1. Joined
    06 Mar '12
    Moves
    642
    17 Aug '12 21:22
    Originally posted by sonhouse
    It will be a while before we can say we get minimum a few weeks heads up. The system as it is has already failed twice. Asteroids have popped up going like a bat out of hell between the Earth and the moon, total surprise time. They were not too big, like a small mountain but still a piece that size could wreck a few states, it would be more than a city buster for sure, probably more like a thousand megaton H bomb.
    It will be a while before we can say we get minimum a few weeks heads up.

    An asteroid large enough to cause a mass extinction would be much more visible than a much smaller one that is not. I would guess it would take much less than 200 years before we will have a warning system can guarantee a minimum warning of a few weeks of a really large one heading our way and the chances of a one heading our way within the next 200 years large enough to cause a mass extinction would be tiny. And I would also guess that in less than 200 years we would even have the technology to deflect them so that they narrowly miss the Earth so that there is vertically zero probability of an asteroid ever causing our whole human species going extinct even within the next 10 billion years.
  2. Subscribersonhouse
    Fast and Curious
    slatington, pa, usa
    Joined
    28 Dec '04
    Moves
    53223
    18 Aug '12 06:301 edit
    Originally posted by humy
    It will be a while before we can say we get minimum a few weeks heads up.

    An asteroid large enough to cause a mass extinction would be much more visible than a much smaller one that is not. I would guess it would take much less than 200 years before we will have a warning system can guarantee a minimum warning of a few weeks of a really large ...[text shortened]... teroid ever causing our whole human species going extinct even within the next 10 billion years.
    Ten BILLION years? That is an appreciable percentage of the age of entire frigging UNIVERSE! The SUN won't be here in 10 billion years. It will be ashes spread over a thousand light years.

    You seem to have an unbounded optimism but you should temper that with a dose of reality.

    Humans have only been around, including all the variants, Heidelbergensis, Neandertals, Australopithecus, Homo Habilis and so forth, only a few million years.

    On the geological scale, a brief amount of time.

    If we don't get off the planet, we will lose our technology perhaps, and maybe sooner than you think. I sure as hell hope not but we are facing daunting tasks if we are to keep our world civilization together.

    This mad rush to produce the next greatest widget is quickly depleting our resources, like copper, which is said to run out in as little as the next 30 years.

    Rare earths aren't THAT rare but it takes quite an industrial strength unit to get it out. Lose that technology and there goes rare earth, erbium, etc.

    If we get into space in a big way, for instance, if we finally crack the problem of extreme strength in fibers, we may have a real space elevator, eliminating the need for giant rockets and bringing down the cost of getting to space more like a round trip ticket to Phoenix.

    Then when we no longer have easily mined copper, for instance, the moon is a giant mine just waiting for us to exploit.

    It will take something like that to overcome the dwindling resources here on Earth.

    I would love to think the human race intelligent enough to overcome its warlike tendencies and political waffling to get real colonies on Mars, Asteroids, the moons of Pluto, and so forth, with an eye to Alpha Centauri, a destination that gives you 3 stars for the price of one, so much science to be learned being there, not the least of which is just having a camera taking pictures of distant galaxies and getting actual parallax off them, thus pinpointing the exact distance and then able to calibrate our standard candles, novae and supernova's. That aside from what wonderful things we would find sniffing around those three stars.

    Imagine having a photo baseline of 4 light years! Right now we get parallax on stars something like 300 ly away using a baseline the diameter of Earth's orbit, 180 odd million miles. Doing the same thing with cameras in space near Earth and around any one of the trio at Alpha Centauri gives you a baseline 138,000 times wider. That would give us direct parallax to 40 million light years out. That alone would be worth the trip. Anyway stuff like that is how we get out of the doldrums we are in now, increasing population versus dwindling resources.

    The next 100 years will tell the tale I think. By the end of this century there will be definitive proof or disproof of global warming and all that entails, losing Florida, etc., whether we can sustain our technology, all that will be sorted out by centuries end. Then a new story starts in the year 2100 or so. One way or the other.

    Ten billion years. That is a pipe dream.
  3. Joined
    06 Mar '12
    Moves
    642
    18 Aug '12 09:00
    Originally posted by sonhouse
    Ten BILLION years? That is an appreciable percentage of the age of entire frigging UNIVERSE! The SUN won't be here in 10 billion years. It will be ashes spread over a thousand light years.

    You seem to have an unbounded optimism but you should temper that with a dose of reality.

    Humans have only been around, including all the variants, Heidelbergensis, ...[text shortened]... s in the year 2100 or so. One way or the other.

    Ten billion years. That is a pipe dream.
    The SUN won't be here in 10 billion years. It will be ashes spread over a thousand light years.

    yes, but we would have space travelled to other solar systems well before then.

    If we don't get off the planet, we will lose our technology perhaps, and maybe sooner than you think

    how could we credibly loose our technology? Our technology will never be dis-invented.

    You mentioned our dwindling resources such as copper. But even if we mine out all the copper out of the Earth and are foolish enough to recycle none of it, that copper would not simply disappear out of existence but must go somewhere! And if that somewhere is the landfall rubbish sites, then we would be simply forced to mine the landfall rubbish sites for copper ( along with many other chemical elements else hardly worth it ) ! The same applies for virtually all the chemical elements ( only except the Nobel gasses which are mined! But they are not essential for technology anyway. So we can reasonably make do without them ) that we currently mine. Mining landfill sites is already being seriously considered and, as our current mines become exhausted, it may not be long before it is economically viable to mine landfall rubbish sites for various chemical elements!
    Over-mining will never mean we loose our technology; it would just mean certain chemical elements will become more expensive at the market place.
    By the end of this century there will be definitive proof or disproof of global warming

    actually, we already have that proof. It is the climate warming deniers that deny that proof.
    But even if all our icecaps melt, that would cause sea levels to rise and flood our most fertile land and that alone would cause a world famine BUT what it want do is make our species extinct. The survivors will simply slowly multiply on the land that would be inevitably left unflooded and rebuild civilisations there and use technology to survive.
Back to Top

Cookies help us deliver our Services. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn More.I Agree