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Author Topic: Asteroid Impact thread - Alas, Mastodon
Ron Lambert
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A 40,000 mile miss! I hadn't been aware it came that close! Most of them that we hear about pass beyond the orbit of the moon, some 250,000 miles out. I think we dodged a bullet, just barely that time.
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Tatiana:
We could have spent $14B to build up the levees, redirect the outflow of the river indirectly rebuilding the barrier islands and so on. Then the hurricane wouldn't have flooded the city. There was an article in 1992 in Scientific American saying the next big hurricane that hits New Orleans is going to flood it, and here's what we need to do to prevent that.

Instead we spent at least $30B in the aftermath, and aren't ready yet for the next one, nor did we prevent all the human suffering that could have been prevented. So, yeah, we were dumb on that one.

Are you sure? You have to consider the probabilities here. What was the probability of Katrina hitting New Orleans in the way that it did? More generally, what is the probability of such a storm in a given year? Suppose it is 1%, to make up a number. Then if you spend 14 billion, over 100 years there is roughly a one-third chance you wasted that money. (100 years is actually rather longer than it's worth considering these things; how much infrastructure from 1908 is still around?) So there is a one-third chance you wasted 14 billion, and a two-thirds chance you saved (30 billion minus 14 billion = 16 billion), for a net expected value of 5.2 billion. On the other hand if you had invested that 14 billion somewhere else, at a very moderate 1% real interest, then at the end of 100 years you would have 37 billion. So with these numbers, building levees is a pretty bad investment. And notice I chose a long time period and a very low rate of return on the other investment.
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Tatiana
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The probability of a big hurricane hitting New Orleans eventually is pretty close to 100%. If you live on the Gulf, it happens to you eventually. It's not a whether but rather a when.
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Alcon
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Apophis will come with in 22,000 miles in 2029... and may hit us 7 years later in 2036. This is a 237 meter wide asteroid, big enough to wipe out France! Yikes! I didn't realize we knew of any that big that are likely to hit us.

As for the one that just missed us by 40,000 miles -- we only noticed it 8 days before it swept by. And that was one as big as the Tunguska event. Eight days warning! We've gotta get better at asteroid spotting or we're going to regret it.

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Juxtapose
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Don't worry, Apophis will miss the keyhole. [Smile]
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Tatiana:
The probability of a big hurricane hitting New Orleans eventually is pretty close to 100%. If you live on the Gulf, it happens to you eventually. It's not a whether but rather a when.

That is not the relevant calculation, however. The question is,do you best prepare for this disaster by building levees, which prevent damage, or by investing in other things, which generate wealth that can be used to repair the damage?
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El JT de Spang
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When significant numbers of lives are at risk, you spend the extra money to prevent that rather than investing is to make a profit on cleaning up the damage. Also, when have you known the US gov't to make a decision like what you're suggesting?

Do you advocate not buying homeowner's insurance if the cost-benefit estimates come out for it being a bad investment?

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King of Men
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quote:
When significant numbers of lives are at risk, you spend the extra money to prevent that rather than investing is to make a profit on cleaning up the damage.
This is not generally true. In general we are willing to spend about five million to save a life, as a rough average. So if you have some estimate of how many lives would have been saved by the levees, by all means multiply by five million and add that to the 30 billion property damage. But this does not alter the fundamental nature of the calculation.

Now, you may be about to go off saying that it is immoral to calculate the cost of lives in this manner. Before you do, consider that if ten million are spent saving one life frm he next hurricane, then that's two times five million that cannot be spent saving two lives from some disaster that's easier to guard against. Nature does not except you from opportunity costs just because you have good intentions.

Also, I did not say anything about 'making profit on cleanup'. You make the profit investing in other stuff before the disaster. Then you spend some of the profit cleaning up. This is a pure loss from the point of view of society, even though it is a gain for the cleanup contractors. Building levees is a gain for the levee-building contractors, too, but I don't see you objecting to their profit. The question is what is the best overall use of resources, not who stands to gain.

Please notice: I do not own stock in either housing contractors or cement factories; I really have no economic stake in which preparations are done.

quote:
Also, when have you known the US gov't to make a decision like what you're suggesting?
Every day. Highway speed limits, for example, are set based on some sort of calculation of convenience versus traffic deaths versus a dozen other considerations.
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Alcon
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quote:
Don't worry, Apophis will miss the keyhole. [Smile]
The first time 'round sure, but what if it gets aerobraked into it for the second time around? There's definitely enough atmosphere up there to do some serious aerobraking for an asteroid that big...

Ps. Your linky is broken.

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aspectre
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It would have been less expensive to give each&every displaced NewOrleanean a new home from existing housing stock already on sale before Katrina hit than to rebuild the flood walls.

As is, there is only a miniscule chance that the rebuilt flood walls will protect NewOrleans from being flooded by even a strong Category2 hurricane, let alone the Cat.3 that they're "designed for".
Discounting rising sea-levels from GlobalWarming entirely, the Louisiana coastline is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of ~3feet/~1metre per century. Faster in some areas, eg NewOrleans is expected to drop a metre in ~50years.
So the flood walls would hafta be at least 3feet higher to bear the brunt of the next expectable Cat.3 hurricane...unless hurricanes start making landfall upon NewOrleans on a more frequent basis than in the past.

At a minimum, the flooded sections should have been bought out under eminent domain and filled to the top of preKatrina floodwalls with soil pumped from a shipping canal dredged through LakePontchetrain to BatonRouge, which will be the natural MississippiRiver seaport for the end of this century.
Then it would have made at least some sense to rebuild&preserve NewOrleans as a tourist destination by putting in new floodwalls.

[ March 04, 2009, 07:50 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by aspectre:
It would have been less expensive to give each&every displaced NewOrleanean a new home from existing housing stock already on sale before Katrina hit than to rebuild the flood walls.

Ah, but think how much cheaper still it would be now, at 2008 prices! [Big Grin]
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aspectre
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"A 40,000 mile miss! I hadn't been aware it came that close! ...I think we dodged a bullet, just barely that time."

It came within 0.00047AstronomicalUnits or 70,311kilometres of Earth's center, or ~63,940km/~39,730miles of surface impact. Using Earth's orbital speed of 107,218 km/hour, 2009 DD45 missed by ~35minutes47seconds.

On the other hand, "1,000 square miles" is contained within a radius of only 18miles.

[ March 04, 2009, 07:19 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

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King of Men
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The impact cross-section is a bit larger than the geometric cross-section, due to gravity and whatnot, so you can likely shave some seconds off that estimate.
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aspectre
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Yeah, but I'm cheating already by assuming that the asteroid passed through the tubular-ring cross-section formed by Earth's travel along Earth's orbit, even though the plane of 2009 DD45's orbit is inclined relative to the plane of Earth's orbit.

The slides on the bottom and right of the screen change the orientation of your viewpoint.
The |< and >| buttons change the time-viewed backwards and forwards respectively.
You can also change the view in a manner such that Earth is at the center of the screen, then zoom in using the labeled slide.

[ March 06, 2009, 01:07 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

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Tatiana
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Here's a follow up on that Winnebago-sized chunk that hit North Africa a few months ago. It seems that they were able to find meteorites that made it all the way to the ground, and they're very unusual. The findings are Nature's cover story this month.
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ana kata
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Oh, something just occurred to me relative to an argument some people way back in the first few pages brought up. They said no big impact has ever happened in recorded history. Setting aside the fact that recorded history is very short, and significant impacts have definitely occurred during that time, e.g. Tunguska, I had an idea that sort of negates their argument.

If a really big impact DOES occur, one of the certain-extinction size that I'm most worried about, then there won't be any way for it to be part of anyone's recorded history because recorded history will end at that point.

Perhaps in a few hundred million years someone else, some non-human species, could be around once again to record their own history. But perhaps not. We really don't know anything about the likelihood of species-who-write evolving on planets like the earth. So far we only know of just the one.

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ana kata
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I've just been reading about Zion's camp, an episode in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons. The church at that time was concentrated mostly in Kirtland, OH and Independence, MO. When the Saints in Independence were being harrassed, mobbed, murdered, raped, etc. and their homes and stores and properties were being destroyed by the locals trying to run the Mormons out, Joseph Smith, Jr. and a few hundred men from the Kirtland area rode to the rescue in a semi-military group known as Zion's Camp.

The expedition suffered through great hardships and difficulties to reach Missouri, at which time the government forces they'd counted on to back them up never materialized, and God, speaking through revelations to Joseph, withheld his permission for them to attack the local mobbers. Apparently self-defense was allowed but not all-out war, and the Saints were urged to proclaim peace. In the meantime, Zion's camp came down with cholera, and most were very sick, and many died. The Camp was forced to disband and make their way home piecemeal as best they could, their numbers sorely depleted. It seemed a terrible defeat.

At the time it was tempting to believe God had abandoned the Saints altogether. The cholera was understood by some at the time to be a scourge sent from God to punish them for internal contention in the camp. Now, of course, we would attribute it to the poor standards of water hygeine. They probably didn't keep their latrines in an area that was downstream from their drinking water supply. Something simple like that might have prevented the disaster. As it was, the Saints ended up losing almost everything in Missouri and having to leave. What does that say about how we should understand the way God succors his people?

That thought was 'impacting' in my head this morning with the question of whether God would reach out and save us from an asteroid impact from which we had means but not sufficient motivation to save ourselves. I'm thinking that God didn't save his Saints from cholera when they didn't even realize yet what caused cholera, and how to save themselves from it. I don't think he's going to save us from an asteroid impact that we can clearly see coming, but are too apathetic to do anything about. I think it's up to us.

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ana kata
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I'm also thinking about the phenomenon of Cassandra. When I make these warnings, I feel like a Cassandra, someone who warns of disaster but nobody listens. It's interesting to realize that the original Cassandra of legend was right. She was Hector's sister in Troy, and predicted that disaster would come to their city, which of course it did in the Trojan War.

I see society as analogous to the body of a human or other animal. Each individual in a civilization is like a cell or other part of the body of society. Some of us are like feet, others like skin or hands, others are brains or bones.

The Cassandras of society are sort of like our eyes, because they see disasters that are headed our way, and they see how we can take steps to avoid them. But they are eyes without any nerve connections to the brain. They can see what's about to happen, but they don't have any way to hook in to the motor nerves and get them to step in another direction to avoid the danger.

What Cassandra needs is to develop some axons into the higher executive control functions of the body of civilization. That is what is lacking. I wonder how to go about doing that?

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Noemon
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The British were taking the threat a bit more seriously than anybody else, the last time I checked. That was a couple of years ago, though. I wonder what kind of progress they've been making in their plans in the intervening years?

Ana kata, what made you decide to switch from your Tatiana handle to this one?

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ana kata
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Ah, I forgot. In order to change the tagline on the topic header I have to change back to ana kata, or it won't let me edit that post. Then I forgot to change back until you mentioned it.
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Tatiana
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There. Back now.
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aspectre
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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17073-nearby-asteroid-found-orbiting-sun-backwards.html

How do you miss a 2to3kilometres-wide asteroid with a 3.4year orbit that came within 0.084AU* of Earth on 9Jan1999?

* According to Nasa's Horizon ephimerides calculator.
It came within 0.0811AU according to the Orbital Simulator (link in my previous post above).

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Tatiana
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Wow, that's a big one. Maybe with more viewings we'll find a somewhat different orbit farther away, or maybe not. I think we're still missing a lot of the earthgrazing objects.

How many miles is .084AU? 93,000,000 * .084 = about 900,000 miles. So would that be about 4 times as far as the moon? That's pretty darn close.

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aspectre
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~12,600,000kilometres/~7,800,000miles, or almost 33 times the average distance to the Moon. Due to the asteroid's orbital inclination, the closest it flys under Earth's orbit is ~3,500,000kilometres/~0.046AU/~2,170,000miles.

[ May 09, 2009, 08:17 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

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aspectre
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Dude gets hit by meteor while walking to school.

The writing mostly reminds me that science reporters were amongst the first fired during the downturn in newspaper subscriptions.

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The Reader
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How could that meteorite have been going that fast? Air resistance almost certainly should have slowed it to around 200-300 mph.
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aspectre
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Amongst other things that would have triggered a science reporter's skepticism.
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Samprimary
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Yeah, Schoolboy survives direct hit by meteorite travelling at 30,000mph, does not survive flash vaporization
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aspectre
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http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2009/7/californias-channel-islands-hold-evidence-clovis-age-comets

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_event

[ July 25, 2009, 07:09 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

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Tatiana
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Interesting articles. How would we cope now with something like this, I wonder? If most of North America burned and there were huge tsunamis on one coast? It would be a struggle to keep civilization going, I think. These things happen pretty frequently in our solar system. Witness the recent Jupiter impact, as well.

We need an asteroid defense, guys. Like, soon. This is entirely preventable. We have the technology to protect ourselves. If we don't use it, whose fault will it be if we get hit? I don't see how we can blame anyone but ourselves in that case.

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Tatiana
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http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Hubble-Jupiter-Scar_7-23-20.jpg

Here's a great hubble picture of the latest impact site on Jupiter.

Note: that black spot where the impact was is approximately the size of the Earth.

[ July 27, 2009, 01:52 AM: Message edited by: Tatiana ]

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The Rabbit
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http://xkcd.com/618/
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Tatiana
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I hope Jeni didn't see that.
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Tatiana
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Impact on North America 13,000 years ago kills off megafauna, including mastodons, woolly mammoths, big sloths, etc. according to a new theory.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/54830807.html

Synopsis is there. For the full article you have to get the magazine. The magazine is really interesting and a great source of astronomical information, in case anyone wants to get it.

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Noemon
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Love the thread title change, Tatiana!
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Tatiana
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Thanks. =)

Btw, there's also a podcast linked from the article that should be free.

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King of Men
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The thread title is indeed funny. I must say I preferred the old theory, though, that humans wiped them out.
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The Reader
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Don't be down, KoM. I'm sure we still helped.
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King of Men
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Yes, yes, but "Helping a giant meteor impact" just doesn't have the same visceral satisfaction as "Wiping out megafauna with nothing but stone spears". It doesn't feel the same when the species in question has had a bloody great rock heaved at it and you're just kicking it when it's down. [Frown]
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aspectre
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50kiloton blast over Sulawesi, Indonesia
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Tatiana
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I want to point out that a huge hazard to the world that I first discussed and urged action on 10 years ago is finally becoming a topic to which the government is paying attention. Next year the U.S. Government will publish a plan to deal with asteroid impacts.

So, finally this is being taken seriously, thank goodness. I just want to point out that I recognized this hazard and began pointing it out over 10 years ago.

I had to do this as an engineer several times, too, before I got my coworkers to begin listening to my ideas. As a female with a soft voice, I was often overlooked on the jobsite until I pointed out to my coworkers that I understood what was going on in several situations well before they did, and tried to tell them what I knew, and they didn't listen. Of course by the time the problem was resolved they had all forgotten what I said originally, hence the need to remind them. After this happened 3 or 6 or 10 times, they began to listen up front as well.

So this is not to say nyah nyah I told you so, though of course my heart isn't entirely free of any hints of that sort of feeling. =) This is just to document the situation so that we may recognize solutions to future problems more quickly.

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aspectre
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"Over the past 3 years, a loosely confederated group of researchers has argued that an asteroid or comet struck North America about 13,000 years ago, wiping out the woolly mammoth, the giant sloth, and other large animals.
Experts say they have shot down most of the supposed evidence, but one finding remained: nano-scale diamond crystals that could have formed only under the extreme pressure of an impact. Now, a group of experts has dismissed this evidence as well, putting what many see as the final nail in the coffin of the mammoth-killer impact."

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The White Whale
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I just attended a seminar discussing extreme volcanic explosions as the likely cause of the major extinction events in the Earth's history. There is more evidence for correlation (and this guy says causation) of extinction events and flood basalt formation than of extinctions and impacts.

He went through all of the evidence of high-pressure build up of carbon dioxide under certain crustal features, which then explode and create many of the features previously associated with impact events. Also, many of the "ground zeros" are near flood basalt, but the flood basalt layers extend far below the impact layer. Simply put: the impacts cannot be the cause of the flood basalts, and they are too often found together to be simple coincidence. Instead, it seems more likely that the flood basalt is a symptom of extreme high pressure which theoretically leads to huge explosions, leaking carbon dioxide, sulfur, and other toxic gases into the atmosphere.

Here's a link describing a little of what he gave in today's seminar.

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Tatiana
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This issue of Sky and Telescope will hit the newsstands soon. I just wanted to point out the story to those who have an interest in this subject, and incidentally keep this thread alive. =)
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Jake
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NEOShield to assess Earth defence
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ZachC
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All of the people on this thread taking this topic seriously are morons. On the off chance, that an asteroid large enough to do serious damage to the Earth came near in its orbit, at least one of the advanced nations on this planet would detect it in time. Our resources are better spent fighting actual threats like global warming and overpopulation than random juvenile delusions straight out of a bad Sci-Fi novel.
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Dan_Frank
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Insightful.

No, wait. That other thing.

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T_Smith
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quote:
Originally posted by ZachC:
All of the people on this thread taking this topic seriously are morons. On the off chance, that an asteroid large enough to do serious damage to the Earth came near in its orbit, at least one of the advanced nations on this planet would detect it in time. Our resources are better spent fighting actual threats like global warming and overpopulation than random juvenile delusions straight out of a bad Sci-Fi novel.

I read that as "are mormons" at first and wondered why some people were being excluded.
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Dan_Frank
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Well it's true that only mormons have the wisdom and foresight to care about catastrophic asteroid impacts. The rest of us are too high on caffeine, nicotine, and premarital sex to notice.
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T_Smith
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*nods* Sounds like you must have read the pamphlets, already.
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