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NASA boosts impact risk from 'potentially hazardous' asteroid Bennu
- vimy 5y agoWhat would we do if an asteroid was on a collision course? Nuke it? Can ICBMs even go to into space?
- graderjs 5y agoCounterintelligence is the first consideration we must never let the public know anything of significant truth value. Whatever it takes to ensure this mission--is justified. Also we must build underground and off-world bunkers where both genetic subsampling of the population and those who are able to contribute to the construction efforts (a la the film 2012) are provided shelter from the coming apocalypse. But why stop there The apocalypse likely provides many opportunities for which we can extract significant profits. By carefully coordinating the amounts of chaos and confusion in society we can maximize our benefit. Surely it's basically a linear optimization problem.
- willis936 5y agoThis is way deep in conspiracy. Asteroid tracking is open sourced. There are no secrets to be kept.
- loopz 5y agoHe forgot the /s tag.
- graderjs 5y agoHe did nothing of the sort
- graderjs 5y agoNo secrets every person on the planet has access to a high grade telescope nothing is censored we can access all data across all frequencies across all portions of the sky. There's absolutely no control... Nothing to see here citizen. Move along quietly now You'll be like the anti-vaxxetss saying the virus is a hoax as they lie dying of pneumonia. When the elites are funneled into their underground bases you'll be saying the asteroid and the cover-up is a hoax as the blinding flash obliterates everything you love Edit: Hey someone should rewrite this Truth for The gentle cottonwool-coddled hn minds that prefer the peaceful vista to the real one before their eyes... Transmit the same truth but share it in a gentler more familiar package to ensure delivery
- akreal 5y agoRedirect it. Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission is going to test soon if this would work in practice: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_...
- graderjs 5y agoThe Daily Tribune: "thank the heavens! Earth saved by Wikipedia article"
- phh 5y agoThanks that's interesting. The article says 0.5mm/s of change is enough to miss the earth, but how much time ahead do we need to find the asteroid? (Assuming we launch the day we find the asteroid, which is politically-wise unlikely but well)
- icegreentea2 5y agoSo with an end-stage interaction where you're not considering keyhole effects, you very roughly you need to accumulate an Earth diameter of position change. So Earth diameter is ~13000km, so that works out 26 billion seconds or 825 years. So in real terms, we'd probably wanna do a but more delta V than that. At 1cm/s, you're down to 41 years for example.
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- foxrider 5y agoWe can only hope that said asteroid isn't too big and evacuate the area of impact. We can't do anything to prevent it. ICBMs can't even target something in space, and even if we blow the asteroid with one the same mass would still be flying towards earth as a shrapnel. Theoretically we can try shooting it with a laser to evaporate part of it creating thrust to divert it, but we don't have lasers that powerful and probably wouldn't. This is uncomfortable truth - we are completely defenseless against asteroids.
- dustinls 5y agoTrivialize the threat publicly, buy/sell off all relevant stocks, then announce threat is worse than anticipated. Deny again that asteroid is a threat. Redraw a different course in red sharpie over the actual trajectory showing a path missing earth. Discredit astronomy, discredit nasa, discredit physicists like there's no tomorrow.
- ianai 5y agoOnly if they were making money off the asteroid. There’d be more money to make in redirecting it. Especially if we’re talking 150+ years from now with much better space capacities.
- acranox 5y agoThis summarizes one possible scenario. https://twitter.com/mycoliza/status/1417539271192309761 https://twitter.com/mycoliza/status/1417539271192309761
- fovc 5y agoFor anyone else wondering whether the "keyhole" term was made up for this or not, no: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_keyhole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_keyhole
- ironSkillet 5y agoFor anyone alarmed by this headline - a main conclusion is that there is a possibility of this asteroid being on course to hit earth in the year 2182 or later.
- checker 5y agoTypo in title, should read Bennu not Bennui.
- protoman3000 5y agoIf there COVID-19 pandemic has shown us anything then that civilized humanity is unable to prevent catastrophe, but that it also will be able to mitigate the worst effects for the richest 20-30% of the population. It is sobering, because there was always this observation that a common enemy unites people to strike effective action and we could feed our hopes that if things are just serious enough, we will be strong enough. But, the pandemic was that common enemy and yet we saw a failure to prevent it. We shouldn’t even say it was due to egoism, greed or incompetence. It’s just impossible to coordinate on that scale. Why would it be any different here?
- norov 5y agoThe only difference is that we would be calling astrophysicists "heroes" instead of healthcare workers. Hell, we might even clap for them at baseball games.
- vvarren 5y agoAnd meanwhile we would give them pay reductions because honor is worth far more than fake money
- redis_mlc 5y agoYour comment is nonsense. > civilized humanity The CCP is a gang of thugs. > we saw a failure to prevent it It was most likely lab-made in WIV, and deliberately spread via international air travel. > It’s just impossible to coordinate on that scale. The CCP won't even say who Patient Zero was, so no coordination whatsoever.
- eps 5y agoDealing with an asteroid threat doesn't require hundreds of millions of people to get off their asses and actually do something about it. That's the difference.
- Tempest1981 5y agoIt may require politicians to unite, to provide funding. Like global warming.
- abacadaba 5y agoSo, unless I missed it in there, how big of a crater is this gonna make?
- T-A 5y agohttps://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/ https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/
- dredmorbius 5y agoIt'd be a pretty exciting day for anyone within 100km or so of the impact site. https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=100&diam=490&pdens=1190&pdens_select=0&vel=17&theta=45&tdens=1000&tdens_select=1500 https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?d... For a water impact, probably a high surf day for an even larger region.
- dredmorbius 5y agoBased on the calculator below, a final crater diameter of 7.39 km ( = 4.59 miles ), and final crater depth of 540 meters ( = 1770 feet ). I've run estimates of effects for selected distances from 1km to 1,000 km from impact. You'd probaby want to be at least 50 km minimum from ground zero. Strutural damage would be severe, though humans could survive There'd be substantial blast effects to 200 km, as well as ejecta. Nearer than 50 km, thermal and blast effects, as well as ejecta, would all likely be lethal. https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=200&diam=490&pdens=1190&pdens_select=0&vel=17&theta=45&tdens=1000&tdens_select=1500 https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?d...
- noahjk 5y agoSince you seem like you've the answer for this : what would it look like if it hit the ocean (both off a coast, in shallow water before a drop-off, and maybe way out in the middle of nowhere)? What if it hit Antarctica or somewhere on the north pole? Could it severely impact our ice reserves?
- endymi0n 5y ago> The Torino scale is a method for categorizing the impact hazard associated with near-Earth objects (NEOs) [...] > # Objects with non-zero Torino ratings > Currently non-zero: none https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale#Objects_with_non-zero_Torino_ratings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale#Objects_with_non-...