Comments on: I used to not worry that much about asteroids hitting the Earth.

By: Marius

Marius — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:54:45 +0000

The asteroids capable of causing a global disaster if they hit the Earth are extremely rare. They probably would need to be about a kilometer or more in diameter. Such bodies impact the Earth only once every 100,000 years on average. Other objects of a similar size, such as comets, impact even less frequently, perhaps once every 500,000 years or so.

By: Sharon Astyk

Sharon Astyk — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:20:15 +0000

Can we just send Bruce Willis up anyway, as kind of a preventative ;-)? At worst, we’re down one Bruce Willis.

Sharon

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:22:38 +0000

Marion: Yeah, but , when the sun blows up, you want to be farther away. I’ll stick with earth.

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:01:26 +0000

That is a cool video…but that does scare me. We might need to send Bruce Willis up to save us.

By: Marion Delgado

Marion Delgado — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:53:03 +0000

cromercrox:

Technically, all things being equal, it’d be safer to live on Mars. Or the Moon, but then you have to deal with all Earth’s asteroid collision bulls__t.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:44:41 +0000

Don’t worry about asteroids as we are pretty good at charting their orbits to see if any is going to hit Earth in the next century or so. Worry about comets, they come as a surprise with little warning and higher speed.

By: Anne H

Anne H — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 05:03:43 +0000

I’m pleased to share something I found while helping my son with homework –
The Earth Impact Effects Program
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

It asks you for a few parameters – Distance from Impact, Projectile Diameter, Projectile Density {Icy Comet, Ferrous Meteor, Rocky Asteroid?}, Impact Velocity, Impact Angle, and whether it hits water, sedimentary rock or crystalline rock.

It then tells you the results of the impact, including the effects on your given location.

By: doug l

doug l — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:21:28 +0000

Makes the possible threat from CO2 generated warming seem almost innocuous. Fortunately we can do a lot to fix that carbon combustion emissions problem AND the asteroid threat if we commit to a commercial heavy launch program, sooner like with a project-manhatten style R&D program, maybe. And by doing that we will likewise be able to create space based solar energy systems that will make all combustion processes for energy generation seem like wood fired boilers and and shadoofs; nice but we have the technology to do better. A high efficiency heavy launch system is the weak link to commercial and permanent science research in space in a robust way. That ISS..ugh..what an expensive headache whose purpose undoubtedly was to prove we could do a lot better when we go bigger. Now’s the time; it’s raining soup.

By: Pierce R. Butler

Pierce R. Butler — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:04:58 +0000

Before watching that, I used to not worry about Venus hitting the Earth.

By: D. C. Sessions

D. C. Sessions — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 02:46:51 +0000

And that some technology change must have happened about 2009 or 2010 that caused the zone of discovery to extend tangential to earth's orbit, as well as outward from it.

In the past decade several governments (including the USA, FWIW) have gotten serious about funding the search for earth-crossers and the Internet has made it much more efficient. An observatory in the Eastern Hemisphere (using loads of image collection and image processing) can spot a potential earth-crosser and notify a network of other observatories around the world. They in turn refine the orbital observations using fast-tracking telescopes and comparing results to refine the data. Way cool stuff -- I got the pitch on a tour of Magdalena Ridge Observatory a couple of years ago. Freaky watching a 2.4 meter mirror track faster than I can swing a joystick.