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Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

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Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#51

Post by ajuc »

iSnow wrote: post #41
gnosis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time to initiate an asteroid defense project is long before a threat is even detected. There needs to be time for technology development, deployment, and testing. Tackling an extinction-level event is not something we want to scramble for at the last possible minute, using untried technology.

> Tackling an extinction-level event is not something we want to scramble for at the last possible minute I am not sure if this is in line with Agile principles like YAGNI.

I'm not sure leading humanity should be done according to agile methodology ;)

It's hard to estimate how long it takes for another humanity to develop if we screw it(so we don't know iteration length), and there is the problem of telling them what we did wrong after we were destroyed.

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#52

Post by apaprocki »

The link to the original L'Astronomie journal article, which contains a diagram and photograph is here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Vt1NAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA347#v...

"PASSAGE SUR LE DISQUE SOLAIRE" p. 347, L'Astronomie Vol. IV

Transcript (French) https://gist.github.com/4136038

Transcript (English, Google Translated) https://gist.github.com/4136045

Also, it appears there are letters to the journal regarding the original article in the subsequent Vol. V, which can be viewed here: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015069401779?urlappend=%3Bs...

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#53

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rorrr wrote: post #10
venus wrote: post #5

> A sobering thought. An even more sobering thought is that even in the present day, if we detected something like that heading our way, there'd be absolutely nothing we could but sit and wait for it to arrive.

That's not true. If we knew for a fact that it would cause global extinction, we would throw everything at it. We could blow it up with nukes. We could put a relatively heavy space probe next to it and deflect its course.

Um, global melting is happening, and squat is being done about it. I wish I could be as optimistic as you. Maybe because a comet is a thing, a tangible menace, we would emotionally respond.

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#54

Post by apaprocki »

temphn wrote: post #6

No photographic evidence. No corresponding accounts. No raw data. Bonilla published his account of this event in a French journal called L'Astronomie in 1886. Unable to account for the phenomenon, the editor of the journal suggested, rather incredulously, that it must have been caused by birds, insects or dust passing front of the Bonilla's telescope. As the saying goes: when you hear hoof-steps, think horses, not ze…

The original article has all of the exact observations as well as a diagram and photograph.

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#55

Post by monochromatic »

pgsandstrom wrote: post #40

The paper in question: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1110/1110.2798.pdf It is written in comic sans and one of the authors is using a yahoo mail. Maybe I'm just being an elitist nerd, but really...

That does not look like Comic Sans. Maybe just some weirdness with font rendering on an iPad though...

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#56

Post by flyinRyan »

gnosis wrote: post #25
Shank wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is slightly true, though notably the Torino Scale mentions that once an object is classed at level 5, governments may begin to take action to counteract such a collision before it arrives at earth, if the encounter is set to be less than a decade away. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_Scale Edit: NASA's JPL maintains the Sentry Risk Table, which tracks all objects that may impact the Earth, with various data…

The time to initiate an asteroid defense project is long before a threat is even detected. There needs to be time for technology development, deployment, and testing. Tackling an extinction-level event is not something we want to scramble for at the last possible minute, using untried technology.

Well, the best defense for something like this is space exploration and collinization. That's being worked on at a reasonable rate.

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#57

Post by monochromatic »

Geee wrote: post #19
polarcuke wrote: post #14

Well if this is true I guess there is one more thing for us to be thankful for today!

It doesn't matter because we wouldn't be here thinking about it. On the other hand, the extinction event would have been a gold mine for the future archaeologists that would have evolved on Earth in the next 100 million years.

You're right, let's NOT be thankful that we're still here.

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#58

Post by incision »

bad_user wrote: post #46
wedesoft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since all objects in space are visible The majority of objects in space are not visible to us. They only become visible when near and bright enough. Even known comets such as Halley are not visible to us most of the time.

Not with the naked eye as the sunlight reflected by Earth makes that difficult, but we do have deep space telescopes, don't we? I don't know much on this topic, but if we are able to spot planets that are light years away, then what's the problem with detecting objects that are gonna crash into us in the next 1000 years? The only problem I can understand is that the sky is a pretty big place, but surely we also have…

>The only problem I can understand is that the sky is a pretty big place, but surely we also have a lot of time to detect such objects.

I'm no expert, but as I understand it, the kind of objects we would be worried about are extremely hard to detect as they are dark, cold and relatively tiny.

At the same time, our "eyes" can only look at tiny patches of sky, generally through the distortion of our atmosphere for only a portion of each day with parts of the sky only visible part of the year. Furthermore, we generally have those eyes trained to other, known targets - stars, galaxies, nebulae and all that.

Consider that we didn't spot Apophis [1], which is set to come extremely close, until 2004 even though it's on our lawn [2] in terms of distance.

There is an effort [3] or two [4] afoot related to tracking asteroids and a new DARPA [5] program for tracking our own local junk.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

2: http://www.howcloseisapophis.com/

3: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/160839035.html

4: http://www.planetaryresources.com/mission/

5: http://www.spaceviewnetwork.com/

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#59

Post by jrs235 »

Gravityloss wrote: post #44
ars wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_%28medicine%29

This would call for a primer in Bayesian inference. Actually, all medical practice would benefit from understanding it.

"Did you diagnose yourself using the internet?! All symptoms lead to Crohn's disease or cancer! It's probably just a stomach bug."

Re: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

#60

Post by grecy »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #26
AlexMennen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a significant chance that a comet will hit and destroy us, it makes sense to do everything we can to prevent it from doing so. Given the stakes, .1% chance should be more than enough for us to take it seriously. It does not seem plausible that we could harm ourselves much by nuking a comet that wasn't going to hit us anyway.

It does seem plausible that we could in fact harm ourselves by attempting to launch a nuclear device out of Earth's orbit. We do have a record of failed launches, several of them recent. Once the nuclear device is out of orbit however, I agree that the harm it can do to us is negligible. Edit: Also, it just occurred to me the possibility of deflecting a comet (which was never in our path) into our path, instead of aw…

We've intentionally detonated hundreds of nukes in the atmosphere.. Even over heavily populated cities. Sure, it was bad, but not earth-ending bad.

If a lunch failed and "nuked" the launch pad, I hope we'd just move on to another continent and try again (and again)

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