311–320 of 374 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A comparable ocean impact would be the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which was about 3x more energetic.
2004 Indian Earthquake was 9.1-magnitude, so it was about 150 megatons of TNT.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100404013939/http://neic.usgs....
Completely out of my domain and seat of pants rationing here, but although the impact probability is 1%, aren't we far far more certain about the /time/ at which it would strike earth? Could humanity collectively just migrate to the side of the world that will be shielded for a day?
The bad news is no, we have nothing even remotely close to the infrastructure necessary to move half the world's population. We don't have the transport, being limited to planes and boats mostly. The good news is that, worst-case scenario, this is going to wipe out a city. And cities and their surrounding areas can absolutely be evacuated. We definitely have the cars and buses necessary for that.
Completely out of my domain and seat of pants rationing here, but although the impact probability is 1%, aren't we far far more certain about the /time/ at which it would strike earth? Could humanity collectively just migrate to the side of the world that will be shielded for a day?
The bad news is no, we have nothing even remotely close to the infrastructure necessary to move half the world's population. We don't have the transport, being limited to planes and boats mostly. The good news is that, worst-case scenario, this is going to wipe out a city. And cities and their surrounding areas can absolutely be evacuated. We definitely have the cars and buses necessary for that.
Even without incentives, in all likelihood, those who can will evacuate early for peace of mind, and as the prediction becomes more certain on its approach through measurement, individuals will I'm sure even start to return /before/ the pass. You know everyone has their own set of 9s to chase
If Mt of asteroid impact roughly equates to a nuclear weapon, then this is pretty bad for a metropolitan area but not enough to put a big dent in humanity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an open doubt whether a fully functional coffee machine is currently orbiting Venus, however one of these hypotheses is different than the other. Hint: expertise matters, evidence matters, and in a field where buildings/laws/fields of study get named after successful contrarians, a long streak of effectively unanimous consensus should not be undervalued.
The good news is that the near-unanimous consensus among experts is that climate change is not an existential issue. Almost no climate scientist thinks that climate change could wipe out the human race. (That's compatible with it having very large effects on human welfare, substantial percentages of global GDP.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bad news is no, we have nothing even remotely close to the infrastructure necessary to move half the world's population. We don't have the transport, being limited to planes and boats mostly. The good news is that, worst-case scenario, this is going to wipe out a city. And cities and their surrounding areas can absolutely be evacuated. We definitely have the cars and buses necessary for that.
But in any case, we certainly have the logistics to move populations given the timeline. Not everyone has to evacuate and return within a 3 day window. Even without incentives, in all likelihood, those who can will evacuate early for peace of mind, and as the prediction becomes more certain on its approach through measurement, individuals will I'm sure even start to return /before/ the pass. You know everyone has the…
Even if we had three years to move everyone from one side of the earth to the other and could handle the transportation, and then another three years to move them back, how are you going to keep them fed? We're just going to double our food infrastructure on half of the world?
Where do we house them for several years? We're going to double our housing?
How are we going to find all those people jobs to sustain them for the several years they're spending on the other side of the world?
All those things would have to be part of the logistics too. Energy usage. Health care. The list goes on.
It would be a logistical and economic upheaval the likes of which the world has never seen. It would lead to political chaos and massive wars over suddenly incredibly limited resources.
Humanity would survive, but a lot of people wouldn't. It wouldn't be a question of logistics, but a complete and increasingly violent reconfiguration of society in all spheres.
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…
Woah. A 1% probability is a lot higher than I expected and am comfortable with (not that I can do anything about it)
Urban areas are only about 0.5% of earth surface, so rough approximation of a catastrophic hit chance is around 0.005%. The chance of you specifically being affected by this asteroid is vanishingly small. You should personally be more worried about crossing a road or plugging in an electric appliance or being hit by a lightning. For others there's a lot more devastation going on globally that you could even do someth…