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United States24805 Posts
On March 14 2013 08:58 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2013 08:52 Jonoman92 wrote:On March 14 2013 08:06 Ettick wrote:
I think this is definitely something that should be looked into more deeply since asteroids can cause terrible, terrible damage to civilization. Imagine if an asteroid the size of New York hit the earth. Everyone would be fucked. Well yeah, but if that is in the stars to happen, as they say, then we can't do anything about it anyway. GL having any effect on anything that big. While I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong decission to be made, I think we should accept there are some things we can't do anything about. I'm not as well educated on the topic as you, but I think resources would be better spent elsewhere, even just making a global pool fund to help in the aftermath of meteor (if someone corrects me that I'm using this word wrong I will cut you) strikes. Assuming it's not on the magnitude of zomg Armageddon type strike ofc. Exactly, just how if a black hole happened nearby our solar system, we would be fucked, and there's nothing we could do about it, we are not at a point where we can afford to be doing something like this to worry about such a petty cause, of a few people dying once a decade. Statisticl hippos are responsible for more deaths that meteors, maybe focus on solving those issues first?
I think you would benefit from doing some research on the topic as I am doing. From your first post:
"If we find a rock big enough to destroy humanity, it'll be too late to stop it"
This is not necessarily true. We may have years of notice, due to our improved ability to predict the path of objects in our solar system. The larger the rock, and the more capable of destroying humanity, the more likely we can predict its path.
"last time it has happened was a long time back"
Which? The mass extinction event? I agree. We honestly shouldn't focus our attention on preventing such a large impact; it would be better to focus on more manageable ones. Even if we are only tracking them, that's still better than doing nothing and burying our heads in the sand. If we have some success with the simpler problems, we can tackle the major ones like an eventual mass-extinction threat later on. It's possible with a little more effort in detection and modelling we will become able to determine there will be a huge strike in hundreds of years, giving us plenty of time (and motivation) to address it as best we can.
"the odds are fine, if we worried about every single little threat nothing would be done"
Doesn't this sound like a cop-out to you? Are you saying we should never address threats unless the odds are high? Have you done the math to see how big the threat really is? What are the odds of an impact of size X happening? What is the average number of people who would die from such an impact? What would be the other environmental impacts? This is very complicated, but is being studied. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to research this stuff more before posting so I could actually compare the estimated threat/danger of impacts vs other things we spend a lot of time and money on, but I'm not prepared to do that yet.
"I imagine doing this is very expensive, with all the needed infrastructure and need to hire smart people, to save what, maybe 100 out of 7 billion people in their lifetime?"
It could be 100. It could be 5 million. Last time (1908) we were lucky, save for the millions of trees and thousands of reindeer who weren't. Let's not forget, saving the lives of people in potential ground zeroes is not the only possible benefit out of the type of work being proposed. The technology being worked on to prepare for moon/Mars/etc missions is related to the technology being discussed in this thread. The potential good-will between nations working together to possibly save the planet is enormous. There could be benefits none of us have thought of.
"Global issues, flaws of capitalism, poverty, rich getting richer, cancer, global warming, HIV, pollution, cultural differences are going to have a much larger impact to people, and those are the issues that need to be solved or improve first before we tackle something as insignificant as this. "
They may have a much larger impact (in say, the next 200 years) than meteors. That, alone, is not grounds to dismiss addressing this as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is the only major problem we face. It's pointless to spend tons of resources developing detection technology and working on a 'shield' if we all obliterate ourselves in nuclear war 50 years from now. However, you could use the argument "why should we focus on problem x, when there are still major problems with y z 1 2 3?" to try to block any advancement.
"this asteroid defence shield crap is one of the silliest things I've read on teamliquid for a while"
Again I invite you to actually do some research (alongside me) into exactly how big the threat is. We have come a long way in detection which also means we are getting better at assessing the risk. Even if you don't agree with any work on the 'shield' due to the reasons you gave above, detection should still be focused on. With proper detection, it becomes easier to ascertain if the 'shield' is actually needed or not in a given century.
In summary: humans are not very good at qualitatively assessing risk. Some threats have a high chance of occurring but a low penalty when they do (not wearing gloves when you handle wood can get you a splinter). Some threats have a low chance of occurring but a high penalty (Tanguska if it struck Moscow instead of Siberia). You need to use quantitative methods to compare the overall threat of each outcome.
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the odds only matter if they are against you. we probably won't do anything until the odds of a big asteroid hitting us is higher than we are comfortable with, and by then it will probably be too late.
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Waste of time and money, the chance of a meteor strike similar to that which wiped out the dinosaurs is so small as to be irrelevant.
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Been a topic for quite a wile.
I`m pretty sure that a few nukes, can shatter a 100m-1km asteroid, if needed. But, we only learn after something horrible happens.
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United States24805 Posts
On March 14 2013 09:25 Scarecrow wrote:
Waste of time and money, the chance of a meteor strike similar to that which wiped out the dinosaurs is so small as to be irrelevant.
As was mentioned, a dinosaur-extinction level event is not the only one worth preventing. Also, it's easy to dismiss this as a 'waste of time and money' but don't forget that the benefits of such work would not be limited to an asteroid shield. This would require technological advancement which could benefit the world in some of its other problems.
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United States24805 Posts
mierin thank you for suggesting that part of the Tyson interview. I agree with him. These investments are super important.
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I never understood the "there's too many problems here, fuck space" position.
There's always going to be problems here, when is it going to be okay to start progressing and moving on instead of sitting around fumbling with the same ol' same ol'?
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On March 14 2013 09:27 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2013 09:25 Scarecrow wrote:
Waste of time and money, the chance of a meteor strike similar to that which wiped out the dinosaurs is so small as to be irrelevant. As was mentioned, a dinosaur-extinction level event is not the only one worth preventing. Also, it's easy to dismiss this as a 'waste of time and money' but don't forget that the benefits of such work would not be limited to an asteroid shield. This would require technological advancement which could benefit the world in some of its other problems.
I agree. We got the drive to create cellphones using the communication technology we put into Space Shuttles - smaller size because you want the least weight possible and save fuel -> portable wireless telephone you can carry around in your pocket.
Imagine what we could do with the technology we develop to put an observatory beyond Earth orbit (well the kind we're occupying right now at any rate). Maybe it could pave the way to have a space station at L1 someday and do cool things with it.
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Pretty Sure America or Russia firing its nuclear arsenal at a giant meteor would destroy it, but then the other nations have no real way of knowing if its actually going to hit a meteor or if the nukes are heading for them and we get a nuclear apocalypse scenario  .
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I simply don't think the costs are worth the benefits. It simply should not be a priority of our funds, at least at this point. Only when we have a surplus, really, could we afford something like this imo. Simple reasoning being there are plenty of massive threats, each with very minor chances of occurrence. We can't prepare for all of them without simply sacrificing what we have existing. When we're already massively struggling on budget cuts, which even once implemented we'll still be running a deficit, we need to have our priorities on the now.
On March 14 2013 09:47 Zaros wrote:Pretty Sure America or Russia firing its nuclear arsenal at a giant meteor would destroy it, but then the other nations have no real way of knowing if its actually going to hit a meteor or if the nukes are heading for them and we get a nuclear apocalypse scenario .
Pretty sure if destroying the meteor with a nuke was a valid scenario it would be announced to all the other countries and they would know what was actually happening. How you can see *that* as an issue is beyond me.
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iNfeRnaL
Germany1908 Posts
On March 14 2013 09:47 Zaros wrote:Pretty Sure America or Russia firing its nuclear arsenal at a giant meteor would destroy it, but then the other nations have no real way of knowing if its actually going to hit a meteor or if the nukes are heading for them and we get a nuclear apocalypse scenario .
Public announcement // government internal messages "Hi, there's an meteor coming, we're going to nuke it, would you all just please not freak out and hold back?"
I don't think any nation would be sending nukes out instantly before one actually hit anywhere.
Yes, everyone would freak out and send some jets to see if its heading to them and possibly shoot it, but that's about it.
It's not like 10 nations would just randomly nuke each other, that's just non sense.
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The only effective doomsday prep is funding off-planet colonization.
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I certainly think we should do this eventually, like, in the next few hundred years. This fantasy that we need to get one right now to prevent the minuscule threat of an asteroid doing serious damage is stupid though. Most asteroids will crash into uninhabited places, it is well within our means already to track the route of any asteroid big enough to threaten humanity, the only class that remains are the asteroids in between that can maybe destroy a city if they happen to land on a highly populated area (just a few % of the earth). I think it's safe to take some chances, like someone else said: if we all think that the War on Terror and so many other things are massive wastes of money, then the same would apply to spending a lot of money on developing a highly advanced asteroid deterrence scheme.
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iNfeRnaL
Germany1908 Posts
On March 14 2013 09:58 gyth wrote:
The only effective doomsday prep is funding off-planet colonization.
The slight difference being the fact that off planet colonization is still years away and a possible anti meteor "shield" is not.
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Seems like a good idea.
What about doing something to prevent super volcanoes though? Say learning how to create a controlled eruption on a small scale?
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IMO preventing asteroids from hitting is pointless if it cannot be done in a cost efficient manner, however ramping up detection make sense, if you can see it coming, you could evacuate the population from impact zone.
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It's interesting to see so many people basing their dismissal of this threat off of the idea that 1) you can't deflect a Chicxulub sized impactor so there's no use trying 2) meteor showers are so tiny they just streak in the atmosphere and don't hurt us, and strangely 3) that these are the only two sizes of asteroids that exist.
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EPT
