how much would NASA tell us?

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Datura, Jan 20, 2005.

  1. Datura surrender to nothing Registered Senior Member

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    What if there was undeniable evidence that an asteroid was going to hit earth in ten years? To avoid panic, would NASA simply withold such information? Or is it their obligation to warn the public?
     
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  3. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    With our current technology, an asteroid that was 10 years away would be no threat. We’ve already sent several space probes to rendezvous with asteroids and comets. It wouldn’t be any big trick to put a nuclear weapon on one and set it to detonate just before it hits.

    The real danger would be an asteroid that’s going to hit in ten days.
     
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  5. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Well, actually it would be a pretty big trick, even if Bruce Willis was available. A single nuclear hit would probably fail to do much more than dent the beast (unless it was a rubble asteroid.) Multiple strikes might work, but that just means instead of being hit by one large strike we are pepperd with scores, hundreds or even thousands of small ones, each destroying all life within a radius of from one to a hundred miles or more, and bringing on a nuclear winter.
    We have to deflect it very slightly at a very early stage. That is not a simple trick.
     
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  7. Gondolin Hell hath no fury like squid Registered Senior Member

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    We could make a huge rope lasso and lasso it... thats a brilliant idea. :/
     
  8. Boris2 Valued Senior Member

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    >To avoid panic, would NASA simply withold such information?

    what about all the amateur astronomers and non nasa organisations that are always looking for new asteroids?
     
  9. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    In fact, an amateur or provincial observatory would be most likely to spot the asteroid or comet which happened to be on a collision course with Earth - that's one reason I liked the movie Deep Impact.

    Even if it was discovered by NASA, they would have a hard time containing news like that. Rumours would leak out on the Internet, and news agencies would bribe the story out of NASA employees before long. And if the doomsday projectile was discovered only weeks away from impact, the crude nuclear option would be our only chance of stopping it. All we could do would be to hope for the best.

    If there was truly no way to avert the impact, might as well let everyone know! Then people could make their peace with their gods and fellow human beings before the end, blow all their bank accounts and finish human history with the biggest global party possible!

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  10. blobrana Registered Senior Member

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    Hum,
    It was agreed at the last astronomical convention held in Denver that the information would be withheld.
    For public safety, i believe....

    "<i>If there is absolutely nothing you can do about it - you can't intercept it, you can't move people out of the way - then it makes no sense to incur social costs from whatever panic or overreaction there will be.</i>"

    "<i>If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss.</i>"

    Armageddon will not be televised.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2005
  11. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    You don’t have to destroy the asteroid, just nudge it off course ever so slightly. The orbital window that’s necessary for an asteroid to hit the earth is incredibly small. It has been suggested that if an asteroid were still years away, even simply painting one side of it with a dark paint would be sufficient to change its course enough to keep it from hitting, due to the different amount of sunlight that it would absorb if it were darker – the tolerances are that small for an earth-asteroid collision course.

    The impulse imparted on the asteroid by vaporizing even a very small portion of it should be more than enough to prevent it from hitting the earth. A nuclear bomb that detonated near an asteroid would almost certainly vaporize many kilos of asteroid material, which would cause a significant change in course.
     
  12. blobrana Registered Senior Member

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    @Nasor
    Hum,
    Strangely using such a strategy still does not affect the odds that an asteroid will impact the Earth… (100%)
     
  13. EpicOfMan Registered Member

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    I think they would let the public know. It wouldn't cause mass extinction, people would have underground shelters, and everyone would start building underground structures big time.
     
  14. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    The odds that a huge killer asteroid will impact earth probably decreases every year as we map more near-earth asteroids and our technology advances.
     
  15. Neildo Gone Registered Senior Member

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    Hell yeah, I'd wanna know too. Build me a nice underground greenhouse and all sorts of stuff required to live without outside presence. Heck, with work, liking to do things on my computer, and all that, it's not as if I get to spend a whole lot of time outside anyways. So living in a nice underground bunker wouldn't be too different compared to now-a-days. Our types are the ones that would be able to live on a spaceship out in space if our race ever became a nomadic endangered species.

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  16. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    We've explored this issue on SciForums before. A mass-extinction scale impact would generate enormous seismic shockwaves which would reverberate throughout the Earth - equivalent to a Richter Scale 11+ earthquake, if that were possible. Underground tunnels and caverns would probably collapse, flood with lava, or at least be severely compromised. Going underground wouldn't save many people.

    The only truly safe hiding place could be off the Earth altogether, and well beyond the reach of sub-orbital ejecta blasted out from the crater.
     
  17. blobrana Registered Senior Member

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    It’s a funny thing statistics... if you stand in the middle of a motorway, for long enough, even though you plot the route of the cars, you will eventually be knocked down...
     
  18. Datura surrender to nothing Registered Senior Member

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    Is that possible? I mean, do astronomers constantly document what may collide with the earth? If so, wouldn't they have seen this coming much earlier than ten days? This question is probably ignorant...obviously I have no understanding of how these things are tracked.
     
  19. eburacum45 Valued Senior Member

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    A trip to the Near Earth Object Program pages is recommended; the orbits of these objects are calculated centuries in advance once they have been discovered. Incidentally it is not possible to predict these orbits exactly because of the incredible complexity of gravitational interactions; but the statements of risk are accurate and, as you can see, quite low.

    What would be a problem would be an asteroid which had not been detected before; a very long period object, or one recently perturbed by one or other of the major planets; we would be lucky to have adequate, or accurate, warnings about such a wanderer.
     
  20. Datura surrender to nothing Registered Senior Member

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    thanks!
     
  21. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    Besides, if the asteroid comes unexpected from behind the Sun, then we usually spot it when it has passed Earth, not before. We've been lucky.
     
  22. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    We can probably expect another Tunguska-sized impact some time this century - the projectile which caused that event would, I think, be too small the spot more than a few days away, if it arrived now.
     
  23. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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