Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040

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Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040

Posted by timothy on Saturday December 22, 2012 @12:30PM from the 2039-on-the-other-hand dept.

dryriver writes with a report from CNN that the asteroid known as 2011 AG5 will not hit Earth in 2040 as early calculations had led some to fear when it was first spotted last year. "To narrow down the asteroid's future course, NASA put out a call for more observation. Astronomers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa took up the task and managed to observe the asteroid over several days in October. 'An analysis of the new data conducted by NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shows that the risk of collision in 2040 has been eliminated,' NASA declared Friday."

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Do we want to know? by Praetor.Zero · 2012-12-22 12:31 · Score: 1

Serious question: Would we want them to tell us if an asteroid were going to impact the earth with sufficient force to elimate the current dominant life form?
1. Re:Do we want to know? by icebike · 2012-12-22 12:56 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It has a diameter of about 140 meters. Its not a planet killer.
  You watch too much TV. Nobody can keep a secret in this world. Not least of all, government officials.
  
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  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
2. Re:Do we want to know? by RedHackTea · 2012-12-22 13:05 · Score: 1
  
  I'd want to know so that I can post on /. one last time. *tear rolls down right eye*
  
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  The G
3. Re:Do we want to know? by MtHuurne · 2012-12-22 13:18 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, since even with current technology it might be feasible to avoid the collision if we know its trajectory decades in advance. For example, if a probe flies close to the asteroid, the gravitational pull of the probe will alter the path of the asteroid a tiny bit, but a tiny bit can be enough if it happens a long time before the asteroid gets too close to earth.
4. Re:Do we want to know? by BobNET · 2012-12-22 13:21 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Last post!
5. Re:Do we want to know? by Trepidity · 2012-12-22 13:27 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Yeah, it'd have a large local/regional impact, but not planet-wide. Estimates of the impact seem to hover around 100-150 megatons of TNT equivalent, which is 2-3 Tsar Bombas.
  
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  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
6. Re:Do we want to know? by tuxgeek · 2012-12-22 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  Most people don't want to know, and some shouldn't even be told if the Earth was about to be obliterated by a comet or very large asteroid.
  But you can rest assured, sooner or later something will come at us and impact the planet. It's happened before, it'll happen again
  
  --
  "Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
7. Re:Do we want to know? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-12-22 15:57 · Score: 1
  
  I believe Humans and Mammals are the dominant life form primarily due to our ability to withstand cataclysmic events like that.
  It's why dinosaurs died out and mammals took over.
  Except that toward the end of the Permian, "proto-mammals" that were in most ways a great deal like modern mammals were the dominant form of animal life on land. And then something happened to cause the worst mass extinction event in the planet's history ... which cleared the way for the dinosaurs and reduced mammals to a small niche for almost 200 million years. What class of creatures end up winning looks like a roll of the dice as much as anything,
  
  --
  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
8. Re:Do we want to know? by crutchy · 2012-12-22 16:56 · Score: 1
  
  "toward the end of the Permian, "proto-mammals" that were in most ways a great deal like modern mammals were the dominant form of animal life on land. And then something happened to cause the worst mass extinction event in the planet's history ... which cleared the way for the dinosaurs and reduced mammals to a small niche for almost 200 million years" maybe the dinosaurs ate all the mammals?
9. Re:Do we want to know? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-22 19:34 · Score: 1
  
  If it lands in the same spot as the Tsar Bomba, it would damage things in Norway. IIRC, there were a few shattered windows in Norway from the Tsar Bomba. Nevermind that. The blew that thing up in a very remote area. If it hit London... wow, just wow. Not a global killer; but certainly a global game changer.
10. Re:Do we want to know? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-22 21:11 · Score: 2
  
  5km isn't enough to "significantly slow down (and disperse)" such a large volume of material. The impact area is still too localised, even though the object is shattered. More than that, the range of conventional "high velocity" firearms isn't enough to reach the asteroid at 5km. And even if it was, your 1 million shooters would all have to be directly under the "dispersal" zone. They'd be vaporised.
  If you could shatter it fine enough at a sufficient distance - multiple Earth-moon distances - so that the spread was at least planet-wide, you might reduce any local damage to tolerable levels. You still get all the energy dumped into the atmosphere, but in this case, that's not enough to worry about compared to the effect of a single impact site.
  Most asteroids seem to be pre-shattered anyway. Loosely held piles of smashed rock, gravel and dust. Unless you can cause it to spread significantly apart, breaking it up isn't doing much to change its nature, it will still impact would the same force it would have anyway. It will also be able to take a massive amount of damage without breaking apart, by shifting internally to absorb the energy. Compare the impact of smashing a wrecking ball into a solid boulder, verses dropping it on a pile of sand and gravel.
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
11. Re:Do we want to know? by crutchy · 2012-12-22 21:50 · Score: 1
  
  troll indeed
12. Re:Do we want to know? by crutchy · 2012-12-22 21:54 · Score: 1
  
  "So, yeah, us Americans could potentially save the planet after all. We just need more ultrahigh velocity assault rifles." you morons can rationalize anything can't you luckily the rest of the world knows how rediculous your empire is
13. Re:Do we want to know? by cstacy · 2012-12-22 23:17 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, it'd have a large local/regional impact, but not planet-wide. Estimates of the impact seem to hover around 100-150 megatons of TNT equivalent, which is 2-3 Tsar Bombas.
  Meeza thinkin' if da asteroid iz like a bomba, it be doing plenty of kabloohee!
14. Re:Do we want to know? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-23 01:03 · Score: 1
  
  It is and it isn't a roll of the dice. Whether or not a creature is already adapted for the radically different conditions that occur during a mass extinction is pretty much random. They can't plan ahead, because evolution doesn't work that way. They haven't spent millions of years adapting for conditions that don't yet exist, they've adapted for the conditions that do exist. Then suddenly the rug is pulled out from under them when the Earth's environment changes en masse. So, when the disaster happens you're either well-suited for the new situation or you're not. In that respect if you take a large group of creatures (say, mammals), there will be winners and losers, and sometimes they are *all* losers (i.e. they all go extinct). Like you say, it *looks* a lot like a roll of the dice. However, whether a particular species survives isn't simply "luck". There will be a specific reason why they survive while other creatures do not. For example, at the end of the Cretaceous, one of the reasons that dinosaurs seem to have died out while mammals and lizards survived is the fact that most of the former are relatively large creatures that would be exposed on the surface and have greater food demands, while the latter two include a lot of small species that can also burrow into the ground and in some cases hibernate if climate turns cold.
  Think of this kind of like an obstacle course where the "random" aspect is the choice of the exact obstacles on the field, but whether or not a particular species makes it through the course isn't random (i.e. there are good reasons why certain species make it through *that* particular course). The survivors then diversify once conditions go back to normal and a lot of previously-occupied niches that are now empty creates new opportunities. Even when creatures survive mass extinctions they are often decimated. For example, a paper just came out recently that looks at lizards and snakes before and after the Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction. The large ones tended to die out and the ones that survived tended to be small -- i.e. it wasn't "random". There was a definite bias to survivors versus non-survivors.
15. Re:Do we want to know? by hairyfeet · 2012-12-23 08:53 · Score: 1
  
  What you are talking about is commonly called the "War Of The Worlds scenario" after the Orson Welles broadcast that caused such a major panic and I would say that even if NASA had a 100% certainty that it would hit they'd not tell the public until something had been done to stop it or it was nearly on top of us for precisely that reason.
  As K said to J in MIB 1 "A person is smart, people are dumb, dangerous panicky animals and you know it" and that is why you simply couldn't tell the populace about such a thing, because while an individual could understand and accept it the herd would go nuts, you'd have looting and suicides and just a giant mess on your hands on TOP of the asteroid problem. That is why I always laugh when I see Michael Bay's Armageddon, it shows everybody just sitting there quietly and watching the sky when IRL we'd be seeing cities in total chaos and anarchy left and right, the public would just flip their shit.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
16. Re:Do we want to know? by hairyfeet · 2012-12-23 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see how you could say it wouldn't cause a planetwide problem when you look at how a single volcano created "the year without a summer' back in the 1800s. The problem wouldn't be the asteroid itself, it would be how much debris and dust it threw up that would screw up weather patterns.
  Now if it hit in the ocean, which considering two thirds of this planet is ocean? Then other than the tsunami it probably wouldn't cause too much damage, but if it hit on land? Then i could see this thing throwing enough shit into the air to drop temps and cause crop failures which in turn could lean to some serious starvation and other calamities.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
17. Re:Do we want to know? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-23 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  "Rediculous"? The entire world knows you're illiterate troll.
18. Re:Do we want to know? by crutchy · 2012-12-23 10:27 · Score: 1
  
  i would rather be illiterate than American (most of which are illiterate anyway)
19. Re:Do we want to know? by crutchy · 2012-12-23 10:30 · Score: 1
  
  you are a sad, sad little boy
20. Re:Do we want to know? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-12-23 11:49 · Score: 1
  
  Fair enough. That's why I said "class" instead of "species"; obviously you can predict that in the event of a major extinction event, smaller animals will tend to do better than larger ones, but you can't predict that, say, mammals will do better than reptiles, without looking at the traits of particular animals within each group. My original point, apparently not too well phrased, was that it's silly to say "mammals are more adaptable than other animals" when we're judging from a sample size of two: one time when we were, and one time before that when we pretty clearly weren't.
  
  --
  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
21. Re:Do we want to know? by cusco · 2012-12-23 15:55 · Score: 1
  
  If it landed anywhere near the India/Pakistan border the firestorms from the resulting exchange of nuclear weapons would probably do for most of our agriculture for the next couple of years.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
22. Re:Do we want to know? by crutchy · 2012-12-23 17:50 · Score: 1
  
  at least i don't post buggy code all over slashdot and than brag about how its not buggy and then eventually realise there's a bug and try blaming it on slashdot haha what a noob
23. Re:Do we want to know? by crutchy · 2012-12-23 21:20 · Score: 1
  
  oh its just apk... i was hoping for someone that could actually make some kind of argument
24. Re:Do we want to know? by AndyKron · 2012-12-24 01:58 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. The Western countries would declare war on the Universe. And send troops...
Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by Frosty+Piss · 2012-12-22 12:47 · Score: 1

Well....
That all depends.
I hear the North Koreans are planning to land thrusters on it and propel it into the imperial bourgeois West...

--
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
1. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by skitchen8 · 2012-12-22 13:06 · Score: 1
  
  So Opportunity and Curiosity need to be on alert then? On a more serious note: theoretical physics, as little as I understand, leads me to believe by looking for them we are actively inviting them to hit us. Shouldn't we figure out how to stop them and worry about seeing them later? If we can't stop it I would contend there is no use in knowing it'll happen.
2. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by icebike · 2012-12-22 13:37 · Score: 2
  
  theoretical physics, as little as I understand, leads me to believe by looking for them we are actively inviting them to hit us.
  Its clear you understand little.
  But I'd be interested in how one sends an invitation to a 140 meter ball of rock.
  Will it RSVP?
  
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  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
3. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by asm2750 · 2012-12-22 13:43 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, has anyone even tried calculating the amount of Delta V needed to move an object like an asteroid? It would be nice if we could park a few at a Lagrangian point and exploit it for space craft/colony building materials.
  
  Although, processing said raw materials into usable product is another story.
4. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by icebike · 2012-12-22 13:47 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  But maybe u think we could just hollywood like blow everything up and thats it?
  In fact this is a realistic option with an asteroid this small. Its only 140 meters, or a football field and a half in diameter.
  Shattering it into much smaller fragments is actually an option, as only some of those would still hit earth, and many of those would be small enough to burn up in the atmosphere. Most that don't burn up, would (statically at least) hit ocean.
  Most asteroids, from what we know, are loose accumulations of space debris without a solid core. It might shatter rather easily.
  
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  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
5. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by bmo · 2012-12-22 14:46 · Score: 2
  
  Yes, people have calculated it. Depending on how far out you are, it can be enough to paint the asteroid white.
  --
  BMO
6. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by skitchen8 · 2012-12-22 15:37 · Score: 1
  
  I was thinking more along the lines of Heisenburg. As parent noted I know very little, but I was trying to make a funny about the so-called Observer Effect. I think I failed at both the funny and smart part though. :) I still think we should blow this sucker up, just to make sure we can if the time comes. To me "exploding into tiny hopefully harmless pieces" has less modes of failure than "attach rocket and try to nudge." Of course this may piss off the asteroid rights set, but they have questionable lobbying power. Are there other ideas out there I am missing out on? I've only really heard of either nudge it or Michael Bay it.
7. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-12-22 16:44 · Score: 1
  
  I still think we should blow this sucker up, just to make sure we can if the time comes. To me "exploding into tiny hopefully harmless pieces" has less modes of failure than "attach rocket and try to nudge."
  You must be young. Those of us who grew up in the 80s know that when you blow up an asteroid, you don't get tiny harmless pieces; you get small fast-moving pieces that are just as deadly as the original rock and much harder to hit.
  
  --
  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
8. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-22 21:57 · Score: 1
  
  It's about being hit by bird-shot rather than a deer-slug. Both are bad, but only one is survivable. Reducing a resurfacing event to a mere extinction event, or an extinction event to a civilisation killer, or a civilisation killer to a large natural disaster.
  If we can reduce the severity, there's a greater chance we can take measures to preserve the species, and the knowledge of our civilisation. One week in a suburban bunker vs six months. Or a year in a large government nuclear shelter, vs... no chance survival at all.
  In the case of a small object like 2011AG5, breaking it up at sufficient distance would render most of its mass harmless. Not breaking it up would be like setting off multiple Tsar Bombs at the impact site.
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
9. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-22 22:03 · Score: 1
  
  Most asteroids, from what we know, are loose accumulations of space debris without a solid core. It might shatter rather easily.
  Impact modelling apparently says rubble-pile asteroids are harder to break up than solids.
  But they will also have a large amount of their mass as dust/sand/gravel. If you can spread it out, it will burn up above 50km, only the large solid masses will impact. But we need to do proper asteroid missions on members of multiple asteroid families. Too many unknowns.
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
10. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-22 22:13 · Score: 1
  
  That's to give a potential impactor enough delta-v to miss the planet.
  Both Frosty and asm2750's proposals require taking a non-impactor and giving it enough delta-v to hit Earth or go into HEO. That would likely require a lot more delta-v, and vastly more control, than the impact-avoidance scenarios.
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
11. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by bmo · 2012-12-23 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  But that's wrong.
  Delta v can be applied in any case with white paint for either capture or avoidance. It's all the same math.
  --
  BMO
12. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-23 04:26 · Score: 1
  
  The difference between an object hitting Earth and one that just barely misses might be a few tens of metres per second, if you catch it early enough. But the difference between the orbit of the best suitable asteroid and a successful impact (or capture) could be anything up to kilometres per second.
  Worse, any miss is a good miss. Whether it scrapes the atmosphere, or swings wide of the moon, it's all good. A hit, otoh, requires aching levels of accuracy. If a million states are called a "miss" but just one is a "hit", then the two situations are not symmetrical.
  Even if the white paint scheme could provide enough delta-v to bring a useful asteroid near enough to Earth, I doubt it could be used with enough precision to actually steer it to crash or capture.
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
13. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by bmo · 2012-12-23 04:40 · Score: 1
  
  Delta V is Delta V and whether it is applied with white paint, ion thrusters, chemical rockets, gravity, etc, makes no difference if the magnitude and direction is the correct amount for capture or mere avoidance.
  Your thinking is too narrow. You are hung up on whether the application is high-tech enough, when the technology doesn't matter except for cost.
  Seriously.
  --
  BMO
14. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-23 04:50 · Score: 1
  
  You are hung up on whether the application is high-tech enough,
  [Sigh] Try reading what I actually wrote. Missing and hitting are not symmetrical situations.
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
15. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by bmo · 2012-12-23 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  >[Sigh] Try reading what I actually wrote
  I did.
  You are hung up on the technology when all this is really just a lot of math called "orbital mechanics" and whether you use the gravity well of Jupiter or the gloved hand of an astronaut giving a sufficient shove (because the further out you are, the less of a shove you need) makes not one bit of difference if the vector is correct.
  Missing and hitting are all the same situations with the same math.
  --
  BMO
16. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by bmo · 2012-12-23 05:16 · Score: 1
  
  Furthermore, I find your signature/tagline most ironic since you can't see that the math for missing and hitting is all the same except for the tolerances for the resulting answer. The algorithms are identical.
  --
  BMO
17. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by cellocgw · 2012-12-23 05:25 · Score: 1
  
  ...when you blow up an asteroid, you don't get tiny harmless pieces; you get small fast-moving pieces that are just as deadly as the original rock and much harder to hit.
  You got one part right: at the point of blowing it up, the total momentum is conserved. You then fail to understand the full physical picture. Each space rock, regardless of size, loses a lot of material due to compressive heating as it enters the atmosphere. If you have one large rock, ablating, say, 1cm deep leaves a pretty large chunk to hit the earth's surface. If a few hundred small rocks each lose 1cm to ablation, there's almost nothing left to hit the surface.
  
  --
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18. Re:Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-23 05:56 · Score: 2
  
  No you clearly didn't. I explained how the two are not comparable. Twice. This is attempt three.
  An object on a collision course with Earth may require only the slightest nudge to send it off-course enough to miss, a few tens of metres per second. Small amount of force.
  But if you want to target something into Earth (or into a Lagrange capture), you are not starting with an asteroid that is in a convenient orbit that is just a few tens of metres per second away from a perfect intercept. Instead you will have to deal with whatever orbit it's in, and looking at actual asteroids, that typically requires several kilometres per second in order to move it into an intercept orbit. (Plus a second burn of about half a km/s if you want to capture it into orbit, in order to circularise apogee.) Large amount of force.
  Several kilometres per second is not the same as a few tens of metres per second.
  Do you understand? Whether you are using a change of albedo, a rocket, or wishful thinking. Kilometres are bigger than metres. They Are Not The Same.
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
19. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-12-23 08:21 · Score: 1
  
  Wow. Three replies and all of them took me seriously. Is 43 too young to turn into a grumpy old man?
  
  --
  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
20. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by icebike · 2012-12-23 12:42 · Score: 1
  
  Most asteroids, from what we know, are loose accumulations of space debris without a solid core. It might shatter rather easily.
  What does the nuclear bomb modeling show?
  
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21. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by icebike · 2012-12-23 12:45 · Score: 1
  
  Ideally, you would blow it up a LONG way away, not point blank.
  It gives the fragments much longer to drift out of conflict.
  Nobody would have a clear idea if which country was going to be ground zero.
  
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  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
22. Re: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth In 2040??? by FatLittleMonkey · 2012-12-23 21:44 · Score: 1
  
  Actually it's probably the nuke modelling that I'm remembering. The problem is that loose piles can shift internally to absorb energy, without actually breaking up. Bean bags. (Perhaps how they they are able to accumulate in the first place.)
  IIRC, there was a method for breaking them up with a realistic number of nukes, but you had to detonate the bombs below the surface. (Lots of pop.sci giggling at the time about how the movie "Armageddon" actually got something right.)
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Re:Or is that what it wants us to think? by icebike · 2012-12-22 13:00 · Score: 1

Because why?

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
2038 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-22 13:08 · Score: 2, Funny

It wouldn't matter. Time ends some time in 2038 when the 32 bit signed time value overflows.
1. Re:2038 by icebike · 2012-12-22 13:50 · Score: 2
  
  If there was any wisdom the Mayans passed down to us, it was that clocks and calendars do not control time.
  But just in case, we are all switching to 64bit clocks.
  
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  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
2. Re: 2038 by skitchen8 · 2012-12-22 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  I totally just heard about this the other day. Wonder if it'll blow by like nothing like y2k or actually have bad effects. From what I read the choices are watch everything die, convince closed source proprietary apps to restart development and switch to 64 bit, or force it to be unsigned and break many functions that add or subtract time. Is this right?
3. Re: 2038 by aliquis · 2012-12-22 17:07 · Score: 1
  
  I totally just heard about this the other day. Wonder if it'll blow by like nothing like y2k or actually have bad effects. From what I read the choices are watch everything die, convince closed source proprietary apps to restart development and switch to 64 bit, or force it to be unsigned and break many functions that add or subtract time. Is this right?
  Thankfully such things are being done by engineers and scientists and not politicians.
  If they was made by politicians they would wait until the last day to recognize it and start acting like they was really busy trying to solve it at 23:45 and then they would pass the deadline.
4. Re: 2038 by aliquis · 2012-12-22 17:09 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe pass is the wrong word to use?
  Maybe I should say fail instead. I mean go over the deadline.
Good work, NASA by gmuslera · 2012-12-22 13:20 · Score: 2

You know how much government and private sector money you could had got if you tried to do a "white lie" like saying that it could hit, and even could be a planet killer? Everyone would want to have a working colony in mars or self-sustaining orbital colonies by 2020, if not before. It could had been a lie for the greater good.
1. Re:Good work, NASA by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-22 14:09 · Score: 1
  
  "muslim and other religious guided idiots"
  that statement is definitely insulting, off topic and uncalled for
  (a) equating muslims with religious idiots is promoting a dangerous stereotype. Especially unfair as a lot of observations in astronomy are thanks to them (their work, their translations and open mindedness toward science)
  (b) even if you do not believe in any religion you have no more proof that believers of any religion are better guided than atheist... there are a many misguided atheists as well. You have the freedom right to believe anything you want... but being as blatantly racist and stereotypical, that is cheap and uncalled for
2. Re:Good work, NASA by SternisheFan · 2012-12-22 14:44 · Score: 1
  
  "muslim and other religious guided idiots"
  that statement is definitely insulting, off topic and uncalled for (a) equating muslims with religious idiots is promoting a dangerous stereotype. Especially unfair as a lot of observations in astronomy are thanks to them (their work, their translations and open mindedness toward science) (b) even if you do not believe in any religion you have no more proof that believers of any religion are better guided than atheist... there are a many misguided atheists as well. You have the freedom right to believe anything you want... but being as blatantly racist and stereotypical, that is cheap and uncalled for
  Damn that was an excellently worded reply, and very true. Muslims have made immense contributions to the world of mathematics, especially trigonometry, architecture, and engineering, philosophy, navigation and medicine during their golden age.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age#Sciences
3. Re:Good work, NASA by rroman · 2012-12-23 01:07 · Score: 1
  
  I actually don't want to discuss religion under this article, but I have to react.
  The statement might be insulting, but I'm quite sure it is true - I'm not trying to be politically correct on Slashdot.
  (a) Vast majority of muslims are religious idiots. From pools conducted in muslim countries, non trivial portion of people support terrorism, al-Qaeda, or bin Laden ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_attitudes_towards_terrorism#Recent_polls ). That are normal people, not a few fundamentalist idiots that would be an exception in muslim society. This actually is just about terrorism and killing people - to call somebody religious idiot, I don't need him to support terrorism, just support for stoning people for adultery ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning#Support_for_stoning), insulting Quran, apostasy is enough. Even forcing women to wear burqas, forbidding women to drive cars, to divorce husband, are grounds to call them religious idiots (Don't have statistic for that but I suspect it will be much higher percentage than the percentage of people supporting stoning). Even so called secularized muslims seem to be secularized as long as they don't have the majority in society (just an example from a debate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r018ohLUuL4&feature=player_detailpage#t=411s). I, based on such data, conclude that vast majority of muslims can be safely called religious idiots. I BY NO MEANS CLAIM, THAT ALL OF THEM ARE, but the portion is great enough.
  
  And as for the contributions from muslims to sicence and culture ... yes they did, what does it have to do with religion and religious idiocy ?
  
  (b) In social studies there can't be any conclusive proof but we have clues. For example statistic about people in prison, atheists are there far less often than religious people: http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percentage_of_atheists . And atheists don't have an imposed twisted sense of morality provided by any abrahamic religion.
  
  I'm trying to be as objective as possible and not stereotypical. If I got the facts wrong please correct me, but I think, that the facts I provided point towards my opinions.
4. Re:Good work, NASA by ScentCone · 2012-12-23 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  Why should we care about being scolded buy someone who can't understand the difference between race and religion? Being a Muslim - or member of any other group that defines itself by it's belief in magic - is a cultural thing, not a race thing. That the first thing that leaps into your brain is race shows who the racist actually is.
  
  --
  Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
For sale: End of the World 2040 Survival Kits . . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-12-22 13:40 · Score: 3, Funny

. . . only slightly used in 2012 . . .

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Incentives. by deimtee · 2012-12-22 14:22 · Score: 1

What we really need is to find a nice largish asteroid (200 - 600 metres) that is going to make a close approach in 10 to 20 years, then hit a few years later. It would divert a lot of resources from the war on X and into space development. Bonus points if the delta V to capture it is achievable.

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I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
1. Re:Incentives. by crutchy · 2012-12-22 17:17 · Score: 1
  
  ...which would start wars in space great idea... if you're luke skywalker
Irrelevant post end of the world event by manu0601 · 2012-12-22 14:22 · Score: 1

Why do we care? The end of the world was two days ago, and now we have ceased to be, I do not see the point of this post
By the way, how was the end of the world for you? Did you have a nice weather?
1. Re:Irrelevant post end of the world event by VortexCortex · 2012-12-22 14:41 · Score: 2
  
  By the way, how was the end of the world for you? Did you have a nice weather?
  Yes, the weather was fine, about the same as here in the much hyped afterlife which, IMO, seems highly overrated.
2. Re:Irrelevant post end of the world event by manu0601 · 2012-12-22 15:13 · Score: 1
  
  afterlife which, IMO, seems highly overrated.
  Very true. Death did not even release me from back pain. How disapointing!
Re:missed it by scotts13 · 2012-12-22 14:48 · Score: 1

That was 86, not 99.
Yeah, but I'd much rather listen to 99's voice...
Re:O come on Nasa by bmo · 2012-12-22 14:56 · Score: 1

>Why not tell a little white lie that this asteroid will hit earth in 2040
Because after we spend $TRILLIONS on the mission, and the conspiracy is revealed, when the real thing comes along, people won't believe it. It's tough enough convincing people to evacuate a barrier island before a hurricane or to get Mr. Truman away from Mt. St. Helens before the eruption.
Also
>assuming such a secret can be kept
General Petraeus couldn't even keep his affair secret and he was an intelligence expert. This is why the moon hoaxers are fucking stupid, thinking that not just one, but thousands of engineers, scientists, and politicians can keep a lid on a consipiracy all at once.
"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead" - Franklin
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BMO
Damn! by Black+Parrot · 2012-12-22 15:02 · Score: 3, Funny

So just how long do we have to wait for this "doomsday" thing?
I'm going to have to spend Christmas catching up on two months' chores that I've been skipping.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Instead by crutchy · 2012-12-22 16:57 · Score: 1

December 21st 2013 no doubt
Re:missed it by crutchy · 2012-12-22 17:02 · Score: 1

i'd rather 69 99
Re:O come on Nasa by crutchy · 2012-12-22 17:04 · Score: 1

"Because after we spend $TRILLIONS on the mission, and the conspiracy is revealed, when the real thing comes along, people won't believe it. It's tough enough convincing people to evacuate a barrier island before a hurricane or to get Mr. Truman away from Mt. St. Helens before the eruption" what politician cares about what happens after they retire from politics? its someone else's problem
Re:For sale: End of the World 2040 Survival Kits . by gman003 · 2012-12-22 17:50 · Score: 2

Man, I'm barely two decades old and I've lived through dozens of predicted doomsdays. September 6, 1994 - the world did not end. July 1999 - the world did not end. All of the 2000 predictions, from apocalyptic Y2K bugs to Jerry Falwell, were wrong. Nibiru did not hit the Earth in 2003, probably because it doesn't exist. 6/6/2006 was unremarkable except for an abnormal number of heavy metal album releases. The Large Hadron Collider did not destroy the planet, although it did find the Higgs Boson. May 21 2011 was quiet. And the 14th b'ak'tun began with no real damage.
And those are just the ones I remember. According to Wikipedia, the "Mayan Apocalypse" was the 52nd doomsday prediction in the past two decades. And there are already five more specific predictions. There's a variant on a theory that predicted the Second Coming to occur in 1980, then 1988, then 2000, and now it's predicted for 2018-2028. Another nutjob is predicting the same for sometime in 2020-2037 (after his 1962 prediction failed). But don't worry, it's not just Christians making stupid predictions - a certain bit of the Talmud schedules the Messiah to arrive around 2240, and certain Muslims are claiming either 2129 or 2280 as the end date. And I am sure, given a few more years, the non-religious armageddon nutjobs will catch up - perhaps they'll twist the 2038 Problem into an apocalypse prediction, just like they did to Y2K.
Re:Instead by oobayly · 2012-12-22 21:42 · Score: 1

Forgot to carry the one?
Re:Instead by crutchy · 2012-12-22 21:55 · Score: 1

infidel! how dare you try to prove us religious zealots wrong with your pitiful facts and science and mathematics! bah!
Re:For sale: End of the World 2040 Survival Kits . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-12-22 22:36 · Score: 1

Doomsdays and End of the Worlds are excellent business opportunities. Disgruntled old COBOL programmers made fortunes off Y2K. The same thing will happen with disgruntled old C programmers in 2038.
This latest Mayan astrological huff featured End of the World package tours to the Mayan ruins, and Survive the End of the World Shelters. Given any catastrophe, or even faux catastrophe, someone will try to make a buck off it. And there are enough idiots who will spend money on anything, not matter how worthless it is.
Two decades old, you are, then? Ask your parents about their Pet Rocks from the 70's or lock them up in Wikipedia.

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
But in fact: by cellocgw · 2012-12-23 05:21 · Score: 1

that's what they want you to think.
They wouldn't want anyone getting wind of their TS/SAR plans for a giant rocket to get all the politicians and Wall St. Bankers off the planet in 2039.

--
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Re:Look everyone: It's 'CruTcHy' (the troll) by crutchy · 2012-12-23 10:28 · Score: 1

so you fixed that bug yet noob?
Oh well... by drwho · 2012-12-23 16:56 · Score: 1

Another Earth-ending apocalypse avoided! I am so disappointed.
Re:Look everyone: It's 'CruTcHy' (the troll) by crutchy · 2012-12-23 17:53 · Score: 1

hey douche. see you're answering yourself... that's a classic sign of madness you know :)
Re:Argue with your list of FAILS, 'CruTcHy' (lol) by crutchy · 2012-12-28 13:12 · Score: 1

you probably don't realize that people reading this will see how much of an idiot you are... it doesn't really reflect that badly on me if people actually click on and read the linked threads which expose you even more as the dipshit you are thanks for the plug... moron :)