6 ms·
A privately funded killer asteroid spotter
- hoten 4y agoDidn't expect Tito's to have donated a million bucks to this!
- itisit 4y agoThe founder of Tito’s, Bert Beveridge, has a background in geophysics, and he’s a billionaire. I’m sure he thinks it’s money well spent, to which I’d agree.
- wave100 4y agoBert Beveridge, founder of a beverage company? That's some solid nominative determinism right there. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
- whimsicalism 4y agoExistential risk is a threat to their bottom line!
- SiempreViernes 4y agoIt's essentially a post-processing step using government data, so a supplement to the government funded programs.
- zasdffaa 4y agoBetter distract ourselves with the 'one day it will happen' rather than deal with what's on our doorstep now which we are causing and we can control, but won't. https://explosm.net/comics/the-future#comic https://explosm.net/comics/the-future#comic
- whimsicalism 4y agoMaybe all existential risks are bad?
- apocalypstyx 4y agoThen the nature of the universe (so far as we understand it) is "bad".
- iancmceachern 4y agoTrue. This is a weird line of thought, but I'll bite. The universe it constantly trying to kill us all. It's entropy. Life is fundamentally fighting against that entropy to keep itself well, alive. So yes, in our "living thing" world view the whole universe is always trying to kill us (life) and we (life) are locked in a constant existential battle with entropy to stay alive. So to oversimplify it yes, we (life) are good and the universe is evil in this thought experiment.
- NateEag 4y agothis reminds me vaguely of the "soul growth" concept, the idea that the universe is a place for beings to grow by means of struggle and trial. Shows up in Christian Orthodox theology, IIRC.
- whimsicalism 4y agoThere is no "fight" against entropy, there is just the evolution of a deterministic wavefunction over time.
- iancmceachern 4y agoAren't things like the poleo vaccine or penicillin that? We could let the universe do its will, or fight against it. The same could be said for ants building rafts to survive a flood. That seems like life fighting against entropy to survive to me.
- moomin 4y agoI mean, it’s probably worth watching “Don’t Look Up” to see what the best case scenario is for this.
- ncmncm 4y agoBolide events are turning out to be far more common than had generally been accepted. For example, it turns out a strike only 12,800 years ago wiped out cultural development in North America, along with 30+ genera of large animals including horses, camels, and mammoths, with direct effects proven as far as Chile, South Africa, and Syria, and triggering the 1200-year Younger Dryas return to Ice Age conditions. The fact was hotly disputed by geologists for decades until the smoking-gun layer of platinum-enriched dust was demonstrated. https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/695703 https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/695703 Google Earth has been instrumental in revealing numerous newly-identified impact craters. Wholly modern humans are known to have been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years (was 200k, latest evidence 300k). The great mystery is why it took until just a few thousand years ago for civilization to arise and stick. Our ancestors were not less intelligent than us, or less bold. We know people were sailing deliberately out of sight of land 50,000 years ago, because they colonized Australia. We find evidence of common cultural elements spanning thousands of miles and tens of thousands of years. We don't actually know how old many of the megalithic constructions we inherit were built; we know only that they are at least as old as known people who used them. There are literally 1M+ square miles of what was rich bottom land during most of that time now deep under the sea. We don't have any idea what was built there.
- robbiep 4y agoI don’t think colonisation of australia is a good example for ‘water travel over the horizon’ - people literally walked there.
- applejacks 4y agoMy understanding is that while there were substantial "land bridges" at the time Australia was initially colonized, nevertheless sea crossings were still required. But it's a bit tough to follow honestly, do you have a clearer picture? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia
- ncmncm 4y agoThere has never been a land bridge to Australia. Getting there involved many sea crossings, no matter when you place the event, no matter how low the sea level fell as water was locked up in glaciers. Look up "Wallace Line". Animals, likewise, could not walk from Australia to Asia, for the same reason. Thus, we do not have kangaroos and wallabies in Asia, though they are in New Guinea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line
- throwaway4220 4y agoReal startup trying to save the world probably will never even make 0.01% of the richest man in the world’s wealth