Posted on 12/09/2005 9:07:47 AM PST by emiller
LONDON — Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390m-wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima.
Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere. In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness.
The experts fear that there is very little time left to decide.
(Excerpt) Read more at todayonline.com ...
Well, we are probably more likely to be able to change the course of a 3000 foot asteroid than we are to control the earth's weather.
You know, it's just- after a hurricane hit, our government with advanced warning, couldn't airlift a bunch of black people out of New Orleans??!! Are they going to come to our rescue in 30 years? Ha. If anything, I'm sure they'll find a way to make it worse. Wobble it right into Disneyworld
ping...
Take a deep breath, and back S-L-O-W-L-Y away from the telescope.
I don't know what their response would be, but I'm sure the Democrats would suggest higher taxation and a "redeployment" to somewhere other than the earth.
I believe that a 390 meter asteroid can be completely demolished with something on the order of a 20 megaton or larger hydrogen bomb. The technique would be to do an excavation to approximately the center of the asteroid for planting the device.
The blast from such a large device should completely vaporize the asteroid, or reduce it to very fine gravel. The gravel would most certainly burn up in the upper atmosphere, and not penetrate to the surface of the Earth.
2036 Headline:
"Chicken Little reporting Sir... the sky is falling!"
so yeh...bases are covered, let's just hope the asteroid comes across my space and hope that my butterfly can live another 30 odd years
Well Duuuh! How do you turn that "Funnel tornadoee type cyclone hurricane thing" off?
THIS HAS BEEN POSTED BEFORE.
.....oh no....we're doomed.....we'll all be killed...
I have it on good authority, that just before impact, the world's feline population intends to lay back their ears, arch their backs, fluff their tails, and hiss all at the same time, and show that space rock a thing or two...
I think any money would be best spent on increasing the survey of earth-crossing asteroids.
That was a GREAT book!
That was my guess, but one never knows these days, what with all the quantum entanglements and flux capacitors discharging and all.
Hear's hoping for a direct hit on the UN!
"Notice they didn't say what the "outside chance" amounts to in percentages."
As a percentage of what? What's the basis on which the percentage is to be calculated?
These events are calculated as a propability, which they did - 1/2036 of hitting Earth.
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