What would happen if we found an asteriod heading our way

[kvnchrist]

I'm getting tired of these simple, small little things that separate us, from turf wars in congress to snot nosed snipe-fests by people trying to exult their ideals over others. As 9/11 brought all this pettiness to end, however short, I'd like to set up a hypothetical that would bring the world together. Knowing human nature, I know, as soon as large scale catastrophes pass, we get back to the same nit-picking that so many are fond of.

 

I was thinking, The ultimate catastrophe was the possibility extinction of all of us as a race.

 

I would ask, If such a thing were to present itself, would we have the capability to deal with the situation and what, if anything could we have as a contingency plan, If we could not alter the trajectory, or destroy the thing.

[marharth]

Humanity has neared mass extinction before. Not only did we just barely get out of it, we brought it upon ourselves.

 

That being said, I honestly don't know. Such a event might be used to gain more political power over smaller nations. Might wait too long before its too late.

[kvnchrist]

Humanity has neared mass extinction before. Not only did we just barely get out of it, we brought it upon ourselves.

 

 

How and when was this.

[Ghogiel]

We can date a possible near extinction of humans through mitochondrial DNA. But I don't know why it is being said we brought it upon ourselves. I have only heard about it being lined to huge natural disaster.

 

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

[marharth]

I was talking about the cold war, but also what Ghogiel said.

[HeyYou]

Yeah, the human race is pretty much its own worst enemy. We are far more likely to remove ourselves from the universe, than the universe is to take us out.

 

That said, if there were some external threat, be it an asteroid, or other stray space-born threat, nations would come together long enough to deal with the issue, and then things would go right back to what they were before...... In order for the human race to come together on a permanent basis, I would think it would have to be some form of continuing threat...... Invaders from mars, or some such. Its possible even a benign visit from ET's could do the trick. Although, why anyone would come here, and announce themselves to us (as other than our new overlords....) is beyond me. We have nothing to offer any galactic civilization, that they couldn't find someplace else, with a less problematic population.

[draconix]

We're really only watching a small fraction of the sky, it's tough to say we'd even see it coming. However, we did spot Apophis back in '04 when it was believed to have about a 3% chance of striking the earth. This was later further examined and the likelihood was decreased. Regardless of that, the discovery acted as a bit of an awakening for some agencies that there is a real threat of a potentially extinction-level collision sooner than we expect. The US, Russia, and China all developed deflection strategies that might help divert the asteroid away from the Earth. At this point, I'm guessing that if we actually did see something coming this way, we'd try to use one of those strategies.

 

Several simulations have been performed (on a computer,) that would show the effect that deploying a nuke might have on an incomming asteroid, and the results weren't really favorable. Some of the softer asteroids just broke into a ton of smaller pieces still hurtling towards the earth, but not small enough to render then harmless, and the other types of asteroids were largely unaffected... So I would rule out the likelihood of us trying to use that approach.

[marharth]

Would be better off to have a bunch of large boulders hit earth then a single large asteroid.

[HeyYou]

Would be better off to have a bunch of large boulders hit earth then a single large asteroid.

 

Not sure that would be much fun either.......

 

The earth has been hit several times in the past. It's only a matter of time before another one comes along. In this instance though, we are talking Geologic time..... might be next week, might not be for a million years or more, but, it WILL happen. The craters on the moon are a testament to the shooting gallery we live in, that we call our Solar System...... This is one of the reasons I think we should be leaning more heavily into space research......

[marharth]

Would be better off to have a bunch of large boulders hit earth then a single large asteroid.

 

Not sure that would be much fun either.......

 

The earth has been hit several times in the past. It's only a matter of time before another one comes along. In this instance though, we are talking Geologic time..... might be next week, might not be for a million years or more, but, it WILL happen. The craters on the moon are a testament to the shooting gallery we live in, that we call our Solar System...... This is one of the reasons I think we should be leaning more heavily into space research......

I don't think we have a problem with our technology. I am pretty sure we could stop a extinction event.

 

Imo the political aftermath of a big asteroid being destroyed would be a bigger deal then the asteroid itself.