3 ms·
Large meteor strike. Your move.
by yinser 2y ago
Large meteor strike. Your move.
- dredmorbius 2y agoWhat are the odds? What are the odds of a successful Mars mitigation?
- atleastoptimal 2y agoUnderground bunkers are immune to giant meteors. Also it wouldn't kill every human, it would simply just screw up most of humanity and lead to a dark age. Every mass extinction in geologic history triggered by a meteor took thousands of years to kill off the species they did. Humans would adapt over such a time frame.
- yinser 2y agoTell me you've never read about mass extinction events without telling me you've never read about mass extinction events.
- atleastoptimal 2y agoplease explain how a meteor would guarantee the extinction of humankind, and if so, over what time frame this would occur. I think you're overestimating the severity of a large meteoric impact on a geologic time scale. Mass extinctions occur over thousands of years. Homo sapiens' ancestors survived every one of them so far, by definition.
- dredmorbius 2y agoAt a sufficient magnitude, a meteor might well liquefy the Earth's crust, or cause seismic shocks sufficient to damage even the deepest bunkers. That said, such an event might well cause problems on a (far more generally vulnerable) Mars colony as well (e.g., ejecta subsequently impacting Mars). And the odds of such an event are quite low. Most killer asteroids would disrupt the biosphere, and quite considerably, but not significantly rearrange the Earth's structure itself. The one time that's happened which we are reasonably confident of is the hypothesized Theia impactor, roughly the size of, erm, Mars, which is thought to have impacted the proto-Earth as the latter was forming 4.53 billion years ago, and forming the Moon as a consequence. Other cosmic events such as a gamma ray burst or rogue star disrupting solar system orbits would have impacts affecting Mars as well, and even a well-established self-sufficient Mars colony would not be a sufficient mitigation. (I'm generally not in the "Mars as a lifeboat from Earth" camp.)
- atleastoptimal 2y ago> And the odds of such an event are quite low low is an understatement. You're talking about a single event that happens every billion or so years.
- edflsafoiewq 2y agoWhich do you think is more hospitable to human life: Mars or a post-meteor Earth?
- atleastoptimal 2y agoPost-meteor earth by far. Post meteor Earth has been habitable to every ancestor of all life living today. Mars in inhabitable to almost all life except extremophiles.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]