Whew! Another close one.

In case you missed it (pun intended), a few days ago another space rock flew quite close past our fragile, pretty blue planet. This one was about 1 km wide and could have caused at least 95% human extinction.

@bunnyknight said
In case you missed it (pun intended), a few days ago another space rock flew quite close past our fragile, pretty blue planet. This one was about 1 km wide and could have caused at least 95% human extinction.

was it being tracked?

would the government even tell its citizens that they were going to die if they had only a few days before a certain asteroid strike?

@lemondrop
Yes, they knew about this one.
And there are at least 3 big ones coming within the next 10 years which are going to miss Earth by a bit. However, there are 2 issues: First; their paths can change due to slight and unforeseen forces, such as meteorite impacts. And second; we may not be getting the whole truth because it could cause irrational panic.

@bunnyknight said
@lemondrop
Yes, they knew about this one.
And there are at least 3 big ones coming within the next 10 years which are going to miss Earth by a bit. However, there are 2 issues: First; their paths can change due to slight and unforeseen forces, such as meteorite impacts. And second; we may not be getting the whole truth because it could cause irrational panic.

I wouldn't mind buying a brand new big screen TV on credit ! lol

@bunnyknight
The Chixculub crater in Cancun was 6 MILES across and would have killed most humans for sure but the one that slipped by us was about a half mile across and would have caused a lot of damage but nothing like the one 66 million years ago in the Yucatan peninsula. That hit left a pile of debris 700 feet deep in BURMUDA.
Think about THAT one for a while!

@bunnyknight said
And second; we may not be getting the whole truth because it could cause irrational panic.

Ah, yes. Paranoia, the eternal refuge of those who have merely tasted.

@Shallow-Blue
What good would it do if we knew a 5 mile wide asteroid was due to hit in a week?
It wouldn't matter where on Earth it hit, the whole planet would be in deep doo doo.
Like a nuclear winter for instance. If humans survived it would not be because they had a weeks warning.

Suppose we DID have a week's notice and we knew exactly where it would hit.
What could ANYONE do? Maybe places like NORAD deep underground already could last several years without sun but who else could survive such a monster impact?

@sonhouse said
@Shallow-Blue
What good would it do if we knew a 5 mile wide asteroid was due to hit in a week?

That's part of my point, yes. "Oh my gawd, the gibberment is hiding this comet from us!!!1!iI!". And they never consider what good it would do the government to do so, or those idiots themselves to know.

Don't worry. It isn't gonna happen. Manganese depletion is gonna get us long before the Perseids will. And the "gibberment" isn't keeping anything (scientific!) from anyone of us.

@Shallow-Blue
Manganese depletion? Splain that one.

@shallow-blue said
That's part of my point, yes. "Oh my gawd, the gibberment is hiding this comet from us!!!1!iI!". And they never consider what good it would do the government to do so, or those idiots themselves to know.

Don't worry. It isn't gonna happen. Manganese depletion is gonna get us long before the Perseids will. And the "gibberment" isn't keeping anything (scientific!) from anyone of us.

So why do you think that asteroid tracking has recently become so serious? Why are some governments pouring billions into this subject? Are they just stupid, or what? And what do you think is more irrational ... paranoia of Russia and Iran, or paranoia of a space rock that can take out billions of people?

@bunnyknight said
So why do you think that asteroid tracking has recently become so serious?

It hasn't. Stop being paranoid. Elon Musk is not the Second Coming.

@bunnyknight
It seems governments are serious in the search for dangerous asteroids because it doesn't matter where on Earth it hits, EVERYONE will be effected. So it is in the self interest of governments around the world to get together to first, detect them far enough out so we have some warning time, like ten years not ten days.
Second, to figure out the best way to deflect the incoming so it misses Earth.
The nuke idea doesn't seem to work, leaving us with a million smaller fragments rather than one large on, in other words a nuke might get rid of half the mass but that doesn't help if the rest is still going to hit the planet.

The longer our warning period, the less energy required to deflect an asteroid away from Earth.
The one problem I see with that approach is it may get the asteroid to miss Earth THIS time but what about the next orbit or the ones after that?
I would say for now if such an asteroid was detected, to me it makes more sense for it to ram into the moon instead.
That way there is no chance of it crashing on Earth a few years down the line.
It would be spectacular for sure to see a 10 km wide asteroid hit the moon.
Funny thing is, a hundred years from now that too may not be a viable solution since 100 years from now we may have cities on the moon and a population in many thousands so the lunarians might not want such a solution.

@sonhouse said
@bunnyknight
It seems governments are serious in the search for dangerous asteroids because it doesn't matter where on Earth it hits, EVERYONE will be effected. So it is in the self interest of governments around the world to get together to first, detect them far enough out so we have some warning time, like ten years not ten days.
Second, to figure out the best way to de ...[text shortened]... ties on the moon and a population in many thousands so the lunarians might not want such a solution.

They are too busy fighting the naturally occurring gas carbon dioxide.

LOL.

@sonhouse said
@bunnyknight
It seems governments are serious in the search for dangerous asteroids because it doesn't matter where on Earth it hits, EVERYONE will be effected. So it is in the self interest of governments around the world to get together to first, detect them far enough out so we have some warning time, like ten years not ten days.
Second, to figure out the best way to de ...[text shortened]... ties on the moon and a population in many thousands so the lunarians might not want such a solution.

Exactly! Most of these space collisions can be deflected if we put some serious effort into it. But apparently, some people are more paranoid about trivial nonsense than a collision that would kill a billion children.