7 ms·
Scientists to nudge asteroid off course as practice for protecting Earth
- GeorgeOrr 11y agoWouldn't it be funny if they nudge it off its current course, onto a collision course with us? No, actually not that funny.
- ceejayoz 11y agoThe article states it wouldn't do any harm to Earth if it hit, and a planet is a pretty hard target to hit even intentionally.
- sbuttgereit 11y agoWhat would be ironic given that quote from the article is if we nudged it into the path of a larger asteroid and that collision sent the larger, dangerous asteroid into our path. Perhaps the larger asteroid fragments in a way to increase the probability of a collision with the fragments. Don't get me wrong... I do agree with you that all of these scenarios are extremely unlikely (space is really big) and I do think the experiment is worth doing. But still, there are failure modes and unintended consequence opportunities that should at least be thought about a bit, even if a very little bit.
- gizmo686 11y agoIn this case, wouldn't any risk of a butterfly effect causing an asteroid to hit us be offset by the chance of a butterfly effect accidentally deflecting an asteriod off of a colission course.
- mangeletti 11y agoEuropean or African butterflies?
- dajohnson89 11y agoEuropean and laden.
- yohoho22 11y ago> But still, there are failure modes and unintended consequence opportunities that should at least be thought about a bit, even if a very little bit. I think it's highly likely that the people responsible for these projects will realize this. Do you disagree?
- mukundmr 11y agoGiven the limited knowledge we have about space, how accurate are the assumptions that no harm will be done? We are still figuring out water on Mars and that is quite near to Earth.
- dredmorbius 11y ago"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams Chances of anything striking anything as a result of human intervention are quite slim. Effectively nil.
- digdigdag 11y agoI would be pleasantly surprised if NASA could nudge an asteroid massive enough to pose a threat to human life on Earth. If we can nudge it into a collision course, surely we can nudge it out of one.
- djscram 11y agoThat would be hilarious, to a sufficiently distant civilization after a respectable amount of time. Maybe there's some kind of award they give out to planets that self-destruct. But instead of the Darwin award, it's called the Fermi award.
- moanuhLeesuh 11y agoIt's on the same sort of humorous level as something Douglas Adams might write.
- dclowd9901 11y agoIt's not actually large enough to pose a threat (according to the article), so even if that happened, we'd be ok.
- notatoad 11y agoOr onto a collision course with a different inhabited planet. Who interprets it as an act of war. This whole comments section is making me want to read some scifi about this. Anybody have any recommendations?
- Nicholas_C 11y agoMix Starship Troopers with The Forever War.
- monochromatic 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_Games There's some rock throwing in this latest book in the Expanse series. You'd want to read the earlier books beforehand though. (They are worth reading anyway.)
- petitmiam 11y agoArthur C. Clarke's 'The Hammer of God'
- Mithaldu 11y agoThere is some super nice rock throwing in this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prador_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prador_Moon
- dmckeon 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_Harlequin%27s_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_Harlequin%27s_Moon suspended animation interspersed with patiently building a habitable environment out of asteroids & comets.
- stevewilhelm 11y agoNeal Stephenson's 2015 speculative fiction novel 'Seveneves.'
- piotrkaminski 11y agoThe last book of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_F._Flynn#Firestar_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_F._Flynn#Firestar_seri... is all about deflecting asteroids, IIRC.
- tvirelli 11y agoMy thoughts exactly.
- malkia 11y agoActually it's funny, just not to us.
- zkhalique 11y agoWhat's the whole thing about drilling a hole and dropping a nuke to split the asteroid up? I mean, I liked the Aerosmith song from that movie (Armageddon) but doesn't that actually seem like a sensible idea for a bigger rock? Looks like some experts agree w me: http://www.space.com/21333-asteroid-nuke-spacecraft-mission.html http://www.space.com/21333-asteroid-nuke-spacecraft-mission....
- yongjik 11y agoMankind never had to drill a hole in zero gravity, so I don't think we have such a tool in the first place. Besides, even if we had something like that, I imagine they would be rather heavy. Hauling it all the way to the asteroid will take a lot of fuel and money.
- mithras 11y agoCould a very strong laser potentially work for this?
- hguant 11y agoI would imagine a simple drill bit would do the trick - that action isn't dependent on gravity, and in an enclosed area (the bore) the simple action of the screw should do it. The real trick would be making sure the ejecta doesn't hang around. For small particulates you could use a static field, but larger masses would be harder.
- yongjik 11y agoBut how are you going to press against the ground without gravity? If you don't press firmly, the drill bit will just scratch the surface instead of boring in. You don't have gravity, and you can't use suction cups (no air!), and I'm skeptical if you can grab on something and hold on to that. (It will require a lot of robotic engineering, and what if the surface is filled with loose gravel?) Maybe you could fire a rocket in the opposite direction the whole time, but that increases fuel requirement even further.
- puppetmaster3 11y agoI'm sure this will not affect gravity paths somewhat as a butterfly effect.
- Sanddancer 11y agoNope. Everything involved is way too small to do something like that. Worst case scenario is we get a shooting star.
- Houshalter 11y agoNot true. Due to the butterfly effect, even tiny changes to a system will totally change the output given enough time. Simulations of the orbits of the planets turn out totally different after billions of years if the measurements of planets are changed by even an inch.
- monochromatic 11y agoI get your point, but this thing is many, many orders of magnitude smaller than a planet.
- drdeca 11y agoIf it did, why would there be any reason to expect that the average influence would be more bad than good?
- Dylan16807 11y agoSure. It will be about equivalent. 99.9999999% chance of doing nothing, half the rest is good, the other part bad.
- Confusion 11y agoSo do satellites and spacecraft, but we still choose to send them out. What's different about nudging an asteroid?
- cLeEOGPw 11y agoButterfly effect only has meaning in a closed system simulation context, where we can find a small difference in initial condition which triggers major changes in later simulation. When talking about real life, it is meaningless, because we can not "rerun" life to check the result after minor change.
- kr4 11y agoWell NASA recently made a statement that there's no significant asteroid going to hit Earth for centuries to come thus shunning growing rumours by conspiracy theorist about Planet X. SO why are they spending dollars on such a scenario (specially when NASA's budget has been reduced recently)? It could rather be spent on say human mission to Mars ETC which are near term possibilities.
- spoiledtechie 11y agoBecause Nasa can only see about 10% of the entire sky. Meaning, they can't see the other 90% probability that it might hit some day.
- malka 11y agoBecause it is cool to do so. And it could confirm some data. Actually, what would be a good reason NOT to do it ?
- Asbostos 11y agoLet's say a mass-extinction causing space object hits Earth every 100 million years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event) . That gives us a 1e-8 chance of all 7e9 people being wiped out in one year. That's an average of 700 people killed every year if it were spread out in time. Definitely a serious risk even if not the most pressing right now. It is however more dangerous than terrorism in America, and plenty of money is being spent on that!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- orphic 11y agoBut wait. What if it's not just an asteroid... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dig
- gansai 11y agoUnderstood that scientists would be able to break asteroid into pieces using many ways. I guess what they could take advantage of this asteroid is to put a drone or some sensor material on asteroid so that it would help space scientists for space research. Its almost like unmanned space mission, just put a drone-sensor on asteroid. It goes with the asteroid and sends down information which might be helpful. Any space scientists here in hackernews? What do you say? Would it be possible and beneficial?
- Caprinicus 11y agoI'm not sure there is a huge amount to be learned from asteroids unless we plan on bringing stuff back with us. We are certainly going to try to do that, and we have also landed a thing on a comet obviously which will teach us much more.