OT: What is the biggest

[President Lomax]

Originally posted by Slick:
What about getting hit by a large asteroid? This could end all life. There is only a tiny amount of funding and effort being expended on looking for these things. And little or no effort going into planning what we would do if we found one on a collision course. We may not even be able to stop something like this, but the sooner we discover an asteroid on a collision course, the more time we have to react. The idea is we find out 30 or 50 years beforehand and then maybe we could deflect it. A those ranges, even a tiny change in its course would make it miss earth.

Slick.

yea i saw something on TV about that. I think it was the discovery channel or whatever, but it said that its not a question of IF we will get it, but WHEN. They said that earths gravitational pull will attract an asteroid sooner or later, and that if they do find out that there is somehting coming our way the will just shoot missiles at it to knockit off course.

[PvK]

Fortunately, developing an anti-asteroid system probably isn't going to prevent dealing with other problems at the same time. The course of action there is pretty clear - continue to research, develop, and deploy a solution. It's a risk, but the course of action is clear, and even looks like bozo politicians can be made to understand and agree to do it. "Oh, so I get to be seen by the voters as a movie-star-like person building a ray gun to save the Earth from destruction? Cool - where do I sign?"

Unfortunately, other problems (environmental and political) seem more certain, more urgent, and less easy to solve. Even with intellectual solutions, getting populations and corrupt/foolish/preoccupied governments to act on the solutions can be really hard. Gotta try though. Keep thinking and expressing intelligent opinions to other people, and to goverment and media.

PvK

[primitive]

The Asteroids hits about once every 100 Million Years.
That should give a 0.000004 % change (if I get my zeros right) for it to hit during the next electorial period (4 years in most countries). Good to know we still have politicians able to find more urgent use for our taxmoney

[capnq]

Humans, of course: Homo Homini Lupus Est!
Humans are the wolves?

"Man is a wolf to(wards) Man."

[Baron Munchausen]

So many opinions in such a short time! I'll have to respond to all of them in one post. Let's see...

First, I have to agree with the first response by Master Belisarius that humans are the biggest threat to humans. Even if we can avoid deliberately killing each other (unlikely) this newfangled 'science' thing has got everyone greedily trying to figure out how to manipulate their environment to make themselves 'rich and powerful' without thinking of the possible consequences. Industrial poisons and maybe an outright plague could do us some terrible damage even without war.

And then along comes Ragnarok-X and observes that governments seem to be collecting the most dangerous humans together into cooperating Groups... Also true!

I don't understand why Atrocities thinks that loss of open wilderness for hunting or moto-cross is any indicator of a 'big threat' to mankind in general. I'd be more concerned at loss of good farmland than open unused land. Animals can adapt to living in farmland, and some of them can even adapt to urban environments -- witness the comeback of the coyote and raven and racoon in the Last few decades. It's kinda hard to grow grain or veggies through asphalt, though. We must stop paving our farmlands for parking lots and suburban strip malls. Other than that, over-population is just a trigger for the first problem mentioned: war.

The asteroid threat is quite real, but we don't know how imminent. That's why we need to spend a little bit (a very little bit in government terms) to at least continue to search for near earth objects. The naysayers are exhibiting a classic misunderstanding of what statistics are about.

Statistics are not laws of nature, they are just observations about averages. The "odds are" there won't be anyone coming the other way the next time you are approaching some rural 4-way stop between some fully grown cornfields where you can't see the road on the right or left. Are you gonna just charge through it at 60 mph without stopping since 'the odds' are in your favor? Or are you smart enough to realize that if there actually is a car coming the other way you'll be just as dead as if you'd driven actoss a busy highway without stopping? Statistics don't tell you about reality. They just give averages. You have to look for yourself to see what is actually the case right now. It doesn't matter what the 'odds' are per year of an asteroid hitting the earth. If there is one on course to hit us next year it WILL hit us next year.

In relative terms it really would cost very, very little to keep of a good search for asteroids that might hit us. A few tens of millions of dollars when NASA gets about $15 billion a year Last I heard?

[ March 29, 2004, 01:40: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[TerranC]

Originally posted by capnq:

quote:

---

Humans, of course: Homo Homini Lupus Est!
Humans are the wolves?

"Man is a wolf to(wards) Man."

---

OOOOOooooh. Thanks.

[Dragonswrd]

I personally am not worried about an astroid. If one hit, we would be dead before most people would know about it. Running out of resources kinda worries me. My main concern is polution. Who cares if we run out of oil in 15 years, when the air will be unbreathable in 50 to 100 years. Why should we care if the rich oil companies go out of business when most of the worlds animals will be extinct because we care more about a making a quick buck than spending a little more to make it safer for our home, the Earth. In our lifetimes we will never have a permanent colony on another planet. Our only hope is if we get our heads out of a@#$% and realize there are more important things than money and who owns what. Unless we evolve beyond greed, we are doomed and so is this whole planet.

[ March 29, 2004, 00:26: Message edited by: Dragonswrd ]

[President Lomax]

I dont think the entire planet will become extinct in like 50 years. I think that before all the oil resources on Earth are gone, that there will be some sort of replacement for it. Hydrogen fuel cells are in development, not quite perfected yet, but we are getting there. Humans will not die out just because we run out of oil or anything. And the earth will most definatly not be destroyed anytime soon. Asteroid or not.

[Dragonswrd]

I didn't mean we would die because of running out of oil. I meant we have almost reach the point of no return on polution and such. We will run out of oil in about 15 to 20 years. Hydrogen fuels cells are non polluting but to produce them is very polluting (sorry on the bad english). We can run out of oil and survive, but if we cut most of the trees down and kill most of the corral reefs (which we are very close to doing), and kill most of the algea (again we are fairly close to doing) we will run out of air. And Last time a checked we needed that.

[President Lomax]

lol yea. i didnt want to spark a debate or anything about how messed up we made the panet or anything...but alot of people dont care about what happens. they figure. "hell! Im gonna die in a couple years! why not make it a living hell for everyone who is born after this point in time!"