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The Tunguska Event

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Re: The Tunguska Event

#31

Post by eterm »

rikkus wrote: post #19
amelius wrote: post #5

> Given a long enough time period, there is a nearly 100-percent chance an asteroid large enough to destroy most life on Earth will impact our planet. No worries. Since quantum mechanics dictates that, given enough time, anything can happen, we can also say that given a long enough time period, life will spontaneously reappear.

Anything can happen != Everything will happen A universe of infinite possibilities does not have to include a particular possibility or set of possibilities.

Infinity can be surprisingly sparse.

Re: The Tunguska Event

#33

Post by michaelcampbell »

rikkus wrote: post #19
amelius wrote: post #5

> Given a long enough time period, there is a nearly 100-percent chance an asteroid large enough to destroy most life on Earth will impact our planet. No worries. Since quantum mechanics dictates that, given enough time, anything can happen, we can also say that given a long enough time period, life will spontaneously reappear.

Anything can happen != Everything will happen A universe of infinite possibilities does not have to include a particular possibility or set of possibilities.

Seen from the other side, given a universe of infinite possibilities, what's the probability that a given thing WON'T happen?

Re: The Tunguska Event

#34

Post by JoeAltmaier »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #33
rikkus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything can happen != Everything will happen A universe of infinite possibilities does not have to include a particular possibility or set of possibilities.

Seen from the other side, given a universe of infinite possibilities, what's the probability that a given thing WON'T happen?

The universe is actually quite bounded in time. Almost anything weird we can think of ... will never happen. Not enough time.

Re: The Tunguska Event

#35

Post by norea-armozel »

bsenftner wrote: post #25

A fun science fiction read is "Singularity" by Bill DeSmedt; the premise is the Tunguska event being a mini-black hole - and it's caught inside the earth, eating it from the inside out.

I love that book. I listened to his podiobook version of it a few years ago. It still seems scary despite how very unlikely the scenario is to be true.

Re: The Tunguska Event

#36

Post by cr1895 »

goldenkey wrote: post #22
saiya-jin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a simple hit of ocean might be more devastating than hitting uninhabited parts of taiga. think about massive tsunami (at least that's what I would expect, depending on the impact force of course)

water is very dampening. tsunamis are from sustained force

It's literally wet! You'll get dampened indeed.

Tsunamis are generated by water displacement from e.g. underwater seismic activity or a massive landslide. Wind-driven waves or tides would be driven by sustained forces.

Whether or not an asteroid can/has cause(d) a tsunami I don't know.

Re: The Tunguska Event

#37

Post by stingraycharles »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34
michaelcampbell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seen from the other side, given a universe of infinite possibilities, what's the probability that a given thing WON'T happen?

The universe is actually quite bounded in time. Almost anything weird we can think of ... will never happen. Not enough time.

How is the universe bounded by time? Perhaps it's bounded by our perception of time, but that doesn't mean time cannot be infinite.

Re: The Tunguska Event

#38

Post by JoeAltmaier »

stingraycharles wrote: post #37
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe is actually quite bounded in time. Almost anything weird we can think of ... will never happen. Not enough time.

How is the universe bounded by time? Perhaps it's bounded by our perception of time, but that doesn't mean time cannot be infinite.

Because things can only happen until entropy heat-death. Then there's not enough energy to do anything. Stuff stops happening. And that's in, what, 20 trillion years? So bounded. { edited: trillion } Ha! 10^30 years by some estimates. So, a thousand billion billion billion years. Anyway, bounded.

Re: The Tunguska Event

#39

Post by annapurna »

mrfusion wrote: post #4

I'm curious if we could mine in areas where large asteroids impacted and gets lots of minerals. Why do asteroid mining if we already have a few in the ground?

I did a short analysis on the all the different types and sizes of meteorites if you are interested. The data is based on the meteorite dataset provided by the US Meteoritical Society.

Site: https://jigdel.github.io/projects/meteorites/index.html

Re: The Tunguska Event

#40

Post by plorg »

amelius wrote: post #5

> Given a long enough time period, there is a nearly 100-percent chance an asteroid large enough to destroy most life on Earth will impact our planet. No worries. Since quantum mechanics dictates that, given enough time, anything can happen, we can also say that given a long enough time period, life will spontaneously reappear.

That's cute, but the statement doesn't even suggest all life would be gone. If I had to guess, "most life on Earth" would be the majority of macrofauna and macroflora.

In other words, life would probably still persist in some form (life...finds a way) and would continue evolving.

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