211–220 of 374 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that was supposed to be some kind of small black hole passing through the solar system or something more exotic. Maybe I'm misremembering. Great book though and still haunts me sometimes when staring up at the night sky:)
I had also interpreted it as a small solo black hole. Which it itself a scary concept.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The coffee machine has no implications on my current life span. It may be true, but who would waste their time caring about this? Show me the /unanimous/ consensus that this is an immediate /existential/ issue. I don't believe such a thing exists. When attempting to understand the difference between those who care about an asteroid and climate change, which was the question, this is the critical point to concern your…
by doubting, you've already ruled it out, haven't you? 95%+ is as good as it gets probably. For starters, we know corals will be dead in the next few decades, home of 25% of all oceanic species. The mass extinction event is underway and we aren't doing enough to stop it.
So you are attempting to create an environment where reasonable doubt is impossible. This behavior is actually part of the reason I have doubts.
> we know corals will be dead in the next few decades
Do we?
> The mass extinction event is underway and we aren't doing enough to stop it.
This is a clever dodge of the original question. Can you explain to me when our current inaction reaches a point where no response will ever be able to overcome the drivers of this mass extinction? Do you have an estimate you can share?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The coffee machine has no implications on my current life span. It may be true, but who would waste their time caring about this? Show me the /unanimous/ consensus that this is an immediate /existential/ issue. I don't believe such a thing exists. When attempting to understand the difference between those who care about an asteroid and climate change, which was the question, this is the critical point to concern your…
Unanimous consensus is an impossible goal. Overwhelming agreement among experts is as gold as standards get. But FWIW, I don't think anyone believes that climate change is a quick duration species-existential event. Massive slow-roll geopolitical destabilization leading to societal collapse? That's definitely on the table.
I know this. I was responding to the OPs appeal to authority.
> Overwhelming agreement among experts is as gold as standards get.
What is this agreement? That it will eventually happen? That's not much of an agreement.
> I don't think anyone believes that climate change is a quick duration species-existential event.
Among those who "agree" is there a common timeframe that they estimate? Or do they all have varying opinions on this?
> That's definitely on the table.
We have nuclear weapons. In bunkers. Aimed at "targets." Everything is on the table. This isn't useful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, what I mean is: why would I use my rocket and nuke to divert an asteroid years in advance, when I can drop an 8MT nuke on you directly in 30 minutes with much more accurate targeting? One possible reason is plausible deniability, but that goes away if we have a good asteroid defense system with an emphasis on early detection.
Ah, I understand now. For one thing, you could weaponize asteroids as a second-strike response, if there's an imbalance where one superpower has asteroid deflection and one does not. Even if it's delayed by months, the certainty that the asteroid will eventually hit establishes a deterrent against attacking the asteroid-controlling country. If there's defenses against ballistic missiles, this circumvents those. For a…
Nuclear second strike has always been from the submarines, which guarantee a response within minutes.
Versus your proposal here of launching a highly visible rocket, to manipulate a highly visible object, with a flight time measured in days to weeks that's mostly ballistic.
Frankly: this is strategic nonsense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it says 1% in the title, what's there to misunderstand?
1% is tiny, really small. In my experience, commonly orbits in the solar system are astoundingly accurate over centuries. This prediction is relatively soon, 2032. So, we have (A) a crude orbit and only 1% prediction of hitting Earth or (B) an accurate prediction of 100% = 1. Between these two, (A) seemed too small and (B) too large. So, I asked. This question seemed appropriate enough. Reading the paper, sure, they…
If you detected 100 objects with a 1% chance to hit, you're actually very likely to be hit by more the 1. There's a lot of objects up there, fortunately the chances they hit us are a lot lower then that so far.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, what I mean is: why would I use my rocket and nuke to divert an asteroid years in advance, when I can drop an 8MT nuke on you directly in 30 minutes with much more accurate targeting? One possible reason is plausible deniability, but that goes away if we have a good asteroid defense system with an emphasis on early detection.
Ah, I understand now. For one thing, you could weaponize asteroids as a second-strike response, if there's an imbalance where one superpower has asteroid deflection and one does not. Even if it's delayed by months, the certainty that the asteroid will eventually hit establishes a deterrent against attacking the asteroid-controlling country. If there's defenses against ballistic missiles, this circumvents those. For a…
But if you could do second strikes with asteroids, that would be a good thing. Second strike capability helps prevent nuclear war. Effective first strikes are what's destabilizing.
Which brings us to your second point. I agree that stationing nuclear warheads in space is a bad idea. But we don't have to do that. With years or decades of advance warning, we can just launch them from Earth.
I work on the Near Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) writing simulation code which predicts which objects we will see. This one has drummed up a bit of interest due to its (relatively) high chance of impact. I actually spent quite a bit of time yesterday digging through archive images trying trying to see if it was spotted on some previous times it came by the Earth (no luck unfortunately). Since w…
If in 2032 an impact did occur, how much time before that impact would be able to ascertain over 50% probability of impact? hypothetically. That is, does the certainty increase steadily or non-linearly over time? Does near certainty of an impact occur from measurements taken just minutes before the impact, or hours, days, years?
I understand it's hypothetical, but even a 10% chance of hitting a city, for example, would be a crisis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
I don't want to come off too harsh here -- not a personal attack -- but I genuinely don't understand why folks are sharing the output from LLMs. It's usually too long, it's not written by a human (which is why I came to HN), and I could have trivially asked an LLM myself!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How far in advance would we know exactly _where_ on the Earth it will hit? If, say, New York is going to be destroyed, it makes a big difference if we know that a year in advance vs. a day.
Does it though? People don't leave hurricane zones. People don't heed tornado warnings. I just have very little faith in humanity, and fell like "Don't Look Up" would be not too far off. Also, if you evacuate New York a year in advance, who's to say that the prediction isn't just a skosh off so that New York is left untouched but the real impact location was hit unprepared?