Just Hit Us And Get It Over With!

[Minimalist]

https://nordot.app/1032459013795840980?c...7532812385


"Formidable asteroid to hurl past Earth Sunday, 4 others approaching this weekend"

An asteroid by the name of 2023 JK is expected to zip past Earth on Sunday, missing our planet by just a little more than a million miles.
According to NASA, 2023 JK is roughly the size of a commercial jet. Or, as The Jerusalem Post measures it, the length of 18 adult male Pacific walruses. Laying in a row. Heads and tusks down.
Also passing by on Sunday, and clocking in at roughly the same size as 2023 JK, will be asteroid JD4. It’ll miss the Earth by nearly twice the distance of 2023 JK.

[pattylt]

I’m curious. If an asteroid was headed for collision with earth, do we actual, at this point in time, have a way to either deflect it or destroy it?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I’m curious.  If an asteroid was headed for collision with earth, do we actual, at this point in time, have a way to either deflect it or destroy it?

Not reliably, no. We've deflected one in an experiment, but have no ability to launch such a mission on the short notice that these asteroids often give. I believe destroying one is beyond our current technology.

[Minimalist]

I’m curious.  If an asteroid was headed for collision with earth, do we actual, at this point in time, have a way to either deflect it or destroy it?

No but we could talk about it endlessly.....probably in the UN!

[Dānu]

[Minimalist]

If you haven't seen "Don't Look Up," go find it. 


Much like Idiocracy, it was not supposed to be prophetic but something tells me it will be if a giant space rock is ever really headed our way.

[GenesisNemesis]

I'd prefer a rogue black hole, quicker process. #teamrogueblackhole

[Inkubus]

[/quote="Minimalist" pid='398410' dateline='1684601016']

I fucking despair.

An asteroid by the name of 2023 JK is expected to zip past Earth on Sunday, missing our planet by just a little more than a million miles.
According to NASA, 2023 JK is roughly the size of a commercial jet.

Worlds smallest commercial jet: Airbus A318 - 103 ft.
Worlds largest commercial jet: Airbus A380 - 240 ft.

Or, as The Jerusalem Post measures it, the length of 18 adult male Pacific walruses. Laying in a row.

An adult male Pacific walrus reaches  9-12 ft.

So a challenge to all you budding mathematicians, how are 7.5 walruses and a commercial jet related? Show your work.

[Fireball]

[/quote="Minimalist" pid='398410' dateline='1684601016']

I fucking despair.

An asteroid by the name of 2023 JK is expected to zip past Earth on Sunday, missing our planet by just a little more than a million miles.
According to NASA, 2023 JK is roughly the size of a commercial jet.

Worlds smallest commercial jet: Airbus A318 - 103 ft.
Worlds largest commercial jet: Airbus A380 - 240 ft.

Or, as The Jerusalem Post measures it, the length of 18 adult male Pacific walruses. Laying in a row.

An adult male Pacific walrus reaches  9-12 ft.

So a challenge to all you budding mathematicians, how are 7.5 walruses and a commercial jet related? Show your work.

It amuses me when the news tries to bring a real dimension to asteroids. Whoinnafuck in general has even seen a real live walrus? SMH

Plus, saying it is roughly the size of a commercial jet doesn't bring home the fact that it's ROUND, and tons denser than a mostly hollow shell of aluminum.

Now, were those walruses lined up in a row end-to-end, or side-by-each? 

[rocinantexyz]

Is it a spherical walrus?

[adey67]

Hypothetical question: If a giant planet killing asteroid was going to hit earth what would you do, what would be your priorities and how would you mentally prepare for your inevitable demise?

[Cavebear]

https://nordot.app/1032459013795840980?c...7532812385


"Formidable asteroid to hurl past Earth Sunday, 4 others approaching this weekend"

An asteroid by the name of 2023 JK is expected to zip past Earth on Sunday, missing our planet by just a little more than a million miles.
According to NASA, 2023 JK is roughly the size of a commercial jet. Or, as The Jerusalem Post measures it, the length of 18 adult male Pacific walruses. Laying in a row. Heads and tusks down.
Also passing by on Sunday, and clocking in at roughly the same size as 2023 JK, will be asteroid JD4. It’ll miss the Earth by nearly twice the distance of 2023 JK.

Four times the distance of the Moon is safe enough. Let me know when one enters the keyhole.

[Dom]

Hypothetical question: If a giant planet killing asteroid was going to hit earth what would you do, what would be your priorities and how would you mentally prepare for your inevitable demise?

Bring out the whiskey.

[Dānu]

Buy some stuff on credit.

[Cavebear]

Buy some stuff on credit.

LOL! Sure, why not game the system. Buy the best champange and glug it maybe.

But actually, I would probably just collect all The Mews into the bedroom and say "goodbye", with tears...

[Alan V]

Hypothetical question: If a giant planet killing asteroid was going to hit earth what would you do, what would be your priorities and how would you mentally prepare for your inevitable demise?

I would hide in my basement from all the people going crazy, like I already do.

[pattylt]

Hypothetical question: If a giant planet killing asteroid was going to hit earth what would you do, what would be your priorities and how would you mentally prepare for your inevitable demise?

I would hide in my basement from all the people going crazy, like I already do.

That’s a good point.  If humanity knew it was coming for us, I’d imagine there’d be quite a bit of chaos going on.  I’ll hide in my basement, too.  I’m not sure I’d want to be one of a few survivors, if any.  I’m too old and arthritic, though I do have extensive knowledge gained from all my years.  I just don’t want to have to physically try surviving.

[Cavebear]

Buy some stuff on credit.

LOL!  Sure, why not game the system.     Buy the best champange and glug it maybe.  

But actually,  I would probably just collect all The Mews into the bedroom and say "goodbye", with tears...

[Cavebear]

LOL!  Sure, why not game the system.     Buy the best champange and glug it maybe.  

But actually,  I would probably just collect all The Mews into the bedroom and say "goodbye", with tears...

Fixed it, I think...

[Alan V]

Hypothetical question: If a giant planet killing asteroid was going to hit earth what would you do, what would be your priorities and how would you mentally prepare for your inevitable demise?

As for preparing for my inevitable demise, I would probably watch the news.  It would be like a countdown to the New Year, watching the ball drop.

[adey67]

Hypothetical question: If a giant planet killing asteroid was going to hit earth what would you do, what would be your priorities and how would you mentally prepare for your inevitable demise?

As for preparing for my inevitable demise, I would probably watch the news.  It would be like a countdown to the New Year, watching the ball drop.

Nice idea but I rather suspect that right at the end the only thing broadcasting would be the emergency broadcast system.

[Alan V]

As for preparing for my inevitable demise, I would probably watch the news.  It would be like a countdown to the New Year, watching the ball drop.

Nice idea but I rather suspect that right at the end the only thing broadcasting would be the emergency broadcast system.

Perhaps you are right, but I can't help but think that the end of the world would be a big news story.

[Paleophyte]

https://nordot.app/1032459013795840980?c...7532812385


"Formidable asteroid to hurl past Earth Sunday, 4 others approaching this weekend"

An asteroid by the name of 2023 JK is expected to zip past Earth on Sunday, missing our planet by just a little more than a million miles.
According to NASA, 2023 JK is roughly the size of a commercial jet. Or, as The Jerusalem Post measures it, the length of 18 adult male Pacific walruses. Laying in a row. Heads and tusks down.
Also passing by on Sunday, and clocking in at roughly the same size as 2023 JK, will be asteroid JD4. It’ll miss the Earth by nearly twice the distance of 2023 JK.

Unexciting space junk left over from the formation of the solar system. Little more than a testament to how silly the news has gotten that they reported this non-event. We get missed by rubbish like this every day. We had six today, are scheduled for four tomorrow, and another 4 the day after that. We actually get hit by objects like this every few months, though most are over oceans or remote portions of the planet and never get reported. We only know about them because they show up on early warning systems for nuclear attacks.

For reference, 2023 JK (just kidding?) was about 38 m across and was crawling along at a mere 9 km/s. Actual dimensions and mass are tricky to calculate since these object tend to have irregular shapes and vary in composition and density. It was probably in the same ballpark as the Chelyabinsk asteroid, which means that if it had come straight down and scored a direct hit on a populated area it could have caused a lot of death locally. On a global scale even the worst case scenario would have gone unnoticed by all but us humans.

I’m curious.  If an asteroid was headed for collision with earth, do we actual, at this point in time, have a way to either deflect it or destroy it?

Not reliably, no. We've deflected one in an experiment, but have no ability to launch such a mission on the short notice that these asteroids often give. I believe destroying one is beyond our current technology.

Yes/No.

The problem with rubbish this small is that we have a hard time detecting it in time. We probably could have blown it to flinders if we'd seen it coming and it had been an obvious threat. A 10 Mtonne nuke would have made short work of something that size, especially as it appears that the majority of these objects are relatively fragile. Honestly though, these things aren't enough of a threat to justify the nervous tick that you'd give everybody else on the planet by firing an H-bomb into space.

The larger ones we have relatively well-catalogued. Except we noticed that our last effort was concentrated on asteroids near the plane of the ecliptic and some of the nastier ones are in really weird highly inclined orbits that we may have overlooked. It's a work in progress. But yes, given sufficient lead time we have the technology to deflect a larger asteroid, even without using nukes that might piss off our neighbours. The difficulty is that the fine details of the orbits are very tricky to predict, so knowing when and where to do the nudging is a non-trivial problem.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yes/No.

The problem with rubbish this small is that we have a hard time detecting it in time. We probably could have blown it to flinders if we'd seen it coming and it had been an obvious threat. A 10 Mtonne nuke would have made short work of something that size, especially as it appears that the majority of these objects are relatively fragile. Honestly though, these things aren't enough of a threat to justify the nervous tick that you'd give everybody else on the planet by firing an H-bomb into space.

The larger ones we have relatively well-catalogued. Except we noticed that our last effort was concentrated on asteroids near the plane of the ecliptic and some of the nastier ones are in really weird highly inclined orbits that we may have overlooked. It's a work in progress. But yes, given sufficient lead time we have the technology to deflect a larger asteroid, even without using nukes that might piss off our neighbours. The difficulty is that the fine details of the orbits are very tricky to predict, so knowing when and where to do the nudging is a non-trivial problem.

The problem is twofold: 1) we have exactly one trial run at deflecting an incoming body (so to speak, it wasn't going to hit us) and 2) there's enough "overlooked" stuff flying around and giving us a week or two's notice that even managing to course an H-bomb ICBM is perhaps a little sketchy.

We see now random, unknown bodies swinging into the interior Solar System, with little notice. If you can hit it all, and it's small enough, okay, now you have a shotgun field and probably nothing goes wrong. if it's big, I'm not sure the energy of even a large fusion warhead can really move it much.

[Paleophyte]

Yes/No.

The problem with rubbish this small is that we have a hard time detecting it in time. We probably could have blown it to flinders if we'd seen it coming and it had been an obvious threat. A 10 Mtonne nuke would have made short work of something that size, especially as it appears that the majority of these objects are relatively fragile. Honestly though, these things aren't enough of a threat to justify the nervous tick that you'd give everybody else on the planet by firing an H-bomb into space.

The larger ones we have relatively well-catalogued. Except we noticed that our last effort was concentrated on asteroids near the plane of the ecliptic and some of the nastier ones are in really weird highly inclined orbits that we may have overlooked. It's a work in progress. But yes, given sufficient lead time we have the technology to deflect a larger asteroid, even without using nukes that might piss off our neighbours. The difficulty is that the fine details of the orbits are very tricky to predict, so knowing when and where to do the nudging is a non-trivial problem.

The problem is twofold: 1) we have exactly one trial run at deflecting an incoming body (so to speak, it wasn't going to hit us) and 2) there's enough "overlooked" stuff flying around and giving us a week or two's notice that even managing to course an H-bomb ICBM is perhaps a little sketchy.

Yes, we've only ever deflected a single asteroid, but that proves that the concept works and that it can be done. As for the overlooked stuff, it's either small enough to be of little threat or large enough that we see it coming a reasonable distance out. Asteroids don't sneak worth a damn. Honestly, they aren't the real worry anyway. We know that nothing of any truly troubling size is likely to hit us in the next thousand years. If you have to dedicate limited resources start with the more probable world enders like Carrington events or epidemics. Those have relatively easy solutions that we've just been lazy about implementing.

We see now random, unknown bodies swinging into the interior Solar System, with little notice. If you can hit it all, and it's small enough, okay, now you have a shotgun field and probably nothing goes wrong. if it's big, I'm not sure the energy of even a large fusion warhead can really move it much.

The extrasolar rubbish is so rare that odds of any of it ever hitting us is effectively nil. The small stuff doesn't shotgun, it vaporizes or shatters into debris small enough to be harmless. Any large chunks get enough lateral momentum to miss us completely. The big stuff is much trickier. We can move it and we can do that quite simply with non-nuclear systems. The trick is to move it years out so that a tiny course alteration now gives you a complete miss 5 years from now. Trying to nuke those is probably a mistake because something that size is much more likely to shatter into a lot of debris still large enough to be dangerous. Happily, those are much less common.