Stella Was Right!

[JackLuis]

Remember the thread about 2012 she started? I looked for it but it eluded me. Drat!

Well it looks like the Central Americans were wrong.

The world ends in 2026, fourteen years off, silly Meso-Americans.

So settle in for a good 26 years before you lose your social security and medical care. I doubt I'll live to see it.

Really the article says:

"Russia in secret plan to save Earth from asteroid: official"

Well that got my attention.

"The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France."

Holy Hillary! what about the tidal waves?

"Course NASA is saying , "It'll miss us," but do you believe the Government ?

The only way mankind can survive is if we immediately breed to build up the possible survivors!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Just have faith in me, children.

wasn't there some movie about a giant meteor, back in the mid seventies? I remember being accosted by some street bum who wanted me to marry him so that he could take care of me-- along with all the other women he was going to marry-- when the meteor hit. He was very sorry when I declined. But-- he didn't strike me as the guy who could fight off the other guys, yanno?

 

[sr71plt]

When that big meteor hits, I want it to land right on top of my head. I don't mind going as long as lots of other folks are going too. And I certainly don't want to be around for the fallout.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Can it be aimed at Washington, DC?

 

[JackLuis]

What if the Russians can aim the Dooms Day Asteroid?

 

[Loring2]

Moving the Meteor

As of yesterday 12/29/3009 I learned that Russia has in fact decided to put a "Man on the Meteor'" supposedly to nudge the big rock to insure that it misses Planet Earth.

We know better don't we.

What plot might be constructed around this and doubtless will be. Heh .. heh .. heh.

 

[Stella_Omega]

What if the Russians can aim the Dooms Day Asteroid?

You probably don't need to worry about that.

 

[christiankay]

As of yesterday 12/29/3009 I learned that Russia has in fact decided to put a "Man on the Meteor'" supposedly to nudge the big rock to insure that it misses Planet Earth.

We know better don't we.

What plot might be constructed around this and doubtless will be. Heh .. heh .. heh.

As long as they don't send Bruce Willis this time... Oh wait.

 

[trysail]

NASA's Near Earth Object ("NEO") Program
NEO Earth Close-Approaches between 1900 A.D. and 2200 A.D.
limited to encounters with reasonably low uncertainty:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/neo...x_rows=0&fmt=full&action=Display+Table&show=1



"Asteroids as most people know, are rocky objects orbiting in loose formation in a belt between Mars and Jupiter. In illustrations they are always shown as existing in a jumble, but in fact the solar system is quite a roomy place and the average asteroid actually will be about a million miles from its nearest neighbor. Nobody knows even approximately how many asteroids there are tumbling through space, but the number is thought to be probably not less than a billion. They are presumed to be planets that never quite made it, owing to the unsettling gravitational pull of Jupiter, which kept- and keeps- them from coalescing.

When asteroids were first detected in the 1800s- the very first was discovered on the first day of the century by a Sicilian named Giuseppi Piazzi- they were thought to be planets, and the first two were named Ceres and Pallas. It took some inspired deductions by the astronomer William Herschel to work out that they were nowhere near planet sized but much smaller. He called them asteroids- Latin for 'starlike'- which was slightly unfortunate as they are not like stars at all. Sometimes now they are more accurately called planetoids.

Finding asteroids became a popular activity in the 1800s, and by the end of the century about a thousand were known. The problem was that no one was systematically recording them. By the early 1900s, it had often become impossible to know whether an asteroid that popped into view was new or simply one that had been noted earlier and then lost track of. By this time, too, astrophysics had moved on so much that few astronomers wanted to devote their lives to anything as mundane as rocky planetoids. Only a few astronomers, notably Gerard Kuiper, the Dutch-born astronomer for whom the Kuiper belt of comets is named, took any interest in the solar system at all. Thanks to his work at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, followed by work done by others at the Minor Planet Center in Cincinnati and the Spacewatch project in Arizona, a long list of lost asteroids was gradually whittled down until by the close of the twentieth century only one known asteroid was unaccounted for- an object called 719 Albert. Last seen in October, 1911, it was finally tracked down in 2000 after being missing for eighty-nine years.

So, from a point of view of asteroid research the twentieth century was essentially just a long exercise in bookkeeping. It is really only in the last few years that astronomers have begun to count and keep an eye on the rest of the asteroid community. As of July 2001, twenty-six thousand asteroids had been named and identified- half in just the previous two years. With up to a billion to identify, the count has barely begun.

In a sense it hardly matters. Identifying an asteroid doesn't make it safe. Even if every asteroid in the solar system had a name and known orbit, no one could say what perturbations might send any of them hurtling toward us. We can't forecast rock disturbances on our own surface. Put them adrift in space and what they might do is beyond guessing. Any asteroid out there that has our name on it is very likely to have no other.

Think of the earth's orbit as a kind of freeway on which we are the only vehicle, but which is crossed regularly by pedestrians who don't know enough to look before stepping off the curb. At least 90 percent of these pedestrians are quite unknown to us. We don't know where they live, what sort of hours they keep, how often they come our way. All we know is that at some point, at uncertain intervals, they trundle across the road down which we are cruising at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour. As Steven Ostro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has put it, 'Suppose that there was a button you could push and you could light up all the Earth-crossing asteroids larger than about ten meters, there would be over 100 million of these objects in the sky.' In short, you would see not a couple of thousand distant twinkling stars, but millions upon millions of nearer, randomly moving objects- 'all of which are capable of colliding with the Earth and all of which are moving on slightly different courses through the sky at different rates. It would be deeply unnerving.' Well, be unnerved because it is there. We just can't see it."

-Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything
New York, 2003



Notwithstanding Hollywood's periodic efforts to assure us that superheroes and methods exist to protect us from the danger of an asteroid collision, the peril is quite real. Assuming (an assumption that is, in itself, unlikely) that we were able to identify a potential collision, we no longer have a rocket booster powerful enough to intercept an asteroid's path. Not only that— according to Bryson— we actually destroyed the plans for the only rocket that we did have (the Saturn V booster) that was powerful enough to reach an asteroid!

 

[sr71plt]

Can it be aimed at Washington, DC?

For your sake, I hope it is--and that you live long enough afterwards to get clued into what you've lost by letting others do all that work for you while you were bitching about it.

(By the way I live close enough to Washington, D.C., for us both to get our wish.)

 

[voluptuary_manque]

For your sake, I hope it is--and that you live long enough afterwards to get clued into what you've lost by letting others do all that work for you while you were bitching about it.

(By the way I live close enough to Washington, D.C., for us both to get our wish.)

Sacramento would be another good choice. Though we may fix that problem by completely taking the government away from the legislature. Comes the Constitutional Convention.



and people think the state is a mess now? Just wait!

 

[JackLuis]

I vote for Orange County or else Texas.

 

[Guest]

I vote for Orange County or else Texas.

Being from the Inland Empire (THERE's an oxymoron for you), I vote for



the Inland Empire.



Oh, and happy New Year (it's the 1st here, and I'm good and buzzed.)

~Paul

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Being from the Inland Empire (THERE's an oxymoron for you), I vote for



the Inland Empire.



Oh, and happy New Year (it's the 1st here, and I'm good and buzzed.)

~Paul

Northern IE, possibly. I have fond memories of Riverside but San Bernardino? Nail that suckah!

 

[Handley_Page]

That's a bit of a problem for us.
I mean if an asteroid could cause devastation the size of France, Paris might actually be a good place to start. But of course, this is plain silly. We're friends with the French - aren't we?

How about some some bigot-based location where theology is more important than education or free and fair elections; hang on - that's not much good; we need oil. . . . . .

It's more complicated than it seems, yes ?

 

[trysail]

That's a bit of a problem for us.
I mean if an asteroid could cause devastation...

...It's more complicated than it seems, yes ?

Ask the dinosaurs.

Thanks to Walter Alvarez, we now know what did them in; see:
T. Rex and The Crater of Doom ( Princeton, 1997 ).

 

[3113]

How about some some bigot-based location where theology is more important than education or free and fair elections...

Utah?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Utah?

Ohio? Florida, the perinium of the USA?

 

[JackLuis]

No not the Inland Empire! Gasp. I beg you! The blistered boulders are doing you no harm and the inhabitants.

I grew up in Redlands, there is no reason to blast there. They are all wrapped up in their own little world. If you start moving them around, that could be bad.

Since the Russians won't let it hit Moscow and the French still make wine, how about the Libyan Desert? Not much to fuck up there and we've drained their reserves pretty good.

Or the east side of the Hindu Kush? That way it'd take out most of the Taliban and Obama can say it was "Allha's Will".

 

[Guest]

deleted

 

[Guest]

No not the Inland Empire! Gasp. I beg you! The blistered boulders are doing you no harm and the inhabitants.

I grew up in Redlands, there is no reason to blast there. They are all wrapped up in their own little world. If you start moving them around, that could be bad.

Since the Russians won't let it hit Moscow and the French still make wine, how about the Libyan Desert? Not much to fuck up there and we've drained their reserves pretty good.

Or the east side of the Hindu Kush? That way it'd take out most of the Taliban and Obama can say it was "Allha's Will".

I grew up in Riverside (now have a home in Hemet), and I still say that the Inland Empire needs something to knock down their home prices. A meteor might be just the thing.

You are right, though. There are better places to send it. Maybe I could get a piece to hit San Berdoo? Just a piece? Oh, and one to hit the Carousel Mall off the 215.