

Detecting asteroids, meteors takes on new urgency - edouard1234567
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/17/russian-meteor-asteroid-b612-detection-satellite/1924633/

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andyjohnson0
Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9 astronaut) gave an interesting talk back on 2004
on "The Asteroid Threat Over the Next 100,000 Years" [1]. He said that we
don't have any technology (space capable nukes, gravity tractors, laser
deflection, etc) to prevent impacts. As far as I know this is still true nine
years later.

He gave some useful probabilities for the likelihood of impacts with rocks of
various sizes over long an short time scales, which puts the risk into
context.

He also explained that if you could develop the means to deflect an incoming
rock away from the earth, the same technology could be weaponized to deliver
impactors towards points on the planet's surface.

Schweickart is involved with the B612 Foundation [2], who are doing work on
impact prevention technology. He's co-chair of the NASA Task Force on
Planetary Defense [3], which sounds cool.

[1] [http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/mar/12/the-asteroid-
threat...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/mar/12/the-asteroid-threat-over-
the-next-100000-years/)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B612_Foundation>

[3]
[http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/library/nac/planetary-d...](http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/library/nac/planetary-
defense.html)

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kaybe
Why do problems like this only get tackled when there was a close call?

It's the same everywhere. Gun control discussions, nuclear power plant safety,
anti-terrorism measures... it's a long list. Suddenly, governments and
societies want action and funding there, where before no need was seen, when
the actual situation didn't change.

(However, in the case of climate change, it might be just to late to steer
things properly when the effects become clear.)

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orthecreedence
I think the funniest thing is that sure, we can detect an asteroid barreling
towards us, but what the hell are we going to do about it? Maybe it's better
_not_ to know. Some things are so completely out of our control that knowing
it's going to happen could only cause more suffering.

I think the problem is that humans (or most animals, I guess) are just
reacting to stimuli around them 99% of the time. So if something bad happens,
we tend to waste time and resources making sure that same _exact_ thing won't
happen again when life is adapting so much that chances are something _new_
will happen next time.

~~~
LatvjuAvs
For example in this situation, warning could be issued to get away from
windows and cover you in big octopus that will absorb all glass shards.

Something like this.

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silvestrov
This happens once every 100 years.

The cynic in me thinks it's cheaper for society to just let it happen instead
of using tons of money on teaching citizens to get away from windows in the
unlikely event of a meteor.

How many citizens do you think would get away from windows if they receive an
SMS telling them to? And how many who weren't at the windows would go stand in
the window to look at the great shiny thing?

~~~
LatvjuAvs
You sir, nailed every concern on the head. Same with fighting drugs, climate
control, that shit eats money like there is no tomorrow and no effect.

Eventually when technologically we will be advanced this will/can be
prevented.

Same with toilets, few hundred years ago we had none in apartments, now
without one someone might die :D

I might be one of these people who would make whatever means to see meteor
after warnings/announcements to go in underground bases(aka evangelion).

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mos2
I saw Ed Lu speak at SETI recently. If you want some more background with
visuals check out his tedxmarin talk:

[http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Changing-the-Course-of-the-
So...](http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Changing-the-Course-of-the-Sola)

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graycat
W. Feller's volume II proves the renewal theorem from which we can conclude
that the stochastic point process of arrivals of asteroids of some size and
larger is a Poisson process, e.g., as in Cinlar's book. Then empirical
historical data provides a good estimator of the arrival rate parameter of the
Poisson process.

Net, we can know the arrival rate of dangerous asteroids, and, ballpark, it's
one each some millions of years. So, we get to f'get about the problem.

