Large asteroid nearly hit us this week
#1
Large asteroid nearly hit us this week
Only 75 km miss..... that is a bit too close for comfort. And they didn't see it coming either:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...?noredirect=on
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...?noredirect=on
#2
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Oct 2009
Posts: 788
Only 75 km miss..... that is a bit too close for comfort. And they didn't see it coming either:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...?noredirect=on
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...?noredirect=on
Close by astronomical standards, but quite different from 75.
#5
In a land of unicorns
Joined APC: Apr 2014
Position: Whale FO
Posts: 6,595
Only 75 km miss..... that is a bit too close for comfort. And they didn't see it coming either:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...?noredirect=on
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...?noredirect=on
I think you were only off by a factor of 1000
#6
This kind of thing happens all the time, we just didn't use to know about it.
Two impacts with significant surface affects in the last 100 years or so.
We don't have any systems to react to something that pops up last minute, but we could cobble together a response with many months or a few years notice. That's why it's important to catalog and track all of the really big ones, so we have time to do something about it.
Would also be nice if one or more governments put a response system on the shelf just in case one surprises us... it's not hard, it is rocket science but well within the current state of the art. Just have to spend a little money.
Two impacts with significant surface affects in the last 100 years or so.
We don't have any systems to react to something that pops up last minute, but we could cobble together a response with many months or a few years notice. That's why it's important to catalog and track all of the really big ones, so we have time to do something about it.
Would also be nice if one or more governments put a response system on the shelf just in case one surprises us... it's not hard, it is rocket science but well within the current state of the art. Just have to spend a little money.
#7
Sorry, I meant to write 75k km but wsan't paying attention to the extra "k"
For some reason the forum system won't let me edit it.
#8
I watched a documentary on stuff like this a while back. They said we'd likely have very little notice if we were going to get hit by an asteroid. I'd rather just live blissfully ignorant...no use it worrying about stuff you can't changed. If you've believe the book A Short History of Nearly Everything, we're long overdue for a cataclysmic impact.
#9
One big exception is earthquakes... plate tectonics apply increasing pressure over time to fault lines so the longer you go without an earthquake on a given fault, the more likely it becomes (and the bigger the energy release). But that's not statistics, that's geology.
#10
We can change asteroid trajectories... the more advance notice you have, the easier it is to do. We could even change the trajectory of a really big asteroid at the last minute if we prepared in advance to do that. No need to follow in the footsteps of the dinosaurs.
Agreed, that's why I added a caveat. Still a dang interesting book.
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