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A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

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Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

#291

Post by herendin2 »

tradesurplus wrote: post #242
bnjemian wrote: post #162

I say we catch that sucker, tow it into our neck of the woods as a second moon, and use it as a space port. Are there a million problems with this proposal? Yes. But would it be totally rad to do this? Also yes.

Why not tow it into Venus or Mars orbit instead? They could do with the benefits of having a decent sized moon. It would make terraforming and long term habitation more straightforward and likely to succeed as well as providing lots of useful materials feedstock atop the gravity well.

If this was remotely possible for us then we could also talk about towing the Earth a little further from the Sun to fix climate change

(It's not possible in any reasonable time)

Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

#292

Post by blocked_again »

subroutine wrote: post #287
andy_ppp wrote: post #279

Suppose this, if there are advanced civilisations doing interstellar travel and there really is a 200km object that could hit Earth (I understand this is too far out), what would be the way to ask them for help?

Shoot a rocket into outer-space with a bunch of full human genomes (sequencing data), a backup of the internet, and a readme. The probability of a starship being within 5 lightyears of earth is likely zero. If there is one, it's probably because it's already on its way here.

This is under the assumption that advancee civilizations can travel only as fast as speed of light.

There is also a possibility that there are advanced civilizations that jailbreaked the Universe/Reality and can be anywhere in seconds. Whether they give a shit about primitive civilizations like us who invented decent computers only like fifty years back is a different question altogether.

Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

#295

Post by Sharlin »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #113
Sharlin wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, the tandem failures of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Observer missions were probably something NASA as an organization needed at the time. A reminder that Space Is Hard, and you can only pick two of "faster", "better", and "cheaper". Since then, NASA's Mars program has grown in both scope and ambition, yet remarkably has had zero loss-of-mission failures during that whole time!

I was referring to the successful landing of Pathfinder but yeah... Space is Hard and NASA is good at it are both very true.

Ah, yeah, you could call airbags lithobraking. I thought you referred ironically to the Mars Polar Lander, but it of course flew in the 1999 launch window rather than 1997.

Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

#297

Post by subroutine »

blocked_again wrote: post #292
subroutine wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoot a rocket into outer-space with a bunch of full human genomes (sequencing data), a backup of the internet, and a readme. The probability of a starship being within 5 lightyears of earth is likely zero. If there is one, it's probably because it's already on its way here.

This is under the assumption that advancee civilizations can travel only as fast as speed of light. There is also a possibility that there are advanced civilizations that jailbreaked the Universe/Reality and can be anywhere in seconds. Whether they give a shit about primitive civilizations like us who invented decent computers only like fifty years back is a different question altogether.

Agreed. But are we assuming that breaking c means they are timetravelers?

Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

#298

Post by csomar »

blocked_again wrote: post #292
subroutine wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoot a rocket into outer-space with a bunch of full human genomes (sequencing data), a backup of the internet, and a readme. The probability of a starship being within 5 lightyears of earth is likely zero. If there is one, it's probably because it's already on its way here.

This is under the assumption that advancee civilizations can travel only as fast as speed of light. There is also a possibility that there are advanced civilizations that jailbreaked the Universe/Reality and can be anywhere in seconds. Whether they give a shit about primitive civilizations like us who invented decent computers only like fifty years back is a different question altogether.

They'd be already here, though. Or at least, evidence of them being here. If the universe is infinite, all possible advanced civilization should be already here. If time/space travel was possible, I think we should have seen it or evidence of it.

Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

#299

Post by azernik »

eb0la wrote: post #273
azernik wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison, that's about 10% of the Moon's diameter, i.e. 0.1% of its volume. (The mass ratios are probably within that 0.1% ballpark, but can't tell for sure until we know more about its composition.)

IMHO beign able to spot something with this size at this distance is really awesome.

Interestingly, the images came from the Dark Energy Survey [1], which for entirely different different reasons is running a very sensitive and high-resolution scan of the sky in visible and near-infrared. This just happened to show up in a frame where they were looking for distant galaxies and events, and the Minor Planets Center noticed the thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Energy_Survey

Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years

#300

Post by koheripbal »

Asraelite wrote: post #35

The post says "Incl. 95.46628 +/- 0.000052". Am I right to interpret this as meaning that the body has an extreme inclination, almost in polar orbit of the Sun? That would be pretty interesting; it would mean an orbit completely out of line with the rest of the Solar System.

Yes. It is the perfect place to host a berserker.

It has an orbital period of 3 million years, so it will be its first site of humanity.

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