ones...I will send flowers...)

We already KNOW what the outcome is with this very special risk is. We shall cease to exist, our history shall cease to exist and 80-90% of all life will be exstinguished from the surface of our planet.

I like the Earth it is home. One day it will be preserved, we shall build a sun to replace the one that burns out and live here and when all the Hydrogen is gone in the Universe...we shall create another universe and bring the Earth with us and perhaps. :-)

-Hack

Inter-Galactic Speedway

[Alien54]

I will continue to assume that macroscopic objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light, no matter where they are in the Universe.

Beside, anthying that could move a planet or an asteroid at 1 million x of light speed would not have much concern about us. we would be to small.

Even if we were in the way of an Inter-Galactic Speedway Offramp

Tunguska hit

[Firethorn]

The reason that there are no numbers is that no census numbers were ever available for the region, it was desolate, but probably not totally empty. On the other hand, imagine the potential death toll from an asteroid that size hitting Chicago, NYC, London, Berlin, Moscow, Sidney, or any other major city.

Re:Tunguska hit

[Troed]

Exactly. It's fascinating to read one day on Slashdot on how the Chicago fire might've been caused by a comet and then seeing the replies to this article where people seem to claim we don't need to worry at all.

On the contrary - lots of things during the last 1000 years might be due to "cosmic" events. We have very little (popular) knowledge about quite drastic environmental changes like the "little ice age" or even the years without the sun that might've been the cause for the nickname "dark ages" (also a comet).

surprise impact?

[tinkerton]

such an impact would be known long in advance.
There is no risk of 'misinterpretation'.
There would be time to move people - to the extent that that is relevant(if the affected area is limited).

I wouldn't want to underestimate the current chance of accidental nuclear war - there is plenty of other people for that - but this is not a credible trigger.

Planet earth is a petri dish.

[GuyFawkes]

unless the bug that is humanity can get out of that petri dish and establish a viable colony on another petri dish we're screwed.

Re:Geo (or larger) Politics and the human conditio

[Anonymous Coward]

Although, they're apparently going back on even that paltry promise, and failing to act on the recomendations of their own task force.

Bomb Truck Defense Analogy

[PingPongBoy]

Buildings are protected by large objects outside against suicide bomb trucks.

We can put a number of large massive objects in several orbits around earth to deflect incoming asteroids.

Naturally these objects can double as space stations or observatories.

The bulk of the mass for these objects can be composed of missiles for shooting the fastest asteroids.

Does that sound like big engineering? For a pretty big problem plus a hefty factor of safety, we need a big solution.

Only if the conditions are not changing

[cpuffer_hammer]

With you coin (lets not get into the coin toss problem). There is nothing of note changing in the environment. In the case of asteroids, earthquakes, and pandemic the conditions it the environment are changing. New rocks are getting nearer to earth, stuff is getting pushed around in the Kuiper belt. Faults are locking and stress is building. New viruses are being mutated, and genetic material is moving around. All these types of changes change the chases of things happening.

Paranoid Asteroid Hemorrhoids

[Mulletproof]

"It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger."

Wait a minute... Whose hands are being tied by an antispace weapons poliferation treaties again?? Bush had to dissolve one of those just to get a ballistic missile shield off the ground, let alone something that will actually project weapons into space. And when we do turn our backs on another one of these assnine treaties (and make no mistake, they are assinine), just remember that quote, because whining bitchasses will crawl out of the woodwork to label the US with emperialistic tendancies and world domination theories. AGAIN. We haven't even mentioned the tree-nazies absolute paranoia of putting nuclear anything into space.

I really don't think the government would mind implimenting this project and others like it. Half (if not more) of the problem is the sorry external opposition to such measures, in addition to those who will hammer the administration for ponying up the cash to make it a reality. As soon as they do, you'll hear the statistics of how unlikely it is an asteroid will hit and how we could be spending that money helping the childern!

Perhapse it's partially the fed's fault, but you have a lot of hipocrites out there complicating the issue by serveral magnitudes both inside and outside this country. That quote is ignorant and indicative of a lazy thought process considering their are a lot more parties involved in this- both domestic and ineternational -that desperatly need that wake-up call.

Lucifers Hammer

[Anonymous Coward]

well if it hits, we can all await the cannibals

(read Lucifers Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle)

Alternatively, it could really be a page out of Footfall ;-)

Movies (and books) have done the impact (and avoidance thing)to death

all that we do know is

1) Whatever solution is approved, congress wont fund it

2) Whatever funding will be appropriated, most will go to redesigning the toilets on the shuttle

3) NASA should not be let anywhere near any solution

4) Hollywood will have Bruce Willis ride into the sunset, or Tom Cruise will accept it as an impossible mission.

How is this worse than nukes?

[Kinniken]

Shortly before Carl Sagan died, he wrote an article in Parade Magazine about how he felt this was a bad idea. His premise being that a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this to turn a "near miss" into a direct hit. Which could be potentially far more destructive than a nuke. Obviously he's looking well into the future. But I think he has point.

Far more destructive than a major nuclear power (The US or Russia today, more of them tomorrow) launching all its missiles all over the planet? It seems to me that any nation with the power to change the trajectory of asteroids would likely have a nuclear arsenal sufficient for wiping out the planet. And unlike with asteroids, with a nuclear arsenal a Doctor Strangelove does not need to wait for a rare occasion to destroy the planet.

Joke Explanation...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's from Civ 3.

Re:Joke Explanation...

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome to /.
act like you've been here before

Dual Use Technology

[JGski]

My only concern is that must of what's on the table for "anti-asteroid" technology is, not surprisingly, the same technology being proposed for "US military domination of space". If it weren't for the recent Bush/Rumsfeld/PNAC/Iraq shenanigans I might give the government the benefit of the doubt. However, I'm dubious about this whole concept.

Re:Dual Use Technology

[Shadowlore]

The same technology that gave governments air power, gives the rest of us air travel. Air has been militarized. The oceans were militarized, and land was militarized.

Yet somehow, we are expected to believe that the militarization of space is somehow different. No, the militarization of space would be no different than land, sea, or air.

The same military technology for launching nukes is responsible for advanced leading to the medium we are carrying this discussion out on, as well as satllites to carry news etc. over the air and space, or the cell phone, etc..

Technology is neutral.

If we look at the history of "militarization" of land, air, and sea, we will see that it has always followed with much increased civilian explroation and use of the "medium". Therefore, we should not fear the concept of "militarizing space" to be bad. Indeed we should welcome it, given what follows.

Besides, whether you realize it or not, the US military already has domination of space.

Re:Dual Use Technology

[glitch23]

If it weren't for the recent Bush/Rumsfeld/PNAC/Iraq shenanigans I might give the government the benefit of the doubt. However, I'm dubious about this whole concept.

Well if it was a democract in office (for example, clinton) we would have to first answer th question of what the defintion of WMD is before anything would be done. At least Bush went and got something done instead of just talking about it and bombing an aspirin factory (in the Sudan) to make it look like he did something useful.

Re:Dual Use Technology

[JGski]

Yes, of course. The entire Silicon Valley was in large part a result of the Cold War. That's a Straw Man.

Strictly, I agree that technology is neutral. However people who control it may not be. Even if people are individually neutral, the organizations they occupy may not be neutral and the individual cease to be in those groups.

I quite aware of the US military current dominance of space; I'm personally responsible for much of that. I'm not sure you are familiar with what is being proposed to accelerate that domination well beyond what exists now. I'm also familiar with the slight of hand that occurs when these types of projects are proposed and funded. What's said publically is generally not what's planned or talked about behind closed doors.

Re:Dual Use Technology

[Shadowlore]

Yes, of course. The entire Silicon Valley was in large part a result of the Cold War. That's a Straw Man.

Yes it is, so why did you post it? You posted that the fact that the technology is very similar to other military aspects makes you "dubious about the whole concept". I pointed out that many other dual use technologies have been handled better than not in more than not cases.

The concept is irrelevant to alternate uses. In fact, there is a reason the similarities are there: the laws of physics as we currently know them. An asteroid hurtling toward Earth is little different than an ICBM or anything else hurtling through space to reach a destination. Therefore the mechanics involved in stopping either one will be very similar. Politics is simply not a part of it.

It is one thing to be concerned abotu the use of the techniology, it is anotehr to say that since it could be used fo rotehr purposes or is similar to proposals that serve these other purposes, the whole concept is of dubious nature.

Indeed, dual use is economically a very valid and useful lever. I would be very dubious of proposals to stop, or even track and predict paths of space objects that could be on a collision course with the Earth that proclaimed to NOT have a military aspect, or could not be used for such purposes.

Anything good for tracking an asteroid or comet at range is useful in tracking smaller objects such as satellites, shuttles, space stations, ICBMs, etc.. Anything good for removing the threat of such objects are likely good for doing that to any of those objects (less likely for ICBMs in some cases).

It would be a fallacy to say that since the technologies offered are similar to other technologies that can be used militarily, the whole concept is of dubious or questionable nature. It would be a fallacy similar, if not identical to the logical fallacy known as "Guilt By Association".

Quick question for y'all

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think we should have a system set up for defending the earth against asteroids, do you think we should also have an effective defense against ICBMs, ala SDI? Why or why not?

What bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider:

Most/many near-miss bodies are only detected when they are very close or have passed by. Is there really time to react?

Is the UN going to authorise the firing of these devices or is some madman (Bush or equivalent) just going to start punching buttons? If the UN is involved, then it will take a few weeks of voting to pass UN resolution 9999, by which time we're roadkill. If, however, the dcision is left to a "super power", then we have a new lophole for weapons testing etc. "We had to fire that missile coz there was this this asteroid.... No we can't show you the proof that there was one because the detection device is classified..."

All our eggs in one basket

[Mike_L]

I think that humans should focus on getting off this planet. There are millions of earth-like worlds out there, just waiting for us. As long as we're stuck here on Earth, we have all our eggs in one basket.

Personally, I think that this will happen in my lifetime. With nanotech gaining speed, it won't be long before the first space elevator is built. That technology will facilitate space-based research in biosphere technologies: hydroponics, solar energy, and efficient recycling.

I don't doubt that an asteroid would collide with Earth. Hopefully the inhabitants of the planet won't be at war at the time and will be able to properly respond to the threat and prevent the destruction of humanity's birthplace. But by that time, I imagine humans will be living in hundreds of worlds - still at war with each other, but not vulnerable to a single asteroid.

Problem or Opportunity?

[constantnormal]

Why is it that no one treats intersections of Earth's orbit by asteroids as an opportunity to snag one and guide it into a convenient Lagrange point?

Seems like it would be a lot easier to move it into a stable orbit that to destroy it.

It would be a great way to build an interplanetary ISP without all the expense of hauling materials up from the gravity well.

Also, it would make a swell military base to be used against those sneaky aliens.

Re:Problem or Opportunity?

[hasdikarlsam]

I don't think so.

Asteroids move pretty quickly; to stop one you'd have to inject a lot of velocity somehow.

How much depends on where you want to park it and where it's heading, but you can be sure that it will be a lot more than the amount of momentum you'd need to move it slightly off course; if it was detected years before, that would be a very small amount of momentum. The trouble is getting it there.

There is another possibility, though: For sufficiently small asteroids in sufficiently unlikely orbits, it may be easier to crash it into Moon than to make it miss the earth-moon system entirely. Might be fun.

Well...that's sorta right

[shadow_slicer]

That reasoning will hold true for time-invariant random events, but the fact is that the asteroids up there move. Hence it can be more probable now than it was then (but I'd still like to see some evidence...maybe I'll RTFA...).

A good example would be if we observed an asteroid on course to hit earth. If the asteroid is a year away, it would be foolish to say that it is equally probable that earth would be hit by an asteroid this month as it would the month 12 months from now.

Even if we observed the asteroid on course to hit earth, it is still only a finite probability that it would hit earth because we cannot know the true course the asteroid would take exactly. So you would include a margin of error in your projections. We can use this margin of error to determine the probability. You find the range of the projection that would include earth getting hit and integrate the probabilities to find the current probability. That's at least the basics of it. In a real example you wouldn't have the probabilities of every possible deviation so you would have to assume a probability density for it (probably gaussian) and integrate that (or look it up in a table) to get the actual probability.

Of course if we don't know of any asteroids that are coming close to earth, the best we can probably do is the prior probability. But given the limited sampling time it's really a shot in the dark.

Note: by limited sampling time I was talking about how long we have been measuring meteor strikes...which hasn't been but infinitesimal part of the earth's lifetime. We may have evidence from rocks and remnants of craters, but there's no way we can know how many meteors fell without leaving evidence that we can examine today (meteors that land in the ocean leave smaller craters, and the earth is mostly ocean).

Bunker Busters Gone Wild

[Mulletproof]

I guess I'm a fan of existing technology here, but I don't see a giganitic tractor beam anywhere in the next fifty years, nor do I see a laser being enough to sufficiently neutralize an extinction event 'roid anywhere in the near future either. I mean, lets keep it simple here-- Gulf War Bunker busters. We know nuclear weapons won't have a huge effect in a vacuume (or at least that's the theory) nor will a surface impact do much a whole lot of damage (supposively). Needless to say, landing somebody on it isn't exactly the best of ideas either... It got Bruce killed last time we tried that.

What we do have is ongoing project to make a bunker busting nuclear weapon, designed to penetrate multiple layers of reinforced armor deep under ground and detonate at a specific depth. Of course the first thing to do is increase the tonnage of this weapon and strap it onto a booster. The second thing would be to harden the fuck out of the penetration module since we're now dealing with reletivistic velocities. It might even be nessisary to slow the weapon down before final impact since it would be easy to pancake the weapon ue to the velocity differential between the missile and 'roid alone.

Penetration-
The formentioned velocity will ultimately aid in penetration, though it'd probably be wise to hedge one's bets. For this, we'll borrow from existing technology again to get the weapon as deep as possible using a secondary nuclear device as a penetration aid, launched anywhere from a few hours to seconds before impact in order to 'prep' the impact site. Since I'm not a nuclear physisist, I don't know if one can 'shape' a nuclear detonation, but the effect would be similar to an anti-armor round breaching the surface for the follow-on penetrator. Multiple breaching charges may be desirable to help the weapon plow as deep as possible. If you wanted to get more exotic, equip em with drill heads to or even a laser to soften up the impact zone on it's way in, though I figure simple is best.

The weapon would be time delayed, used in concert with a number of other weapons as the astroid is 'seeded' with a volly or two. At time zero, the internally syncronized weapons would detonate, hopefully deep enough to fragment the killer astroid into a less killer one, possible smaller ones to be finished off my more vollies or other means.

I figure it's technology we have experience with, if not on that scale. We have plenty of nuclear weapons and that astroid has plenty of inertia, all things we can use to our advantage in dealing with it.

At least it's better than hoping for a government funded "Tractor Beam"

Re:Bunker Busters Gone Wild

[falsification]

landing somebody on it isn't exactly the best of ideas either... It got Bruce killed last time we tried that.

Damn it! I almost forgot. That man is a hero. I can't believe we haven't put him on the quarter yet.

Re:Bunker Busters Gone Wild

[Mulletproof]

Or at very least name a school after h-- ...eh, wrong meteor. Nevermind.

Been done. . Re:Colonize Mars!

[photomic]

The ultimate defense for humanity and all the rest of the life on this planet, of course, is to terraform and colonize Mars. That way, even if a planetary defense system fails and Earth gets pulverized, life lives on on the surface of Mars.

Hey, it worked for Mars, right?

Re:Been done. . Re:Colonize Mars!

[pyro_dude]

Please mod parent up +1, insightful.

Bruce will save us...

[Wolfcat]

The easy way to protect earth is simply to ensure that Bruce Willis never dies... freeze him if we have to. Then thaw him out, and he can go to the rock and blow it up with three minutes to spare, and none of us need every worry again... having Tea Leoni won't help, she will just go to the beach and die... so its Bruce all the way.

Tell that to all newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

via George Bushs Campaign webpage. You can actually send your comment/article to nearly all newspapers at once. Yes, all 300 Newspapers in and around the DC area and the three states. Clicking "Print letter" even costs them money and paper... - Tell them how much you like your national debt, your three minimum wage jobs and the fact that the USA have lost much of their freedom.

Re:Tell that to all newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

print just sends you an rtf, doesnt cost them shit; nigger

Huge efforts possible if we're really desperate

[Goonie]

Who knows, maybe an Apollo-scale effort could be mounted to stop the impact. But I wouldn't count on it. It is a hard problem, and sheer manpower dollars may not be enough.

If it really threatened the existence of humanity as a species, we could put in a heck of a lot more effort in than Apollo. Gross world product was about 20 trillion 1987 dollars, back in 1994, according to a few seconds of googling (can't find more accurate figures). It's probably about 25 trillion now. If we could devote 25% of this effort towards saving the world (I believe that the USA diverted about 50% of its GDP towards the military in WWII), that's 12.5 trillion 1987 dollars annually. That buys you a heck of a lot of stuff...

If we were smart...

[alwaystheretrading]

We should actually try to blow up or divert a real near earth asteroid so we know which strategy works and which is a waste of effort. That way, when (not if) the real situation arises we will know what to do.

Re:If we were smart...

[Rick the Red]

Oh, we're smart. We're just cheap.

Miss or false positive

[dr. electron]

1. INCOMING!
2. Fire nuke
3. Oh, just a false positive
4. Nuke comes down on (afghanistan|iraq|...)
5. Oh, well ...

You assume

[Mateorabi]

You assume that the probability of being hit by an asteroid has a Poisson distribution and is therefore memoryless. In which case you are correct, given that nothing has hit us yet doesn't change the distribution function for the future.

But we don't know what causes asteroids to wander our way, only that it hapens on a semi periodic basis. Perhaps as we orbit the galaxy we come accros regions with more gravitational distortions that are more likely to send stuff hurtling inwards from the oort cloud. Perhaps there is a misterious 10th planet that goes through a dense part of the oort cloud. Perhaps....

Anything that makes the system non-memoryless (i.e. statefull) and makes the events more periodic than random allows us to say that given no events so far, the probability of an event in the near future is greater/has gone up. (Extreme example: We arrive in london at some random time and don't have a watch. The fact that Big Ben hasn't rung in the last 40 minutes allows us to state that it will ring 'soon' with greater certanty than the fact it hasn't rung in the last 10.)

Of couse the fact that an asteroid doesn't hit in just one year makes the already small probability change for the next year only by an infentesmal ammount. I.e. a change of 1/50000000 --> 1/49999999 or even smaller.

Those probabilities are misleading

[jesterzog]

If the only reason to build a defence system is to prevent extinction of the human race by an asteroid, I think it's pointless to bother. The same goes for using the "possibility of asteroid extinction" as an excuse to get off Earth and build a permanent Moon or Mars base.

Yes, asteroids do strike the Earth. Yes, sometimes they create big disasters, tsunamis, huge fires and whatnot. Extinction? Very occasionally, unless you're a cockroach. All of this paranoia about mass extinction is justified in timeframes of millions of years, but certainly not tens of years. All of this paranoia has been brought on by a recent barrage of movies and misconstrued media reports.

The fact is that humans have survived in their current state for tens to hundreds of thousands of years already. We might be wiped out by a nuclear war or some other man-made tragedy resulting from the exponential changes very recently, but the chances that we'll be wiped out by an asteroid in the forseable future are minescule. Cities and countries might get wiped off the map more frequently, but not to the point of extinction of the race... and having a Moon base if that happens won't result in much more of a gain if extinction is what you're concerned about.

Realistically if we don't kill ourselves in some other way, it's very likely that the species still be around 500 or 1000 years from now. At that point, it will likely be much more feasible for people to develop a reasonable asteroid defence system at much less expense and using an existing infrastructure, if it's needed. But throwing away billions or hundreds of billions of dollars on it today because of unjustified paranoia is just silly.

Should we study asteroids and search for them to understand them better? Sure. Should we build a planetary defence system? Perhaps, but not without more information to actually justify the expense. If the human race happens to get wiped out in the next 20 years of research after surviving for the length of time that we have, it's just incredibly bad luck.

Disaster Recovery Plan

[80N]

We're all pretty used to having a Disaster Recovery plan for our sites, it seems like what's needed is a DR plan for the planet. Consider the scenario where there is a global disaster (asteroid or any number of other causes) that results in a residual population of survivors. Chances are that they aren't all going to be rocket scientists, indeed it could be a few generations before anyone of that calibre is born. What a legacy it would be if there was an archive of a significant knowlege base coupled with some pretty simple instructions for accessing it. What would it cost to do this?

Simple:

[Anonymous Coward]

Launch triangular ship, have it blast away at asteroids.

It needs to watch out for those small UFOs though. The big ones shouldn't be a problem.

Thodds are sooooo far out

[HermanAB]

governments have greater things to worry about - such as clean water for everybody...

But are we worth saving in the first place?

[Quizo69]

Lots of arguments here for how to avoid a planetary extinction of the human race.

I'd venture a different line of thinking - are we worth saving as a species in the first place?

Think about it for a minute. The reason we want to save ourselves is a selfish one, not a necessary one. What do we contribute to the wider galaxy or universe? If we were made extinct, who would care? If you accept the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, then what makes us so special that another planetary species would consider us worth saving? After all, we continually kill one another, we look out for ourselves at the expense of others, we do whatever it takes to get one over the other guy.... we're not a really shining example of a species that deserves to survive, if you ask me.

Yes, I know that there are lots of good, well meaning people (I like to think I'm one of them). But on a planetary scale, if you were an alien civilisation, would you stop by and save us, or would you take one look at our barbarity and say "good riddance"?

Re:But are we worth saving in the first place?

[Dr. GeneMachine]

If we were made extinct, who would care?

I would.

The Bush solution to the problem, obviously,

[Snafoo]

is to racially screen the extraterrestrials getting on the asteroids, so only white, and not green or grey, aliens can get on the thing. You can be sure that good, universe-governing-entity-fearing white aliens won't randomly crash into us. Let's put the others on pluto without trial as 'alien combatants' until the universe undergoes heat death.

Or maybe I've just been reading too many white house press releases.

online simulator - not that dangerous, see?

[the_REAL_sam]

this asteroid simulator
(developed by NASA) shows just how easy asteroid defense can be, given timing, positioning, thruster movements, etc.

check salshdot 1st problem solved...

[mattlamb]

This old /. post gives the basics on how to stop a rogue metorite without nukes or tractor's.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=45499&cid=47 09 365

When wil they learn to just check salshdot before spending money on research.

You are leaving out one BIG variable. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Something has changed in the formula.

Comet clusters are cyclical occurrences. We're entering one right now. It began, actually, with the whacking Jupiter took back in 1994. Upper Management knows this, and is preparing. Some might say that this is the reason Bush and crew are hoarding oil and materials, building underground bases, etc.

I'd also suggest that it's the reason for the subtle, but steady stream of messages through the media, gently herding people toward certain acceptances. --And why others are waking up to the idea on a subconscious level of cometary disasters. Even this '10th Planet' thing being promoted by NASA is a subtle form of psychological preparation. "There are big objects out there."

Jupiter is currently showing a big blue band across one fifth of its mass, indicating massive upheaval of lower atmospheric gasses. Last summer we had huge solar flare activity. These are gravity related events. Something very big going on out there, and there are people who know what that something is.

Never forget, NASA is a government organ, and as such, all information which comes through it will be deliberately spun to achieve certain public affects. Government today is anything but honest and genuine in its intent.

The statistics you are talking about are only useful when the proper shape of the model is understood, and the model in question is not what it appears on the surface. The solar system is not so stable. . .

-FL

USAF Already Funds An Asteroid Survey

[cmholm]

After reading through the Spaceguard proposal and the Space.com article, I gotta wonder if the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

There's mention of the big buck$ LSST telescope, and a proposal to pop for six dedicated scopes, but nothing about the US$8mil or so that has already been allocated to the PanSTARRS project in Hawaii. UH is developing a telescope array and automated asteroid detection system to scan almost the entire sky every few days. Once deployed on either Mauna Kea or Haleakala, a five year campaign is planned to catalog at least 90% of the estimated number of 0.3km or bigger NEOs out there.

If an orbit is found that seems to intersect with us, then it becomes someone else's problem.

Side effect of leadership types

[skinfitz]

The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.

Unfortunately this is a side effect of voting in leaders that are "religious". You see, from their point of view "[deity(s)]" is watching over us and would not allow anything to happen to us. I mean - we could all be wiped out in a single impact? How silly. [deity(s)] would NEVER allow that to happen. Ha. And remember we are good we all go to heaven, and if you are of a certain faith and die as a martyr, then you get lots of beautiful women in your harem too.

Absofucking lutely barking mad ridiculous, but for some bizarre reason people believe this stuff, but worse VOTE IN leaders who also (or at least pretend to) believe too.

Perhaps it's like an interplanetary Darwin theory thing.

unneccessary stupid bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

What fucking good is a planetary defense system against asteroids when we still can't stop our own selfish selves from destroying our own planet. We are consuming finite resources at an unstainable rate. We slaughter people and the environment to satisfy our own greed for material wealth.

Personally I'd be happier if someone invented a device to attract asteroid over here.

Mars Consulting

[frs_rbl]

Surely we could adapt their Air Defense system -so efective against probes and landers- to shoot down asteroids. Outsourcing is not necessarily a bad thing

A new line of thought!

[keoghp]

With the world the way it is today, should we not be protecting the ateroids from the earth?

Re:Sounds like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Protect me from ass_steroids??? What does this have to do with protecting me from performance enhancing drugs taken in suppository form?

Waste of money?

[Tei]

Something is good to try againt the danger, and is a intelectual effort. More money waste in weapons is not a good idea, guys.

Re: Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

The important thing is not to stop questioning. --Albert Einstein

Why?

I have answers to all of your questions

[some guy I know]

why should we realistically expect an asteroid to hit the Earth and destroy 90% of the population?

Because it has happend in the past.

How many millions upon millions or years will it take before this happens?

My guess is that it will happen sometime within the next 100 years.
(Think "religious fanatic".
Think "suicide bomber".
Think "9/11".)

Is there anything more obscure that slashdot can be afraid about?

The eventual heat-death of our universe.

Re: BAM!

[some guy I know]

The earth has been hit with many asteroids. Never once has it destroyed all life.

How do you know?
An asteroid large enough to destroy all life would probably be large enough to destroy the fossil record, as well.
For example, there may have been life on the Earth before the collision between the Earth and the very large asteroid that resulted in the creation of our Moon.

Welcome

[CBob]

I for one welcome our post impact bronze age overlords.

Given enough lead time it's pretty easy...

[qeveren]

... to stop an asteroid from striking the Earth, relatively speaking, of course. After all, you only have to alter the asteroid's arrival time by something like seven minutes (depending on the direction it's coming from, obviously) in order for it to completely miss the Earth, assuming it's starting on a collision course.

Give us 10 years of a headstart and a lot of white paint, and odds are the big rock will miss.

Re: BAM!

[juhaz]

For example, there may have been life on the Earth before the collision between the Earth and the very large asteroid that resulted in the creation of our Moon.

Mars-sized object is a wee bit big to be counted as a mere asteroid. Anyway, there could not have been life yet because that was mere few hundred million years after Earth's formation, the place was way too hot, even the crust hadn't stabilized yet.

Something More Practical ...

[triso]

How about something a little more practical: like a device to protect us from bad movies about asteroids that are going to crash into the Earth.

Re: BAM!

[Happy Cramper]

Anyway, there could not have been life yet because that was mere few hundred million years after Earth's formation

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Some scientists believe life existed prior to the formation of the moon, and they have some evidence to back it up. LINK