Please tell me this is some bad joke!

[decookie]

I love the way that, in Armageddon, when bruise willis sacrifices himself at the end of the film its meant to be moving and emotional. Can you hold back the tears?

Oh, but of course when Paris gets completely destroyed the attitude is something along the lines of, "damn, lucky it didn't hit the US of A or we could have had a tragedy on our hands!!"

Grrr... it made me mad. God bless America my arse.

[Jorath Calar]

Yep Armageddon was a piece of shit movie...

[Bozos of Bones]

You can say that again(refer to last page for further info). And very forced patriotismic.

[Zuvio]

"If you spot a life-size meteor in the sky, go into your houses and turn on your TV or radio and listen to the instructions. And when you notice that the meteor is going to crash anywhere near you in a 5-mile radius, remember boys and girls: Duck & Cover!!"

[Rokenn]

Originally posted by Sigmar: The planet hasn't been hit by a "large" asteroid for 2000 years+, the way I figure it the chance of one hitting us in our lifetime is extremely low...Enjoy life, don't tune in to scare mongering news like that, what will be will be. Not much the human race can do about asteroids anyway is there?

Actually there are things we can do if it is spotted early enough. The closer the object is the harder it is move off course to miss the planet. Think about it this way. Shoot at a target with a gun from 100 meters. Now move the barrel an inch to the right. Repeat this from 1 meter. You will notice a pretty big difference in where the bullet hits. Same with an astroid. If we know for sure that one is going to hit and it is still months/years away a small 'nudge' with a few hundred megaton of nuc's fill cause it to miss the planet.

The last large impact was in Russia (Tunguska) less then a hundred years ago. The concussion from the blast, estimated at 20 megatons of TNT, leveled trees in an area nearly 40 miles in diameter. This from a rock merely 100 feet in diameter. Just think of the fun that would cause today if one hit a major city.

[Granamere]

Also correct me if I am wrong but are not the chances of us decting anything as small as 100 feet in diameter before it hits almost impossible? I know 100 feet is a third of a football field but that is very small when you think of how big space is. Think about it. Trying to protect against something that small over the whole world. How many Hubbles would you need just to do that? Also finding them in time enough to knock them off course?

Granamere

[frudi_x]

it is possible to detect objects even just a few meters in diameter, but those are purely chance discoveries. and even then they have to pass very near the earth to become bright enough to detect. the problem is, there is just no way to detect all the objects larger than say 10 meters (these can survive the fall through our atmosphere and explode near the surface, causing megaton size explosions), as these objects probably number in the billions or more!
the best we can hope for is to someday be able to track all objects larger than say 100 meters, those have the potential to devastate entire countries. even this task is currently well above the capabilities of the rather limited network of telescopes searching for earth crossing objects at the moment.
what IS currently being worked on is finding and tracking the 'global killers', objects about 1 km in size or larger, those can put us back into the stone age (those few people that actually survive the first year after impact). iirc it will take a couple of decades to achieve this at the current rate of discovery.

the second issue is, of course, what to do if we actually find an object on collision course. blowing it up is not a good option, as that only leaves many smaller fragments that are still going to hit, possibly doing even more damage than the single larger impact! the only real option is deflection and the only feasible way to achieve this with the current technology are nuclear weapons, detonated above the surface of the asteroid. problem is, we have neither warheads powerful enough (or maybe we do, not really sure about the power of the weapon required) nor a delivery system that could reach the target.
so basicly, if anything is intent on hitting us in the next decade or so, there's nothing we can do about it. fortunately, the chances of that happening are rather miniscule.

[ 09-03-2003, 06:18 PM: Message edited by: frudi_x ]

[Bozos of Bones]

The main problem is this: an object between 50 and 200 feet is only noticable to us when it is between our planet and the sun, it's trajectory is similar to ours and is a bit out of the exact earth-sun line in the direction of it's vector. Meaning, we can see it only in this type of situation:


_O-sun

___o-object of 100 feet --->it's vector

____________/->earth's vector
__0-earth ---
Meaning: Oh, look! It's gonna hit us...! skrshhh!!!!!

[TheCrimsomBlade]

The news said today: "they figured out that the asteroid will hit dead center in Greenland". They also said the angle that it hits will turn the whole planet about 22 degrees off its axis. They also said that only one (1) human in every 4,500,000 would survive the inpact and most of them that do survive would live in the land down under. This means that Menmoch would still be here to keep the Ironworks going, so what is everybody so worried about? Don't you realize that we have already beat the odds, so everybody kick back and stop all the worry.