Earth woefully unprepared for surprise comet or asteroid, Nasa scientist warns

a reply to: CaptainHook

Its all good!

And to be fair, the very real problem of a lack of planning and preparedness SHOULD concern us now, whether we have something concerning on our scopes or not.

There ARE techniques we could devise for deflecting or destroying dangerous objects while they are still far enough away to make a decent difference to the death toll they might cause, were they to hit. But nailing these reliably will require practice, and plenty of it. That is going to require some significant research and development, and actual training missions flown to space, to test calculations by actually altering the courses of asteroids that we DO know about already (in such a way as to push them further away of course), but also lots of R&D on the ground, to establish a more comprehensive and granular understanding of the passage of solid bodies through our solar system, as well as making it possible to see them earlier, by driving optical and digital imaging gear, sensors, and so on, so far in advance of what we have now, that we can see everything from the size of a nation to a nickel and everything in between, every time, without fail while it is still years, preferably DECADES away from impact.

This needs doing. Its as serious as a heart attack, and I am glad that we have a thread to talk about that in!

Earth woefully unprepared for surprise comet or asteroid, Nasa scientist warns

We have been for many hundreds of thousands of years. Whats the big deal now ?

I love Doomporn in the morning. Pretty sure he is just saying we aren't prepared for the scenario, which could be real any day. It will happen just a matter of when. Comets are the biggest threat considering they usually have long elliptical orbits, move much faster, and are much harder to detect. Count your blessings, we live on borrowed time.

The weirdest thing is that, it would probably save humanity if it hit

a reply to: CaptainHook

I think it's time to initiate operation Acme. Basically, the northern hemisphere will open slightly, separating from the southern hemisphere, just enough for a mechanical arms wearing hilariously oversized gloves to swat away the threat with an enormous tennis racket.

originally posted by: bender151
a reply to: CaptainHook

I think it's time to initiate operation Acme. Basically, the northern hemisphere will open slightly, separating from the southern hemisphere, just enough for a mechanical arms wearing hilariously oversized gloves to swat away the threat with an enormous tennis racket.

You know the earth is flat though, right?

People Campaigning For Meteor To Hit Earth Over Clinton or Trump Being President

All I can read into it is a man with a begging bowl. ie. Please give NASA a few billion$ cos we've got to find a way to stop an asteroid that might or might not hit the Earth.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

That happened in my timeline

Space cannons y'all, this is just a big push for wars in space!


About time!

a reply to: crayzeed

Given what happened in Russia not so long back, and given what happened in Tunguska (also Russia) in 1908, I am at a loss to understand how you can consider the very real, and somewhat over due threat of a significant asteroid collision, to be merely an opportunity for a person to hold out a beggars bowl.

An asteroid impact of significant scale could wipe all but the smallest fragment of life from the face of this planet. If it were possible to avoid (which every reasonable analysis suggests is indeed the case) then why would you turn up your nose?

I just start getting suspicious when I see Armageddon or Deep Impact on TV playing all weekend.... Makes you wonder !

Of course this is real news.

I've seen many documentaries stating that despite the many professional and armature eyes on the sky that we don't have much more than a fraction of the sky observed. So we just don't have eyes on every angle we could be hit by.

On top of that, we haven't much in the way of practical means to deter or destroy an body of matter that would present a real threat. We have plenty of ideas and conceptual devices, but I doubt we have many physical devices available to do much other than nudge something like that.

A nudge would be great if we could do it early enough, the issue is, we wouldn't see this thing until that nudging wouldn't do much.

This and other reasons are why we are so bent on going to Mars after really doing bare minimum in space since the moon landing.

People are getting a bit worried that all our eggheads are currently all in one basket.

a reply to: TrueBrit
Just who said there is an overdue threat and how did they come to that conclusion? The Chicxulub asteroid happened over 66 million years ago so by their reckoning this happens every 60 million years so we're due another one?
Why could this not be the Tunguska event. Think if that had happened over London or New York it would have been a vastly more Earth shattering event than over Tunguska.
Now you come to the lottery, and it is a lottery, ok just who knows the size of "the next one"? Trillions of asteroids hit the Earth every year,just because they are micro does not dilute the fact and your assumption that any technology exists is pie in the sky, drawing board stuff.
We are more likely to suffer a nuclear war first so by your reckoning you should be digging your bunker now. Are you?
So yes, they are hanging out the begging bowl.

a reply to: VegHead

It's a bit as if, they're putting an excuse out as to what an asteroid on target to hit Earth is......but much as Wilhelm Reich's wife was recorded as saying in the mid-1950s ~

"The United States is putrid to the core ~ the United States has declared war on extraterrestrials."

~ Nasa playing up asteroids almost hitting us.....do you ever wonder if a gigantic spacecraft is approaching Earth with retaliatory intentions....?.....a very little known alien/human interaction story, is from 1955, when Mrs Reich was filmed....it was in Nigeria.....that Nazis had infiltrated the Health Services.....they were explicitly intending to damage Jewish babies' brains to make them look inferior & falsely justify Nazi behaviour during the Second World War......the first baby they had hold of was who I met as a 17-year-old teenager, she told me this......the Nazis were about to bash a chisel through the fontanelle area of Suzanne's skull when a ufo manoeuvred into view distracting the Nazis' attention.....she said "They sounded like a corny movie as they said,
"It kan't be! They vood haff to be rrreading ourrr mindzzz!"
Suzanne (a pseudonym agreed with her) said,
"Then the ufo landed and aliens got off the craft, and walked up to the Nazis and told them, 'You have to be aware you are definitely sounding too morbid in behaviour to us'. The aliens caused images of slapstick comedy to appear in the air, images of things like someone opening a door and a bucket landing on their heads, and said, 'What is this thing called laughter? What are you laughing at? Why is that something humans like to watch?' So they were saying they generally didn't like the human race, and it was as if the Nazis just represented human troublesomeness.
"We told lots of Jewish people about that incident, people like Joan Baez & Leonard Cohen, but we agreed there seemed to be an issue that Jews are a better breed of human and the reason for all the trouble over the centuries that Jews have had is because of jealous reactions to them.....and we think it's better not to say all that, we'll just cause violent reactions to us all over again. And that is our Jewish secret."
That story is at the beginning of a book called The Pseudonym She Would Have Always Preferred, available on one of the electronic ebook websites......by someone, probably pseudonymously, calling herself Anna Sparber.......

How do you prepare for an incoming comet or asteroid? Giant tennis racket?

originally posted by: MissPlissit
a reply to: VegHead

It's a bit as if, they're putting an excuse out as to what an asteroid on target to hit Earth is......but much as Wilhelm Reich's wife was recorded as saying in the mid-1950s ~

"The United States is putrid to the core ~ the United States has declared war on extraterrestrials."

~ Nasa playing up asteroids almost hitting us.....do you ever wonder if a gigantic spacecraft is approaching Earth with retaliatory intentions....?.....a very little known alien/human interaction story, is from 1955, when Mrs Reich was filmed....it was in Nigeria.....that Nazis had infiltrated the Health Services.....they were explicitly intending to damage Jewish babies' brains to make them look inferior & falsely justify Nazi behaviour during the Second World War......the first baby they had hold of was who I met as a 17-year-old teenager, she told me this......the Nazis were about to bash a chisel through the fontanelle area of Suzanne's skull when a ufo manoeuvred into view distracting the Nazis' attention.....she said "They sounded like a corny movie as they said,
"It kan't be! They vood haff to be rrreading ourrr mindzzz!"
Suzanne (a pseudonym agreed with her) said,
"Then the ufo landed and aliens got off the craft, and walked up to the Nazis and told them, 'You have to be aware you are definitely sounding too morbid in behaviour to us'. The aliens caused images of slapstick comedy to appear in the air, images of things like someone opening a door and a bucket landing on their heads, and said, 'What is this thing called laughter? What are you laughing at? Why is that something humans like to watch?' So they were saying they generally didn't like the human race, and it was as if the Nazis just represented human troublesomeness.
"We told lots of Jewish people about that incident, people like Joan Baez & Leonard Cohen, but we agreed there seemed to be an issue that Jews are a better breed of human and the reason for all the trouble over the centuries that Jews have had is because of jealous reactions to them.....and we think it's better not to say all that, we'll just cause violent reactions to us all over again. And that is our Jewish secret."
That story is at the beginning of a book called The Pseudonym She Would Have Always Preferred, available on one of the electronic ebook websites......by someone, probably pseudonymously, calling herself Anna Sparber.......

Wow! Joan Baez is Jewish? I thought she was a shiksa?

a reply to: HUMBLEONE

You can do various things, least in theory.

1. Painting it with reflective paint that would create a small deviation in it's trajectory.

1. 2. Land a craft on it and have that craft drill into it and eject debris as a form of propulsion.
   
2. 3. Attach a solar sail to it and let the sun help
   
3. 4. Attach a ion pulse engine to it
   

But these are only if we had enough warning, if we don't well, pretty hopeless.

a reply to: CaptainHook

I think NASA aren't telling us all the truth because this is about the 4th such headline this year I've seen on the net (Media site).

Why would they keep telling us that we are unprepared for an asteroid hit? Think about it... there must be one heading our way... they just don't know the exact projectory.

a reply to: CaptainHook

The thing about surprises is that they are...unexpected.

A surprise increase in viral infection will, guess what, catch us unprepared.

Bit like saying I wasn't prepared for something therefore it caught me unawares.