This was along the lines of my first thoughts (except the Greenland part ). Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, reality began to take over. There would be no single country or leader who could forge and carry out such a galactic-sized plan. I confess to wishin', and hopin', plannin' and dreamin' ... but whether we tunnel or go into space (space station or Mars colonization) only a very, very few could be chosen for survival and that would not be acceptable to the earth's populace. As far as destruction / deflection, there have been all sorts of theories from pulverization (lots of little meteors striking Earth) to attaching giant sails to slow it and change its course. In either case we have to get to it in time -- a few days to get there and set a nuclear charge as in "Armaggedon" is pure Hollywood -- so that cuts our launch time for intercept to about six or maybe seven years. However, I would like to think that we could do it (my eternal optimism mixed with a nasty case of altruism). What other choice would we have?
Actually, there are solar winds and enough "dark matter" to affect the trajectory of the asteroid -- but it takes a loooooong time. Aside to Deckard: I do hope you weren't offended by my responses. Because the problem is so serious but so colossal, I have to poke fun at myself for thinking a person without a scientific background could make such pontifications. (You, or any board member, may personally excoriate me at thumbs@email.com). I too am a science fiction fan and a big supporter of space exploration and colonization. It is the natural extension of the human spirit.
Like Ali once said, "It's the one you don't see coming that knocks you out." I'm still for colonization of Mars as quickly as we can. Sure, the moon provides a base, but Mars has the real potential for the extension (and possibly the continuance) of humanity.
Forget Bruce Willis...That's the greatest film of all time. Forget Casablanca and the godfather. That's the greatest movie that human beings have ever created.
Sounds like we dodged a bullet again, thumbs, thank god. A lot of people don't understand the possibility of a certain strike is very real. Some might even argue that we are overdue. Most just choose to place it in the realm of fantasy and many think the space program is a waste of money. Do they waste a bunch of money? Sure. And they can do a better job. But their budget keeps going down taking inflation into consideration, and they are being pulled in many different directions. NASA needs to get it together and get their budget increased. We need to stop depending on a shuttle that is driven with '60's and '70's technology. I'm like you, thumbs. I'm not a scientist either. Thanks for your post. Maybe I'll e-mail you sometime. B-Bob, you're a physicist... you should put your scientist hat on for a minute and explain how real this threat is and how far away we are from being able to deal with it.
Folks, I gave you my expert analysis: Eddie versus asteroid. Yeah, they tend to greatly *overestimate* these things when first discovered. It's a game of scientific estimation, where you will typically explore the worst case scenario first. So the "1 in 900,000 chance" or whatever was based on a calculation that basically rounded the chances up whenever possible. You could call this a "conservative" estimate, in the same way that GW's economic policies are "conservative." Whoops, wrong forum. As for how you could deal with this, it's interesting. I really don't know where our technology is for such a thing. If you break a big rock into pieces, its center of mass should continue along its original course. So simply blowing it up into smaller chunks could mean we would get hit by four smaller chunks instead of one big chunk. If I was in charge rolleyes: heaven help us), and we had ten years head start, I would try to affix some rocket boosters to the thing and just slowly nudge it from its path. It wouldn't take much (say just a year or two of a slow rocket burn) to gently nudge the thing an earth's width off course. I haven't done any calculations to back that up, however. That rock is pretty massive.
Thanks, B-Bob. I'm concerned about the ones that don't give us any lead time. One not that long ago passed between the orbit of the Moon and Earth. We spotted it a day or two AFTER it happened.
What is absolutely scary is that, with all the telescopes trained on the night sky, those observers cover something like 10% to 15% of the earth's sky. That's why a rock beast like that can shoot in unseen until very late in the game.
I agree, we will one day be able to further explore our galaxy, and Mars is the only planet in our own one that can be colonized by humans. If for no other reason but to act as a jumping-off point for further exploration. I doubt any of us will see it in our lifetimes, but one day the Earth will be so over-crowded and the resources will no longer be able to support the population that we will need to look towards the stars for colonization. It will be a long journey, and Mars is but the first step. What was that quote from Armageddon? "Truman: Well, our object collision budget's a million dollars. That allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and begging your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky." I might be in the minority here, but I liked Armageddon..had some really cool lines.. "I want to name her Dottie, after my wife. She's a vicious life-sucking b**** from which there is no escape." "Look, you wanna compare brain pans? I won the Westinghouse prize when I was 12, big deal. Published at 19, so what. I got a double doctorate from M.I.T. at 22, chemistry and geology. I taught at Princeton for two and a half years. Why do I do this? Because the money's good, the scenery changes, and they let me use explosives, OK?" "We spend two hundred and fifty billion dollars a year on defense, and here we are, the fate of the planet is in the hands of a bunch of r****ds I wouldn't trust with a potato gun!"
The Dottie line was cool, but my favorite was when they were getting strapped in and Steve Buscemi made the "lowest bidder" observation. I can't remember the exact line, though.
Perhaps we should just start eating the poor and/or the stupid now. Well, for a test phase, we could just start with Jazz fans.
I think it went like this.. "You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?" Buscemi had lots of great lines/scenes... I also really liked the scene where he was re-enacting the Dr Strangelove scene..and the colonel guy tells him "Get off....the nuclear....warhead." Great idea Bob...as long as we use the Fakers fans after the Jazzholes.
It'll be a miracle if humankind does not destory earth and every living thing upon it before the year 2014. though to see humans put all their beliefs aside and unite against a threat coming from outside our planet, that would be something extraordinary and may be just thing that saves us from destroying ourselves.
