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Neil deGrasse Tyson Outlines a Plan For Saving Earth From Asteroids
dsinc contributes a link to Neil deGrasse Tyson's short piece in Wired on how we could deal with the very real threat of killer asteroids, writing "In 2029 we'll be able to know whether, seven years later, Apophis will miss Earth or slam into the Pacific and create a tsunami that will devastate all the coastlines of the Pacific Rim." From the article: "Saving the planet requires commitment. First we have to catalogue every object whose orbit intersects Earth’s, then task our computers with carrying out the calculations necessary to predict a catastrophic collision hundreds or thousands of orbits into the future. Meanwhile, space missions would have to determine in great detail the structure and chemical composition of killer comets and asteroids."
But we're going to need another basket if we want to survive as a species.
We need this Southern guy with three names to come up with a plan to drill into the asteroid . . . never mind!
If it was possible for an asteroid impact to cause a mass extinction, wouldn't it have happened already?
When exactly did Neil deGrasse Tyson become the world's official representative on all things astronomical? Was it the the pluto thing? It's just really weird that every media outlet seems to go to him for everything these days. He's really articulate and informed, but so are a lot of people. I don't get it.
Let me guess, he wants to reclassify Earth as a "Non-Asteroid-Attracting Planetoid" in the hopes of fooling the asteroids.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
An asteroid calculated to miss for 1000 orbits can have its orbit gravitationally altered by a close pass with another small but significant mass object in the Kuiper Belt.
At that point, the next pass by Earth may not be "by Earth"...
Everyone else is busy working on future tech to ensure it hits America and only squishes Americans.
hear, hear, lets spend all of our precious energy inventing news ways of offing ourselves, that way when the killer asteroid does impact at some point in the future it will put a nice layer of dust over our dribble.
No, that would be Americans themselves...
Ever notice how the news makes sure to refer to any psychopathic killer by three names?
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a lowdown sidewinder that shot Pluto in the back just to watch it die.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Didn't it?
1 - catalogue all the asteroids likely to pass by earth
2 - analyse their composition
3 - determine which can have their orbit modified so as to be placed in orbit around earth for an energy effort low enough that one will come out ahead either using the asteroid for material in orbit (to construct space stations / satellites, the probe to explore the next asteroid &c.) or have ore valuable enough to be worth returning to earth
4 - profit!
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
wake me up when they actually implement some of that socialism your referring to.
If the US takes this on, I would surmise it would fall under NASA's umbrella. With their funding being cut, though (total of $17.7 Billion for 2012*) I don't see a lot of excess to whittle off for exploring options. Most likely the military will absorb the cost, but don't expect to see "kinder and gentler" on their option list.
[*] - http://io9.com/5885042/how-will-the-white-houses-brutal-budget-cuts-affect-nasa
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This is why you should have children. We need more brains, more people thinking about big problems and they need lots of people supporting them to think about these big problems like how to protect this rock and how to get some of our populace off this rock to other rocks. Without this we face near certain extinction. Breed. Read to your children. Teach them to love learning. Teach them to work hard. The rest will follow.
The dinosaurs say hello...
Oh wait, an asteroid impact caused their mass extinction.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
3-body problem --> non-linear feedback --> mathematical chaos --> must simulate, but very sensitive to initial conditions. There is a lot of matter in our solar system for which the orbits are not known. ==> I don't believe 'hundreds of orbits in the future'.
A triangular space ship with vector blasters!!! It worked in the 20th century and it should work in the 21st century!!!
Couldn't Tyson just move all of us to his home planet prior to the asteroid hitting earth? Or is the environment of his home planet inhospitable to earthlings?
I've seen this guy's face and name pop up so much this last month, its reminding me of Andy Worhol's most famous quote.
He's a cool guy and all, but it now feels like he's a William Morris client.
I was hoping for 3 robots piloted by young cute girls in skin tight outfits...
It's worse even than that.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How's the earth staying up in space right? Why doesn't it fall down!
Yes this is indeed the need of the hour! Save Earth from asteroids! How about we stop this paranoia and focus on matters closer to home, or what will be left in a few short decades will not only not be worth saving, it would well deserve obliteration by an asteroid or two!
Headline is hyperbolic. Astroid sized impacts aren't going to destroy Earth. It'll be fine. It's the humans for which we need to be concerned.
The republicans will scorn the theory, deny the evidence, publicly attack the scientists who produced it, and insist on doing nothing.
Isn't he the one that killed the planet Pluto?
I thought even the smallest nudge can totally change the trajectory of crap in space.
Can't we just fire off something to nudge it slightly at a different angle?
Evidence for Younger Dryas impact: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/01/1110614109.abstract
Note that the YD debris layer covers 10% of the Earth. It is hypothesized it was caused by a comet which broke up some time before hitting Earth, so created a large number of smaller craters rather than one big one.
This is no joke. We can't even solve the three body problem. Who thinks we can solve the three hundred thousand body problem?
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Given the way the past generations have treated the future ones, there won't be enough time between figuring out the threat and putting together an adequate response in time.
Past performances prove that any previous generation has no qualms at all about making the future generations pay for their own spending and not the other way around, all this is done while paying plenty of lip service to the proverbial 'children'.
You can't handle the truth.
Wake UP!
Approximations :-)
Hey, it worked for the Voyager probes.
Jupiter has been doing a good job vacuuming these rocks, if not, kiss your ass goodby, because there is no chance in hell we are going to avoid an extinction event.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
He does seem to be going on about this issue a bit lately.
What are you not telling us, Neil?
So an exact solution does not exist, big deal. There are plenty of things we can calculate numerically with precision which is high in practice and arbitrary in theory.
He is right, we know too little about asteroids today to be able to predict a collision, let alone think of deflection. Before trying to come up with a plan to deflect one, we need to study them much more.
3 - determine which can have their orbit modified so as to be placed in orbit around earth
4 - Oops!
I know, right? Most disappointing "socialist takeover" ever. Where's Eugene Debs when you need him?
With the computing power, the n-body problem can be solved with sufficient precision for the purposes of detecting this particular threat. And it will give us enough fore-warning to do something to prevent it. Whether we can come to a consensus and actually do it is another issue.
Let me get this straight, in the same post you complain that we won't work together and fix the problem and then also chastise "socialism" - Do you think there is a private company who would be doing this save for the chains of government?
His plan...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Anyone that read Lucifer's Hammer knows that asterioids and comets bounce around in their orbit too much to make anything other than a reasonable guess till they are too close to do anything other than hide The Way Things Work in your septic tank. For those unaware - it's written by Larry Niven and David Pournelle
No wonder they named a Jr High School after this guy.
"Omnis tuus capsa sunt inesse nos"
The earth doesn't need saving from asteroids, it's survived asteroid impacts for 4 billion years. Humans are what we need to save from asteroid impacts and the simplest solution to this problem seems to me to be to move off of objects that routinely get struck by asteroids (the earth) and onto something a tad bit more maneuverable (like an asteroid)
T.Rex's last words were "What's that wooshing sound?"
Sweet! I can tell my banker to kiss off when he asks about making a mortgage or car payment. Awesome news!
The USAF is looking around for a new bomb big enough to bust those wacky Iranian Nuclear Factory Bunkers. Maybe an Asteroid might be up to the job.
You would just need to catch it, and toss it in the right direction. This shouldn't be a problem for the current state of technology.
Probably.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I mean, come on, after the Earth has collided with an errant asteroid and all life on it has been fried, would you really care that the space aliens are laughing at you? If people are not moved by "You are all going to die!" they are not likely to be persuaded by, "Space aliens would laugh at you!".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Whether we can come to a consensus and actually do it is another issue.
Obligatory
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That ain't gonna cut it. Even if the nuke blows up the asteroid, its center of mass will continue on the original trajectory. All the chunks that were displaced in the tangential (to the trajectory at the moment of explosion) will hit the earth. Only the chunks displaced in the normal direction has some chance of missing the earth. Again given the size of the Earth's gravitational well, it would only delay the impact by a few thousand years. So nuking the asteroid is likely to nip in the bud any nascent life form emerging after the apocalyptic impact.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
System alert: Watch out, we've got a bad asteroid over here!
And the outcome will be? We will know the precise hour when we die.
How do we stop an asteroid anyway? I've heard proposals of nuking the asteroids, but I don't see how we will intercept an asteroid with enough nukes early enough to deflect the asteroid. I don't suppose a nuke would be much better than simply hitting the asteroid with a high momentum slug and hope to change the trajectory sufficiently. How will we accelerate such a slug and set it on an intercept course with the asteroid?
Just like clockwork every year the stories abound about meteors/comets/space junk colliding with earth and sealing our fate. Then we hear from bacteriologists that some primordial ooze will threaten to overtake the planet. And on and on and on......... Working in medicine I see this everyday; a constant lobbying for $$$. Cancer vs. heart disease vs. neuro diseases, yada yada yada. I'm not saying that these concerns are without validity, just that this is simply the tried and true method for garnering public support for increased funding.
That is what the Yellowstone supervolcano is for. An asteroid hit is too chancy and not precise enough not to cause unwarranted collateral damage in other parts of the world. The problem with the Yellowstone supervolcano is that it probably won't wipe out California and the East coast, but it will weaken the U.S. enough to make invasion a real possibility for the country that is ready.
Even though its good to plan for precuations and deflection efforts, the fact is, humans could survive a Chicxulub sized impact fairly easy, it is completely survivable here on earth. Unlike dinosaurs humans can store away enough food to get through a long period of time without sunlight, and store a seed bank supply containing huge stores of all seeds from food plants and livestock to repopulate and restore agriculture afterward, and libraries filled with the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Unless, we include the entire population of these efforts so the entire population stores away huge amounts of freeze dried and preserved food, the survival facility would have to be secret and heavily protected from the riots and chaos that would ensue in a asteroid winter. There would be many of these facilities located in top secret all over the planet so even if one was destroyed by the impact there would still be others. The people participating in them would have to live nearby and would have to go underground at a moments notice. Some of them would have to be located near fertile, farmable areas for recovery long after the strike. They would be far underground and bult to withstand wildfires, huge winds, earthquakes and all the other stuff that could happen. They would be protected from tsunami, located inland and so on and from any other conceivable disaster.
All of this could allow humanity to survive on earth even easier and with less trouble than on mars. It is actually easier to survive here on earth after an asteroid than it would be on mars.
Wouldn't the significant increase in surface area / volume ration cause a far lower mass to actually hit earth?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Ar you saying he hasn't cleared his orbit? Because he seems to be the only mainstream media friendly astronomer which would seem counter-indicative of that hypothesis.
Well, if your bomb is strong enough, you can blow it enough for the center of mass to become irrelevant, as all debris will fly away from it. If it isn't that strong, you can still ensure you blow it into small enough pieces that it's surface to mass ratio is big enough for them to not survive reentry.
But the best option is probably just to propel the thing, you are right.
Rethinking email
While we can't say for sure whether it was asteroids, there is certainly evidence for several mass extinctions in Earth's history.
Neil de Grasse Tyson is also in the news for being the proud (?) author of the only modification to be suggested and approved for inclusion in the new version of Titanic:3D - theres a mention here
the ultimate wave defense game
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
I read the title as 'a plan to save earth from assholes'. I'd be more interested to hear his answer on that one.
They can't even calculate it's trajectory close enough to determine if it will hit one on of the few key windows in 17 years that might put it on a collision course in another 7 years. Why should I think the projection out 24 years from now (appx) will actually hit a target only a few thousand miles across and in a window of less than half a day with that level of imprecision?
I think either he's been watching too many Hollywood films, or the reporter didn't correctly quote the statement.
I think it depends on which way the winds carry the ash. Seriously, Californians would be better off if they eliminated the power the east coasters have over them, and California (actually, the whole west coast) is where all of America's remaining technology is. Where do you think your smartphone, computer, etc. were all designed? Certainly not in Detroit, NYC, or DC. The east coast cities don't really produce anything of value, and in the case of NYC and DC, they do nothing but cause harm (from the banksters in NY and the politicians and lobbyists in DC).
I think Heinlein wrote about a mining rig/linear accelerator once, but I've never heard about it since.
The idea is to fly a mining rig to an asteroid and land it there. The mining rig would be nuclear powered and use a laser or mechanical tool to grind up bits of the asteroid, which it would then fire through a longish magnetic accelerator, acting as a propellant. This would be used to then steer the asteroid to where we want it--deep space/the sun/jupiter for disposal or into a stable near earth orbit for harvesting.
The thrust generated by firing bits of iron rich alloy out the back would be small, but the duration could be decades. If the asteroid is spinning, a computer could control the timing of the release to effectively steer the asteroid.
This is no joke.
Yes it is. Orbits, unlike the weather, are not chaotic. For those who don't know, chaotic means "sensitively dependent on initial conditions", which in practice means that the error in your output calculation is not proportional to the error in your measurement of the initial state. This is why accurate, non-probabilistic weather predictions will never be possible beyond the very short term.
Orbits are not chaotic. The error in the calculation of the orbit is proportional to the error in our current measurements of its position and velocity, and any relevant masses that could affect its orbit. The more we study the object, the more precisely we know its orbit, and the more precisely and the farther into the future we can predict its orbit.
We don't need to solve the 3000-body problem, because the vast majority of bodies in the solar system have a completely negligible effect compared to the solar wind.
There is still uncertainty in the orbit of Apophis. That's why you still hear the odds of it passing through the 'keyhole' that will send it on a collision course with earth, rather than an explicit "yes" or "no". Yet with precise enough measurements, we could say that, and eventually will be able to.
So, yeah, the butterfly effect is just a joke in this context.
The enemies of Democracy are
The Way Things Work was written by David Macaulay , NOT Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle .
And if you're caching books in your septic tank for the benefit of future generations, you really should be including a copy of the Motel of Mysteries.
We can't even calculate all of the digits of pi! Whatever shall we do!
AHHHH!
Yes it is. Orbits, unlike the weather, are not chaotic.
An orbit is not chaotic. Solving two orbits (three bodies) is the exact problem that lead to the development of chaos theory.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
[1] Any mathematicians reading this are probably going to crucify me over my abuse of terminology there, sorry...
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You can numerically integrate from initial estimates of known objects. Uncertainties get magnified when any two get close enough. Rotations come into play, mass can get redistributed. And of course a new object could always appear, don't forget the solar system shifts to entirely new space every 316 days.
That's irrelevant: the US already has bombs plenty big enough to bust those Iranian nuclear factory bunkers; the only problem is that they're nuclear themselves. What the USAF is looking for is a really big conventional bomb, because it's not politically feasible to start dropping megatons of hypocrisy on the Iranians.
With an asteroid, on the other hand, there's no problem using a nuke.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I wouldnt bother - no matter how many safe guards science put into place to ensure at least some of the race survived, the first words the surviors will utter staggering out their shelter will be 'Thank God!'
The problem with the Yellowstone supervolcano is that it probably won't wipe out California and the East coast
Don't worry, the flood of refugees will.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I never heard of Neil deGrasse Tyson's (thank goodness for cut and paste), was he in Armageddon? I am glad he had found a way to take his movie background and create a solution that works.
no comment
I came up with a drinking game where you take a drink every time there was a scientific inaccuracy in "Armaggeddon" but I would always pass out drunk by the end of the opening credits.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
That's the second anti-Tyson post (really, why are you so exercised about this educator?) in which you accuse him of "pondering to the crowd".
Pondering. I don't think that word means what you think it does.
Okay, you made your point earlier. You *really* don't like Tyson and are, for some reason, very, very bitter about/toward him. For whatever the reasons, of which you seem to disapprove, he's successful and famous and you're not; take a deep breath, get a drink and get over it.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Derpa derp, I am teh smart.
The enemies of Democracy are
We all have our brain farts. :D
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Predicting asteroid collisions that far in the future is not easy. The limitation is not compute power, but data accuracy. Small uncertainties in position and speed are magnified exponentially every time the body passes close to a planet or moon. Small uncertainties in the gravitational field of the other bodies (e.g. comets, unseen asteroids) and in the solar wind has a similar effect. So if measurement technology improves one digit every X years one expects that forecasting range will increase at a constant rate at best (i.e. every X years we can predict a collision with extra Y months in advance).
I wonder what would happen if someone would start a Kickstarter project around this: "Save the Earth! Target funding: $1,000,000,000,000. The more you contribute, the greater the chance you will survive."
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It would be midly entertaining, but because they wouldn't hit their goal, the funds would not be released...
Remember when the Onion used to be funny, like 10 years ago, before it was a shameless shill for the DNC? Those were the days.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Remember when the Republican party used to be sane? Today's Republicans are the gift that keeps on giving to the Onion writers.
But wouldn't that take away funding from Global Warming research and Green Projects?
Worked against those evil commie nukes and there is nothing more powerful than evil commie nukes.
Let me get this straight, in the same post you complain that we won't work together and fix the problem and then also chastise "socialism" - Do you think there is a private company who would be doing this save for the chains of government?
He's probably American. They haven't a fucking clue what socialism actually is. To them it's just a word that appeared in the English language during the 2008 US presidential election campaign when the bimbo-in-chief started bandying it around to refer to any Obama policy she didn't like.
sounds more like the media whore physicist full employment act to me.
Who is Goodby?
This new learning fascinates me. Tell me again how we can prevent asteroid strikes with just computers.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Near Earth Asteroid collision predictions are relatively straightforward and processes for mitigation are being worked on. That issue is almost too easy and we'll know years if not decades in advance if a relatively large asteroid is a threat. The threat from a large comet approaching the inner solar system is a different issue and one that doesn't lend itself to easy prediction and mitigation. We might have several months to plan for deflection/destruction of a large comet swooping in from the Oort Cloud. Remember those blotches in Jupiter's clouds from Shoemaker-Levy 9? They were produced by cometary fragments.
THAT is the one you linked to?! Just this week they published: this about him :-P As soon as that hits the atmosphere, he's outta here! lol.
Well, the guy who almost single-handedly caused Pluto to be relegated to Minor Planet status should know a thing or two about planetary destruction...
It would however reflect the willingness of people to "pony up the dough" with regards to getting things done.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
first you need to decide precisely how you are going to defend.. then you build the catalog of threats... for two reasons
1- locating everything does JACK for you if you can't stop anything yet, if you can see it- but do nothing- it sucks.
if you can deal with it, and miss seeing it-- it sucks, but at least with the latter you have a better chance of success 100% kill ratio on 10% of objects as located is better than 0% kill ration on 100% known objects
2- knowing the method defines how encompassing your catalog of astral bodies have to be..
if the method selected allows for getting meteors within mars orbit and moving at 1/10th lightspeed or so,-- that's all you gotta look for.
if the method available requires having months advance notice (launch per interception, ship per interception, and sending up oil drillers with nukes) we gotta look farther out for more lead time
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
He mentions the date as Friday the 13th, April 2029. When the date is about 18 years from now, what was the need for mentioning that 13th is a Friday. Now instead of focusing on science, there will be a bunch of people who focus on Friday the 13th.
|On Friday the 13th, April 2029, it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
I was thinking the "other killer asteroid movie" with Billy Bob Thornton in it. Get it, Southern guy with 3 names? Neil deGrasse Tyson has 3 names? OK, Dr. Tyson is a black Northerner and Mr. Thornton is a white Southerner? Oh, heck, you are right, joke is way overused and no longer funny,
testing 1 2 3
Myth. Republicans (conservatives) today are no different today than they were generations ago.
Because the human mind tends to filter out the bad memories and latch onto the good, we all tend to have sugarcoated views of the past. Because of this phenomenon, the moderate Republicans of the past, with their popular, sane and dare I say, effective policy positions are the ones that end up being cast in history as representatives of the great majority.
Meanwhile the John Birch society and Know-Nothing type groups end up being forgotten, or retroactively cast as a "fringe groups" that had no support or influence, when in fact they carried the sentiment of the large portion of the electorate.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.