The Earth gets warmer, it gets cooler, that's what it has done for billions of years before Man ever set foot on it. My point was tongue-in-cheek a bit. Looking at the trends of today, where innovation and industry are being stifled and destroyed in the name of stopping Man from causing the Earth to do what it's going to bloody well do whether we are here or not, it is easy to see such lunacy having progressed to the point where a relatively minor diversion of the path of an asteroid 30 years from now could never happen because the industry and technology necessary to bring it about would have long been snuffed out by these crazed hysterical suicidal Luddites. In their zeal to go ever further in preventing any action which they believe could have any 'harmful' effects on the planet, they instead bring about its destruction. Even taking into account my generally cynical outlook on the majority of people on this planet, I would still be really discouraged to think that such a scenario could actually play out, that people as a whole could be so foolish as to be led to their own demise like that without so much as a whimper.
How true! And humans died long before we invented guns and nukes, so they're cool too. Everyone should have one.
OK I understand your point now. I disagree with it though as I think you're looking at combatting Global Warming very narrowly. Leaving aside the debate whether its happening or not or is man made the efforts to combat global warming aren't all luddite and certainly aren't creating disaster. If coming up with ways to save energy and use resources more efficiently has many other benefits besides combatting global warming. For instance whether you believe in man made global warming or not driving a hybrid will still save you money and represents an advancement in technology while not leading to your demise.
Actually, I do not disagree with you at all about that. People don't ride around on horses today, and that's not because the government legislated them out of existence. Rather, the market came up with something legitimately better, and people chose to move to the new technology. Same with color televisions over b&w, stereo audio over mono, etc etc. The list goes on and on. The problem, as I see it, is that there are too many people driving policy who see 'the environment' not as an issue which will be incidentally benefited from moving to more efficient technology as the market naturally moves there, but rather as the untouchable dogmatic 'holy writ', outranking and subjugating all other issues and priorities, trying to achieve by mandate that which should be allowed to happen naturally through market forces. This is where I fear things are headed. But I sincerely hope things go the way you envision them, which would be much more sensible and market-friendly.
It was all a hoax, the boy was wrong. NASA and Europes Space Program both deny it. http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/91346/wednesdays-buzz-you-missed Wednesday's Buzz You Missed by Molly McCall 3 hours ago Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:45:10 PDT In today's round-up of some of the hottest stories in Buzz, the "NASA boy" is proved wrong, some Chinese Web users express their national pride, and a popular HBO actress reveals her health struggles... NASA sets the record straight It read like a space-age tale of David and Goliath. An enterprising 13-year-old German boy recalculates the likelihood of an asteroid hitting Earth, alerts NASA, and the big American space agency acknowledges he's right. Only problem? It's not true. Officials from both NASA and the European Space Agency have refuted the account, which sped across the Web at the speed of light. The young man's asteroid-strike numbers were not correct and the U.S. space agency has not, repeat has not, changed its mind about the 1-in-45,000 chance that the hurtling hunk of rock will collide with our planet. (The student thought it was a 1-in-450 chance. Yikes!) Unfortunately, all this came out after articles on the teen's statistical success soared in Buzz, and even made it to the Yahoo! front page. Lookups for "apophis," the asteroid in question, surged into the top hourly searches. Some Chinese Web users have had enough According to TechCrunch, a new icon is spreading among Chinese users of MSN chat. Combining a big red heart and the word "China," the instant messenger emblem allows users to publicly express support for their country. The tech blog says Chinese e-chatters have adopted the "heart China" badge "by the thousands" in "response to Western bullying over recent Olympics protests." The reaction in Buzz has been similarly fervent. The story soared to the top of our Sci/Tech section.
When I saw the thread title, I thought the cast from Friends are gonna reunite for yet another season.
Russian report says Apophis Will Hit Earth on April 13, 2036 http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20110206/sc_space/willapophi****earthin2036nasarejectsrussianreport In 2004, NASA scientists announced that there was a chance that Apophis, an asteroid larger than two football fields, could smash into Earth in 2029. A few additional observations and some number-crunching later, astronomers noted that the chance of the planet-killer hitting Earth in 2029 was nearly zilch. Now, reports out of Russia say that scientists there estimate Apophis will collide with Earth on April 13, 2036. These reports conflict on the probability of such a doomsday event, but the question remains: How scared should we be? “Technically, they’re correct, there is a chance in 2036 [that Apophis will hit Earth]," said Donald Yeomans, head of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office. However, that chance is just 1-in-250,000, Yeomans said. The Russian scientists are basing their predictions of a collision on the chance that the 900-foot-long (270 meters) Apophis will travel through what’s called a gravitational keyhole as it passes by Earth in 2029. The gravitational keyhole they mention is a precise region in space, only slightly larger than the asteroid itself, in which the effect of Earth's gravity is such that it could tweak Apophis' path. “The situation is that in 2029, April 13, [Apophis] flies very close to the Earth, within five Earth radii, so that will be quite an event, but we’ve already ruled out the possibility of it hitting at that time,” Yeomans told Life’s Little Mysteries. “On the other hand, if it goes through what we call a keyhole during that close Earth approach … then it will indeed be perturbed just right so that it will come back and smack Earth on April 13, 2036,” Yeomans said. The chances of the asteroid going through the keyhole, which is tiny compared to the asteroid, are “minuscule,” Yeomans added. The more likely scenario is this: Apophis will make a fairly close approach to Earth in late 2012 and early 2013, and will be extensively observed with ground-based optical telescopes and radar systems. If it seems to be heading on a destructive path, NASA will devise the scheme and machinery necessary to change the asteroid’s orbit, decreasing the probability of a collision in 2036 to zero, Yeomans said. There are several ways to change an asteroid’s orbit, the simplest of which is to run a spacecraft into the hurtling rock. This technology was used on July 4, 2005, when Deep Impact smashed into the comet Tempel 1. This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site of SPACE.com.
Oh please, for every man trying to prevent harm done to the planet, 100 others are harming the planet.
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=97602&highlight=Apophis Already posted -- please merge threads.
I'll be pretty old by then, that's if I make it, and it would probably be a good time to go anyways. It'll be my kid's generation's problem by then.
Am I the only one who thinks it's hilaroius that he's giving an interview to a source called "Life's Little Mysteries" about the possibility of a 900 ft. wide asteroid smashing into Earth?
Pffft. I can't believe this 13-year overlooked this. My 7 year old is all over things like "equatorial geosynchronous zone" and "equatorial planes".
