The Earth is continually under threat of impact from asteroids, meteors, comets, and other space junk. Based on current theories, it has been 65 millions years since the last mass extinction event due to a meteor: it ended the hundred million plus year reign of the dinosaurs. The odds of an impact this massive happening within the next one or two hundred years is microscopic. However, smaller bodies can still be quite devastating if they strike the Earth with sufficient speed.
In 1908, a meteorite struck Tanguska, in Siberia. Fortunately, the area was not populated by humans, and no people were killed. However, a body of approximately 100 meters (not big in terms of the solar system), exploding quite a few kilometers up in the air (~5-10 estimated) completely devastated an area of approximately 2000 square kilometers with an explosion comparable in yield to 1000 "Hiroshima" atomic bombs. Granted, this level of impact doesn't happen very often... but ~100 years ago is a very short time by solar system standards.
How many people would have died if the meteorite had arrived on the same trajectory a couple of hours later? Millions of Moscow residents would have died.
Moscow was here
Fast forward a hundred years to the event of approximately one month ago: thousands of people in Chelyabinsk were injured by the shock wave (due to broken glass) from a very similar event to the Tanguska impact, except much smaller in scale. Russia has had enough.
According to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, famous physics and physics publicist, no country's government is doing anything about the threat of impacts. He said this before today's announcement from Russia that they are planning to ramp up their detection efforts and begin work on systems to physically intercept Earth-bound objects. The article mentions that Russia admits it will not be able to handle such a project by themselves, although much of their planning has already been completed since they started work about a month ago (guess why). Part of the plan involves placing an observatory in stationary orbit between the Earth and the Moon at an appropriate Lagrangian point (quite interesting if you read up on this).
Russia wants to put some eyes at L1
I have been interested in this issue for a while. What can we do about the threat of impacts. What should we do. Exactly how big is the threat of impacts? I'm reading some books on the topic right now, and was going to delay creating a thread a few weeks to discuss this, but Russia has forced my hand.
I firmly believe that my country (USA) should either get on board with Russia's project or begin new talks about increasing the USA's dedication to finding ways to prevent devastating impacts.
In the past 10-20 years we have actually made some progress in detection: we can track the largest meteors, asteroids, and comets much better than we could before. Really small bodies (pebbles) do not pose much of a threat. I see two other classes of threats: somewhat larger than pebble, and somewhat smaller than Tanguska. Objects that are the size of cars can be quite devastating, but are virtually impossible for us to detect with technology that will be available for many years to come. We should focus on tracking the objects that are slightly smaller than what we are currently able to track; not only are they more dangerous, but it's just not impossible with current technology to begin work on tracking these fairly large objects, compared to Land Rover sized rocks.
The other piece of this is of course responding to a body that is on an impact trajectory. Unfortunately, Bruce Willis won't be able to help when it's a real asteroid coming. For years people have been hypothesizing ways to shield the Earth from impacts: deflection, annihilation, etc. Maybe we can finally put some of the Earth's nuclear arsenal to good use.
Not this time, Bruce
In the short term, impacts are probably not the greatest threat to humanity. They are up there, however, despite what the world's apathy would lead you to believe. I encourage you to do some research on the issue as I am currently doing.
Long term, impact is probably one of the top three reasons why humans will cease to be (I might be giving us too much credit... who knows).
What is your country doing about this? What should they be doing? How can we help? If you don't think we should address this, why?
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.
I think its pretty bad that even though there's such an infinitesimal chance of a large-scale impact happening anytime soon, we have done next to nothing as a planet to shield ourselves from the potential apocalypse. We know they've hit us before and we were lucky. Is that really what humans have evolved into? Beings that still look directly at a huge potential threat to their survival as a civilization and go "eh we'll just roll the dice and pray" won't live for too long.
This isn't one of the natural disasters on earth where you can mess up and no problem, a small area is destroyed but you pick up the pieces and rebuild. If a big-scale impact happened, gg Earth. There is no second chance.
What we should do (we as in EU+US+other developed coutries) is to solve the problem of detection once and for all. If we could predict Tunguska events 2 month in advance it would decrease their impact (no pun intended) significantly.
This is completely feasible, even with our current technology and current economic/fiscal climate. A few years ago Congress comissioned a study on the asteroid threat. The result was that the biggest total threat was from objects 100-300m in size. Asteroids that spend most of their time inside the orbit of Earth were deemed especially dangerous, since they are harder to detect.
NASA's proposed solution was a 1.5m infrared telescope on orbit around Venus, which was supposed to find ~80% of these objects by 2025. The proposed price tag was 3billion. (Give or take 50%, I don't remember the exact numbers. I promise I'll dig up the orginal study soon.)
So basically by far the biggest threat are asteroids that would cause vast regional devastation but would have little impact for the Earth as a whole. Furthermore detecting asteroids is very easy compared to changing their trajectory. The sensible solution seems to be to invest heavily into detection and think about defense when we actually find an asteroid that's headed towards us.
No, actually humanity has evolved into the opposite... Let's take zero risk and start investing infinite money into very small probability disasters... We are scared of global warming, nuclear, coal, cars, chemicals, food, electromagnetism... Each of those thing have their loonies wanting to put half of humanities production into stopping the danger of... We live, we improve, we must follow the mighty laws of economics, sure when we know the asteroid is coming, the price of anti-asteroid solution might be slightly skyrocketing.
Actually today I was wondering about this, if you know an asteroid will destroy a city of the size of lets say, Mexico city. Which will cause more suffering and damage in the long run, letting every get hit by surprise or evacuate 10's of millions of people. Of course we should try to save as many but the result might not be kill more in the long run? What do you think
Evolution is a race to develop technology to protect against asteroids. Life is limited in space because intelligent civilizations get hit by asteroids.
For every human that cares about a troubling issue in today's world, there is a person who doesn't give a shit, another person who doesn't know that shit exists, and another one who points to something else. I'm pretty sure an asteroid detection/shield system is at the bottom of all the global issues we're facing today.
While I believe having the ability to prevent such disasters is a good idea, I don't know if I agree with the fact that we need to plan/have something ready for every minuscule eventuality. Seems like just pissing resources away on a roll of a massive die that has to land on the same side 100x in a row for something devastating to happen.
As long as we go for "ignore the likelihood of it not happening and let's focus on how scary the threat is"
The freaking sun will one day kill us all, yes the same thing that is keeping us alive will become so hot that it will incinerate us. The meteor threat is nothing but a fart compared to this, wanna worry about something? Then worry about the freaking sun literally turning Earth to a piece of coal before it implodes.
On March 14 2013 08:38 Integra wrote: As long as we go for "ignore the likelihood of it not happening and let's focus on how scary the threat is"
The freaking sun will one day kill us all, yes the same thing that is keeping us alive will become so hot that it will incinerate us. The meteor threat is nothing but a fart compared to this, wanna worry about something? Then worry about the freaking sun literally turning Earth to a piece of coal before it implodes.
The key difference between these two threats is that one can strike at any time; the other is most likely far into the future. The good news is there is some overlap in preparation for both eventualities... improving our ability to defend from asteroids most likely also improves our ability to improve our overall space technology.
On March 14 2013 08:36 Mortal wrote: While I believe having the ability to prevent such disasters is a good idea, I don't know if I agree with the fact that we need to plan/have something ready for every minuscule eventuality. Seems like just pissing resources away on a roll of a massive die that has to land on the same side 100x in a row for something devastating to happen.
Work is being done to try to balance risk of different types of impacts to see which ones are most worth focusing on (as has already been mentioned by another poster). It's been 100 years since the last impact that could have killed millions, and 1 month since the last impact that injured thousands. This is a real threat.
The perspective here is astounding to me. I honestly believe that comets are the last of our worries, doing anything at this point is a waste of money.
If we find a rock big enough to destroy humanity, it'll be too late to stop it, plus, last time it has happened was a long time back, the odds are fine, if we worried about every single little threat nothing would be done.
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?
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.
I know you teach Micronesia, and you're a smart person, but this asteroid defence shield crap is one of the silliest things I've read on teamliquid for a while.
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.
On March 14 2013 08:26 0x64 wrote: No, actually humanity has evolved into the opposite... Let's take zero risk and start investing infinite money into very small probability disasters... We are scared of global warming, nuclear, coal, cars, chemicals, food, electromagnetism... Each of those thing have their loonies wanting to put half of humanities production into stopping the danger of... We live, we improve, we must follow the mighty laws of economics, sure when we know the asteroid is coming, the price of anti-asteroid solution might be slightly skyrocketing.
Actually today I was wondering about this, if you know an asteroid will destroy a city of the size of lets say, Mexico city. Which will cause more suffering and damage in the long run, letting every get hit by surprise or evacuate 10's of millions of people. Of course we should try to save as many but the result might not be kill more in the long run? What do you think
Perhaps this is the best example of why a lot of people are starting to realize money is a huge factor holding people back from expanding technology and knowledge. Its the reason a lot of space missions never make it past the drawing board and a large contributor to why the space exploration programs have been making no progress further than the moon since '69.I wouldn't be surprised if there's other space-faring civilizations out there that most of them have long-since abandoned such concepts.
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?
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?
Now apply that argument to terrorism and the amount of money spent on fighting it by all developed nations.
I think that a system that is capable of changing the trajectory of an asteroid would also be capable of mass destruction here on Earth. If one were to be created it could be used as a weapon. Currently, I trust the world powers enough to support an asteroid shield, but others might disagree. I think we humans have come a long way towards world peace, even though we still have a long way to go.
There are also many more pressing issues than potential meteor strikes. The likelihood of anyone creating a functional system that can detect and alter the trajectory of asteroids is very small due to expenses, unless a devastating meteor strike occurs to cause people to change their minds and warrant funding for such a project.
Eventually, the Earth will be destroyed. If not by meteors, then by some other cosmic disaster. Probably the Sun overheating us or going supernova. Ultimately, I'd be more interested in funding a warp drive or other means of interstellar travel. Or how about building a large space station, or a moon base? These are things that would be better uses of money for space programs in my opinion. An observatory of some sort that detects astral bodies is also a prime example of this. I'm just not sure about the part that deflects/removes potentially dangerous asteroids.
I think that different methods of preventing meteor strikes should be discussed, I'd like to learn more. I've heard about missile defense ideas and I know most people reading this have seen the movie Armageddon, but there must be other, better ways to prevent meteor strikes than blowing them up.
On March 14 2013 08:51 FiWiFaKi wrote: The perspective here is astounding to me. I honestly believe that comets are the last of our worries, doing anything at this point is a waste of money.
If we find a rock big enough to destroy humanity, it'll be too late to stop it, plus, last time it has happened was a long time back, the odds are fine, if we worried about every single little threat nothing would be done.
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?
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.
I know you teach Micronesia, and you're a smart person, but this asteroid defence shield crap is one of the silliest things I've read on teamliquid for a while.
Neil Degrasse Tyson talked about using a rocket as a kind of gravitational tractor beam. You fly a large rocket next to the asteroid, and as gravity pulls them together, you continually edge the rocket away, and so deflect the asteroid. Just make sure you don't deflect it INTO the earth.
Look up his videos on the Apophis asteroid. Very cool.
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.
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.
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 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'?
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Too bad nothing happened. At least we had 4 more years of the space shuttle and a space telescope that will revolutionize our view of the universe if it ever gets off the ground. But in the meantime it's suffocating space science.
Personally, I think its important that we invest in the technology needed to stop these things from hitting us. The truth of the matter is that we don't really have all of the asteroids mapped out yet, and these things do pose a threat and they seem to be pretty common. I think this research is also beneficial to us as a species because of the fact that it goes hand in hand with current ambitions to mine asteroids. In other words finding these things have multiple benefits, one of which might be protecting our species lol.
On March 14 2013 10:11 furymonkey wrote: 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.
what does cost efficient mean under these circumstances? If we discover an asteroid heading towards us that can annihilate a portion of the planet or something, and it's going to hit us in 20 years...im willing to bet that the world would fund a project to prevent it from hitting us no matter what the cost. It would be the number one priority and cost would be irrelevant.
I bet we weaponzie astroids the second we have the capability to. First thing we did once the atom was split was drop a bomb so it only makes sence that once we can deflect them away from earth we will try and bring small ones towards it as a weapon.
On March 14 2013 08:36 Mortal wrote: While I believe having the ability to prevent such disasters is a good idea, I don't know if I agree with the fact that we need to plan/have something ready for every minuscule eventuality. Seems like just pissing resources away on a roll of a massive die that has to land on the same side 100x in a row for something devastating to happen.
For everyone with this attitude, I'd recommend looking something up called Long Term Capital Management. It was a company run by several people with Nobel Prizes in economics that failed completely and went under because of this exact same idea. They thought the chance of the Soviet Union collapsing and failing was quite small, and thus did not incorporate the risks of it happening into their models.
Mathematically, it's difficult, but you absolutely do need to take into account rare and unlikely events with catastrophic consequences.
If the consequences of failing to prepare for a specific event are something on the scale of millions or billions dying (or the entire human race), then can you really afford NOT to prepare for it?
More importantly, the amount of money required to put a system into place to prevent this type of disaster is actually miniscule when compared to the scale of something like the U.S. budget.
On March 14 2013 14:02 Orcasgt24 wrote: I bet we weaponzie astroids the second we have the capability to. First thing we did once the atom was split was drop a bomb so it only makes sence that once we can deflect them away from earth we will try and bring small ones towards it as a weapon.
I hope to god I am wrong
I know Carl Sagan tried to make this point on at least one occasion, but I never saw it hashed out that much. I think the problem with it is nuclear stockpiles as they exist are as destructive and precise as you need weapons to be. Coming up with something more destructive than H-bombs, like weaponized asteroids or antimatter bombs, would fit right into the existing frameworks that stop us from using nuclear weapons. It's not viable politically, economically (due to all the ways countries depend on each other today), or by common sense (retaliation).
The thing is having the capability to alter their trajectories is basically immediately the same as weaponization. Just like having the ability to launch something into orbit gives you the ability to launch missiles (although not necessarily with rocket-sized nuclear warheads atop).
Evolution is a race to develop technology to protect against asteroids. Life is limited in space because intelligent civilizations get hit by asteroids.
It's actually Reapers lol. (I mean the ones from Mass Effect)
I think it's good that the Russians are taking the initiative start on this kind of thing. They put a huge amount of emphasis on air defense and ballistic missile defense, more than any country by far. Personally I'm surprised their existing technologies are totally insufficient. I guess intercepting an asteroid is magnitudes harder than an ICBM. It's bad though that most other countries, including the US, seem to not give a care about a very real threat.
That's Barringer crater correct? The flow of the post looks like you were saying that was the result of the Tunguska impact (which was smaller).
Also blowing it up isn't a good idea. Most of the fragments will keep their momentum and hit anyway...and we'd have less idea where they were going to land.
aside from detection/deflection of asteroids. this technology could ADVANCE i repeat ADVANCE our technology. it is the smart way in investing for the future of mankind.
On March 14 2013 15:34 sheaRZerg wrote: That's Barringer crater correct? The flow of the post looks like you were saying that was the result of the Tunguska impact (which was smaller).
Also blowing it up isn't a good idea. Most of the fragments will keep their momentum and hit anyway...and we'd have less idea where they were going to land.
Other than that I agree.
Wouldn't separating it into smaller pieces, causing greater surface area, mean that more of it burns off once it enters the atmosphere? Provided the pieces are acceptably small, it probably is a good idea to blow up an asteroid.
On March 14 2013 15:34 sheaRZerg wrote: That's Barringer crater correct? The flow of the post looks like you were saying that was the result of the Tunguska impact (which was smaller).
Also blowing it up isn't a good idea. Most of the fragments will keep their momentum and hit anyway...and we'd have less idea where they were going to land.
Other than that I agree.
Wouldn't separating it into smaller pieces, causing greater surface area, mean that more of it burns off once it enters the atmosphere? Provided the pieces are acceptably small, it probably is a good idea to blow up an asteroid.
If you blew it up far enough away from the planet ya. In the sky is too close. The atmosphere can burn small sized astroids down to nothing quite easily. We acctually get pelted by small rocks from space quite regularly but 99.9% of them burn into oblivion. The ones that do get through are usally not destructive at all.
The russian astroid was about 10,00 tonnes and 55feet wide according to guesstimates by scientists
On March 14 2013 15:34 sheaRZerg wrote: That's Barringer crater correct? The flow of the post looks like you were saying that was the result of the Tunguska impact (which was smaller).
Also blowing it up isn't a good idea. Most of the fragments will keep their momentum and hit anyway...and we'd have less idea where they were going to land.
Other than that I agree.
Wouldn't separating it into smaller pieces, causing greater surface area, mean that more of it burns off once it enters the atmosphere? Provided the pieces are acceptably small, it probably is a good idea to blow up an asteroid.
If you blew it up far enough away from the planet ya. In the sky is too close. The atmosphere can burn small sized astroids down to nothing quite easily. We acctually get pelted by small rocks from space quite regularly but 99.9% of them burn into oblivion. The ones that do get through are usally not destructive at all.
The russian astroid was about 10,00 tonnes and 55feet wide according to guesstimates by scientists
I know, I wasn't really thinking of hitting it after it entered the atmosphere.
Meh, I think that a defense against meteors that are a threat to all life on earth is a good idea, but investing billions just so a comet won't destroy a small city is over the top for me. Cities get destroyed all the time by earthquakes, fires, water, whatever, and almost never by comets/asteroids. So investing billions in such a low probability/low impact event would not be my highest priority.
The article mentions that Russia admits it will not be able to handle such a project by themselves, although much of their planning has already been completed since they started work about a month ago
Yes. Planning a project this size is that easy.
On a more sincere note: People are susceptible to fear for these large risk/low probability events. I am all for pumping large amounts of money in space-technology. However I have a larger fear for fossil fuels running out during my lifetime. So, in Starcraft lingo, we need to expand to somewhere first to acquire additional gas, rather than build tons of photon cannons around our base that's running out of gas . (Granted, the main base should be protected in this analogy as well. However, you wouldn't invest in cannons if the odds of something attacking your base are very low). Establishing a moon base (I don't know if there's something valuable we can mine there) > asteroid shield, imho.
The article mentions that Russia admits it will not be able to handle such a project by themselves, although much of their planning has already been completed since they started work about a month ago
Yes. Planning a project this size is that easy.
On a more sincere note: People are susceptible to fear for these large risk/low probability events. I am all for pumping large amounts of money in space-technology. However I have a larger fear for fossil fuels running out during my lifetime. So, in Starcraft lingo, we need to expand to somewhere first to acquire additional gas, rather than build tons of photon cannons around our base that's running out of gas . (Granted, the main base should be protected in this analogy as well. However, you wouldn't invest in cannons if the odds of something attacking your base are very low). Establishing a moon base (I don't know if there's something valuable we can mine there) > asteroid shield, imho.
This is part of that evolution though, and an improvement on asteroid detection will give the current asteroid mining corporation plans a boost as detection and means of capturing asteroids will get easier. To expand on your analogy. It's like upgrading your command center to an orbital command. Giving you access to mules and orbital scans and nothing like rushing turrets.
The article mentions that Russia admits it will not be able to handle such a project by themselves, although much of their planning has already been completed since they started work about a month ago
Yes. Planning a project this size is that easy.
On a more sincere note: People are susceptible to fear for these large risk/low probability events. I am all for pumping large amounts of money in space-technology. However I have a larger fear for fossil fuels running out during my lifetime. So, in Starcraft lingo, we need to expand to somewhere first to acquire additional gas, rather than build tons of photon cannons around our base that's running out of gas . (Granted, the main base should be protected in this analogy as well. However, you wouldn't invest in cannons if the odds of something attacking your base are very low). Establishing a moon base (I don't know if there's something valuable we can mine there) > asteroid shield, imho.
There's plenty of valuable stuff to mine on the moon (thorium, Helium-3) but I think it's still far too big of an investment to be worth it. We need cheaper ways to get into space (space elevators, come on damnit) before we can really focus on colonizing off-world since even if there's valuable stuff to mine, the logistics will be far too expensive.
On March 14 2013 15:34 sheaRZerg wrote: That's Barringer crater correct? The flow of the post looks like you were saying that was the result of the Tunguska impact (which was smaller).
Also blowing it up isn't a good idea. Most of the fragments will keep their momentum and hit anyway...and we'd have less idea where they were going to land.
Other than that I agree.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that that crater was Tunguska. Sorry about that. However, I think they were comparable in size. The Tunguska was rock though and took more damage entering the atmosphere.
On March 14 2013 08:26 pinnacle wrote: It's sort of stunning how the US ignores such a large threat even if its unlikely. We're so paranoid about everything else
Dont be riddiculus. It's not about protection, it's all about avoiding prohibition of space armistice. That's a great excuse to start militarisation of space, and thats what it ("asterois shield") really is (but offcourse the possitive side effect is preparation to asteroid threat)
My country is doing nothing against this as far as i know and i think there should be an international effort to make this happen and to wich every country should make an apropiate contribution. The change that an astroid strikes is small on a year to year basis but if we realy plan on humanity surviving for 1m+ years (and why shouldnt be) then we should face that fact that an astroid will hit sooner or later. Astroids are the only thing that can whipe out human civilisation and even human life,at least i cant think of annything else for now. Since the possible damage is extremely high it would be economically worth it to protect against it, even if the change of it happening is verry small. There are already manny things done, manny space agencys are looking activly for objects that might hit the earth in the future.Am not sure if it is possible to make a shield against astroids but if it is possible countrys should work together to make it happen, as long as its economically viable.
On March 14 2013 10:11 furymonkey wrote: 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.
what does cost efficient mean under these circumstances? If we discover an asteroid heading towards us that can annihilate a portion of the planet or something, and it's going to hit us in 20 years...im willing to bet that the world would fund a project to prevent it from hitting us no matter what the cost. It would be the number one priority and cost would be irrelevant.
And that is why spending on more than detection is pointless. If anything threatening is detected it will have a budget.
Planning for what to do if something is detected is one thing. But actually building it (with no observable threats) would be a waste.
On March 14 2013 10:11 furymonkey wrote: 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.
what does cost efficient mean under these circumstances? If we discover an asteroid heading towards us that can annihilate a portion of the planet or something, and it's going to hit us in 20 years...im willing to bet that the world would fund a project to prevent it from hitting us no matter what the cost. It would be the number one priority and cost would be irrelevant.
And that is why spending on more than detection is pointless. If anything threatening is detected it will have a budget.
Planning for what to do if something is detected is one thing. But actually building it (with no observable threats) would be a waste.
Detection is definitely a plus, but what about situations where we discover something is coming but don't have time to defend against it? Perhaps if the efforts were started sooner (even just the research stage with not physical testing), before the threat was detected, it would not be too late to prevent the damage. On the other hand, delaying that type of work just a few years while working on detection should be perfectly reasonable, given the statistics involved.
We should totally invest in technology capable of rotating Earth, so we can use China and Russia as shields.
On a serious note, it's competely pointless at this stage of human development, this is a long term issue and we have several more pressing short term issues, like resource exhaustion. Instead of this silly shield, we should focus on energy & fuel R&D, otherwise human civilization has <100 years left, and all kind of asteroid threat against it becomes a non-issue.
On March 15 2013 01:36 Frigo wrote: Instead of this silly shield, we should focus on energy & fuel R&D, otherwise human civilization has <100 years left, and all kind of asteroid threat against it becomes a non-issue.
You know, they aren't mutually exclusive. We should certainly focus our efforts more on the more important things. What you suggested is one of the more important ones for sure, but if we just put asteroid detection into a "wait until our other major problems are solved" category we will never work on it, and we may really pay as a result. That's true for many problems.
Problem is as a specie, we HUMAN don't trust each other. I don't see countries will willingly join together to build up something like this unless we got hit and got terrbily damaged from an asteroid/comet etc.
Why? Because developing something like this has a very thin line for some powerful weapon development. Anyway, if continue like this human will kill each other long before a body from space destroy earth assume that shits won't hit earth in the next few thousands years(very short time, like a blink of an eye in term of solar system).
Stop pretending anyone's going to nuke the asteroid. Great job, we just blew up an asteroid, now what do we do with all the pieces of asteroid that are falling towards several locations on Earth.
Any country with nuclear weapons probably has at least a few people advising the powers that be about not nuking an asteroid.
On March 15 2013 04:13 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Stop pretending anyone's going to nuke the asteroid. Great job, we just blew up an asteroid, now what do we do with all the pieces of asteroid that are falling towards several locations on Earth.
Any country with nuclear weapons probably has at least a few people advising the powers that be about not nuking an asteroid.
I think that might depend on mass, speed trajectory, composition, and lead time. Certainly, nuking doesn't make sense for many if not most scenarios. In some cases, with very little warning, increasing the surface area of an object via a large explosion might be preferable to changing course.
I thought the idea was to detonate a nuke near the asteroid to try to nudge it somewhat with high speed neutrons and x-ray radiation, not to actually "blow up" the thing. This too goes back to the early detection of potential impacts. If you know an asteroid will pass through a gravitational keyhole in 10 years that will cause an impact 5 years after that, then nudging it just a little is enough.
OTOH, if you have an asteroid that is heading straight towards you and will hit in 2 weeks the amount of work you need to do on it to make it miss the Earth is much, much higher.
On March 15 2013 04:13 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Stop pretending anyone's going to nuke the asteroid. Great job, we just blew up an asteroid, now what do we do with all the pieces of asteroid that are falling towards several locations on Earth.
Any country with nuclear weapons probably has at least a few people advising the powers that be about not nuking an asteroid.
That's not the only reason nukes would be viable. Nukes are a relatively lightweight and off-the-shelf technology that we already have a lot of. And they happen to be great at imparting impulses to propel things, as in Project Orion.
On March 15 2013 04:13 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Stop pretending anyone's going to nuke the asteroid. Great job, we just blew up an asteroid, now what do we do with all the pieces of asteroid that are falling towards several locations on Earth.
Any country with nuclear weapons probably has at least a few people advising the powers that be about not nuking an asteroid.
I think that might depend on mass, speed trajectory, composition, and lead time. Certainly, nuking doesn't make sense for many if not most scenarios. In some cases, with very little warning, increasing the surface area of an object via a large explosion might be preferable to changing course.
Except it's much easier to calculate an approximate trajectory for one asteroid and take appropriate action. If we can't burn it/stop it, then a hasty evacuation of the blast area or preparation for medical relief to said area can be done as soon as we find out where the asteroid will go. If we blast it, then we have to individually calculate the trajectories of all the fragments of the asteroid, so more evacuation and splitting up the medical relief.
I don't believe it's worth the money to develop and create such shield over something that happens every century or so. Better to just improve the already established tracking system and implement an emergency response plan from it. The latter is smaller, cheaper, not politically sensitive, and feasible as you don't sound like a crackpot crying the sky is going to fall.
On March 15 2013 04:13 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Stop pretending anyone's going to nuke the asteroid. Great job, we just blew up an asteroid, now what do we do with all the pieces of asteroid that are falling towards several locations on Earth.
Any country with nuclear weapons probably has at least a few people advising the powers that be about not nuking an asteroid.
Quick napkin physics brings me to conclusion smaller pieces of objects descending all at same speed than an object with its mass equal to the sum of the smaller pieces mass. This is because the kinetic energy of both are the same , but this isn't calculating the larger surface area from smaller pieces being burned up in the sky than a single object. Finally, many man made structures are more likely to deflect several pieces of small mass than a huge one
So yes, smaller pieces are better: more pieces burning up and less likely to do damage on buildings.
I finished reading a >10 year old book which had some interesting ideas. For example, NEO detection involves analyzing tremendous amounts of data collected in the search for new objects. This might lend itself to a similar decentralized computing system similar to SETI/Folding/etc.
I've turned my attention over to the 2007 NASA Report to Congress, which was linked to earlier in this thread. I will sum some of this up.
Congress asked NASA to submit a report on the following:
how to carry out a survey program of near-Earth objects
recommended procedures/budget to carry out such a program
analysis of methods for diverting an object on a likely collision course with Earth
Specifically, Congress wanted to know how we could successfully detect, track, and characterize all NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter to 90% completion by 2020. An NEO is any comet/asteroid that travels within 1.3 AU of the sun (Earth is at 1 AU).
NASA came to the following conclusions:
Rather than reach Congress' stated goal of understanding the properties of 90% of all NEOs greater than 140m, we should modify it to search for 90% of all Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs) greater than 140m; objects that come within 0.05 AU of Earth's orbit
The above goal is viable by 2020 with the additional construction of certain searching assets (they go into detail)
New space-based infrared systems PLUS shared ground-based assets (bigass telescopes) would work well
Radar based systems don't help with searching, but might with tracking
How much information we need to measure about each NEO depends on what mitigation strategy we wish to use
Regarding #1, we should obviously focus our attention on the most dangerous rocks first. Regarding #2-3, it can be summed up as more observational equipment is needed to reach any kind of a reasonable deadline. Regarding #5, you can get away with only knowing the mass, speed, and trajectory of a PHO if the only way you intend to affect it is by smashing it with a big explosion. However, if you want to use one of many other methods of deflection, you will need to know composition, spin, and other details that are more difficult to measure. Thus, a study of how to best deflect asteroids is actually relevant to a discussion of how to best detect asteroids.
I will provide some more information in a subsequent post, such as why 140m is chosen as a cutoff, and what methods have been proposed for deflection.
I will summarize what NASA found regarding methods for diverting a PHO:
Nuclear standoff explosions are 10-100 times more effective than non-nuclear alternatives
Surface/subsurface explosions carry additional risk of fracturing the NEO. They are also more expensive/risky to implement.
Kinetic Impactors are the closest to being available currently, and might be viable in certain circumstances
Slow-push methods are the most expensive, are the furthest from being technologically ready, and would require a great deal of warning in order to implement.
Roughly half of all PHOs are in orbits that we cannot reach currently with modern launch systems. Given enough time, routes using slingshots around other planets could be used, but they would require a great deal of warning as well. Alternately, on-orbit assembly of propulsion systems could be used.
Currently, NASA's Spaceguard Survey finds NEOs greater than 1000m in diameter ($4.1 million per year).
Population
Extinction comets make up 5-15% of the NEO population.
In 2006 NASA had identified 701 NEOs greater than 1km in size, and 3656 NEOs smaller than 1km in size
NASA estimates 1100 NEOs greater than 1km in size, and 100,000 NEOs smaller than 1km but greater than 140m in size
About one in five NEOs in any class/size are PHOs
An object would be able to pass through the Earth's atmosphere and do significant damage if it was about 50m or larger. Up to 140m in size, impactors would have regional effects, but not sub-global or global effects. 300m asteroids would have sub-global effects whereas 1km asteroids would have global effects. 10km+ events would result in mass extinctions. The lower limit of 140m in our NEO search is based on the idea that we should be looking for impacts that would do damage at the state/seaboard level rather than at the city level.
This is one of those threats where you can't just look at historical data to determine if action is necessary. If you wait for the first significant loss of life to say 'hm I guess impacts actually do pose a threat worth addressing' it will be too late for a potentially large number of people.
For those of you who are interested please read the actual report which goes into more detail.
On March 27 2013 02:19 micronesia wrote: This is one of those threats where you can't just look at historical data to determine if action is necessary. If you wait for the first significant loss of life to say 'hm I guess impacts actually do pose a threat worth addressing' it will be too late for a potentially large number of people.
For those of you who are interested please read the actual report which goes into more detail.
6 years later still no action has been taken based on that report. And as far as I know neither the European Space Agency nor the European Southern Observatory has a comprehensive plan to tackle the issue.
It's sad, because if NASA's estimate from the 2007 report are to be believed we are talking about a total cost of 1 - 2 billion USD for solving the issue of detection forever. Just for comparison, that's about the cost of a single launch of the Space Shuttle, 6% of NASA's yearly budget or less than 20% of the ESA's yearly budget. *
It seems like detection will come from general purpose telescopes, like Pan-STARRS, LSST and ESA's Gaia telescope. The good news is that eventually survey telescopes will be good enough to find or rule out impacts from any potentially dangerous object. The bad news is that it might be too late for some people.
The best case scenario is that one of these will find a small or medium sized asteroid that will hit in 20-30 years time. That would give an incentive to solve the problem once and for all.
*I think there are some political lessons in those numbers but I don't want to derail the thread. It might also be argued that NASA's estimate of 950million USD in the report for solving the problem of detection is too optimistic. It might be but probably not to the extent that it changes the overall conclusion.
The more we invest into something like space exploration, the more our daily lives become intrinsically better so I have no gripe; look at technology today, most of it was spearheaded by the perfect job NASA has almost always done (with a few bumps along the way, usually caused by lack of funding).
If it wasn't for things like this, pushing our boundaries, I fear I'd not have my shiny new Blackberry Q10 :D
It's an interesting discussion and I'm glad you started it, micronesia.
I think the idea of putting an early warning system in place is not only worthwhile, but paramount. We aren't examining much of the sky, and to steal a phrase from a terrible movie, it's a big-ass sky. Most people just consider extinction-level events when discussing anti-impact countermeasures, and they show up so rarely that it's arguably not worth looking into. However, smaller events (and yes, Tunguska was a small event, cosmologically) happen with much greater frequency, and the only reason people aren't yet clamoring for some kind of defense system is because we haven't yet had a city erased from the landscape by a relatively small rock.
An observatory at a Lagrangian point between the Earth and the Moon is, I think, a really good idea. It requires few corrections, and can be easily maintained if necessary, on a relatively smaller budget.
(It's not actually too expensive, relatively speaking, to send stuff to the moon. It's getting something all the way out there and then back out of its gravitational influence that's the problem, and that's where costs increase tenfold. That's why a one-way trip to Mars is being seriously considered for the future, for example, as colonists wouldn't need an escape plan to get back to earth, and thus would be financially viable.)
Sadly, and to answer one of your closing questions, Norway doesn't have much to contribute towards realizing this goal. With the limited resources of a small country, Norway focuses strictly on the areas in which we can specialize to make it worthwhile. The high latitude of Norway, particularly of Northern Norway including Svalbard, is an ideal place from which to launch rockets that observe the aurora, and we examine the relationship between the Sun and the Earth. It's a very limited space program.
I've also seen a few comments in this thread about how we wouldn't be able to do anything even if we did discover something headed our way, and so an advance warning system wouldn't be of any use. That's not at all accurate. Astronomers and physicists argue that given sufficient advance warning, we would be able to deflect the incoming disaster with the technology available at present time. We just need an early warning system, and it's nice to see one being seriously considered.
On March 31 2013 09:01 Aylear wrote: I've also seen a few comments in this thread about how we wouldn't be able to do anything even if we did discover something headed our way, and so an advance warning system wouldn't be of any use. That's not at all accurate. Astronomers and physicists argue that given sufficient advance warning, we would be able to deflect the incoming disaster with the technology available at present time. We just need an early warning system, and it's nice to see one being seriously considered.
This is definitely true, but with current technology there are severe limitations. For example, without a tremendous lead time it would be difficult to strike asteroids/comets coming in from a large angle relative to the eclectic plane due to rocket limitations... of course if we have years to plan planetary slingshots something could be worked out in theory.
In other words, detection is extremely important, but current technology would only be sufficient for certain impact scenarios. We are not so helpless that small advances couldn't be helpful, but not secure, either. At least with better detection we could evacuate impact zones for city-level and below impactors.
Advances are always made in small steps, and this is no exception. Just putting a telescope up there, specifically for the purpose of observing things dangerous to us, is a good start. And as everyone should know, R&D related to space tends to improve stuff on earth as well.
It's a relatively small price tag for peace-of-mind for everyone on the planet.
On March 31 2013 13:46 ThaZenith wrote: Advances are always made in small steps, and this is no exception. Just putting a telescope up there, specifically for the purpose of observing things dangerous to us, is a good start. And as everyone should know, R&D related to space tends to improve stuff on earth as well.
It's a relatively small price tag for peace-of-mind for everyone on the planet.
Until it misses something and we get this gigantic outcry of "OMG WE'RE WASTING SO MUCH MONEY WHILE AFRICAN CHILDREN ARE STARVING!!!11!!!111"
For the record, I think it's a great idea and I wish we would have done this sooner.
EPT
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. (Granted, the main base should be protected in this analogy as well. However, you wouldn't invest in cannons if the odds of something attacking your base are very low). Establishing a moon base (I don't know if there's something valuable we can mine there) > asteroid shield, imho.
