Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/03/are-asteroid-impacts-preventable.html
…
2 Likes
After the last three years? IDGAF if they are preventable. Because reasons.
2 Likes
Who is this “we” you speak us? Humans today? No. Humans decades or centuries from now if we actually bother to develop asteroid deflection capabilities? Absolutely. We’re gonna develop asteroid mining at some point anyway, and that’d get us most of the way there.
1 Like
1 Like
With Aricebo gone, not anymore. It was last line of defense against such things… how hilarious would it be if we are wiped out in a couple years by an asteroid that could only have been spotted easily by Arecibo’s radar transmission feature
1 Like
Bill Nighy really is a jack-of-all-trades.
we’d need more than a couple of years notice.
The Pink Floyd remix was great. Legend has it that Clare Torry did that primal screaming on “The Great Gig in the Sky” in one take!
But I would think a 360 mile wide asteroid could be seen with a regular telescope way ahead of time. Not that we could do anything about it mind you.
The #1 best way to deal with an asteroid impact is to accurately predict the location and time of the impact, and evacuate the site before hand. To do this we will need really good telescopes and radar, and ideally transponders on the asteroid.
An asteroid is unlikely to make Earth uninhabitable because the really big asteroids are already well documented.
On the other hand, a huge comet could come through and take us out (as in the novel Lucifers Hammer). Its pretty unlikely but in the long run it would make sense to develop tracking for comets in high orbits and countermeasures to steer them away.
A big comet would be really useful right now if it could be made to collide with the moon. Lets think along those lines.
I dunno, maybe it’s better not to know.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
