Nice picture they put with the article!

Really big rock (1/8th earth size I guess from the piccy) if you now read the story it says 70-meter-long rock.

But the things missed us so nothing to worry about I would say. Maybe Bush can kinda make some changes in his star wars project to actually shoot these things.

You can't really start a drilling expedition on a 70 meter long rock now can you I think I've been watching too many movies

And on a comic note:
Newsflash: Scientists report "Astriod did not contain kryptonite" Thats such good news for all your super people out there



(Edited by Chambler 20/03/2002 10:52)

Scary!

But then I have a deep-rooted fear of asteroids that goes back to early childhood.

interesting! hmmmm this sorta thing really makes yuo happy doesn't it? not that we could all be killed, but i eman its not happened yet so we're pretty lucky to be alive so thats why we should make the most of life i think not worry about this stuff happeneing, live for the moment

it is a little scary knowing that there are these potential earth destroying asteroids up there floating about. typically, i doubt we'd even get told if one was going to hit.

What bugs me is that the danger is virtually negligible. We've made it through the entire lifetime of human civilisation without being wiped out - why are we in any more danger now, all of a sudden? The only thing more remote is that the Earth might win the galactic lottery...

I find it interesting that we hardly ever heard about this kind of thing until the original Star Wars (SDI) project got cancelled. Then suddenly, the news was full of it. Around about the time Bush Jr reinstated the project - it all went quiet, with the occasional flash like this...

I'm convinced the only peope that ever really pushed it were the people working on 'detect and destroy' projects - in danger of redundancy with the end of the Cold War, along with a few of the more whacked scientists who would have been ignored before!

Sorry for the rant, but as a former astronomy student this is a pet hate of mine...

Astronut, it's just risk management.

The odds against a given person developing cancer are relatively low, and if they do the odds of them dieing of it these days are also relatively low so long as it is detected early enough; yet despite humanity having survived millenia of cancers before discovering them, we still chose to invest millions in cancer research.

The chance of a kilometer wide chunk of rock hitting the Earth at a hundred kilometers per second is phenomenanly low (at least millions to one against in a year), but if it does then billions of people will die. Just because this hasn't happened in the last couple of million years when we couldn't have done anything about it, is that any reason not to now, when we have at least the theoretical capability to do so, invest in detecting and deflecting potential threats - however remote the threat may be.

As for when we started hearing about this kind of thing, I thought it was around about the time that Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter.

The US's SDI projects would be useless for this sort of thing, as they're almost exclusively anti-bm and anti-sat, geared towards delivering small high-fragmentation warheads to tiny targets a thousand miles away on ballistic tragectories at a moments notice; not pitching a nuke at a kilometer wide target a million miles away with at least hours notice.

Just another former astronomy student...

surely it is almost impossible for us to stop an asteroid hitting us even with our present technology?

---

by Mr Bob
surely it is almost impossible for us to stop an asteroid hitting us even with our present technology?

---

Theoretically it's perfectly doable, so long as it's detected and intercepted early enough only a tiny deflection would be needed.

Any interception would be occuring at least hundreds of thousands,probably millions, of miles away, so a lateral deflection of around one arc-minute at one million kilometers is still going to result in a displacement of around 300km, doubling the deflection and range quadrouples the resulting displacement. Of course this dosn't take into account any acceleration/deceleration, which would probably be significantly more effective still in protecting the earth - causing the target to pass through where we would be either before or after we're there (probably best before as decelerating it could result in it hanging around the inner solar system more than we may wish).

Probably need to use two seperate detonations in quick succession to do this, as one would leave too much debris (ie one to do the deflection, the other to do the housekeeping while the debris not had chance to spread).

considering the look of our heavily cratered moon ,earth has been incredibly lucky not to have had more big asteroids hit it. And after watching the discovery channel more people die of little asteroids hitting them than of heart attacks each year!
theres a lot of big rocks out there, and i for one would be quite happy to support any attempt at a defense system against them!just to be on the safe side

---

by nemesis
considering the look of our heavily cratered moon ,earth has been incredibly lucky not to have had more big asteroids hit it.

---

An atmosphere that burns them up as they come through it, and tectonic activity that continually rewrites the earths sufrace serve well to keep Earth's face unpitted. The moon on the other hand lacks both, so has several billion years of scars from impacts of all sizes.

Personally, if man kind's gonna be wiped out, i think i'd rather not know.

Not only that, but there are *plenty* of craters from impacts with the earth, it's just things tend to grow on them, and as Callum pointed out, tectonic activity tends to "heal" the surface a bit.

Here's a quick list..

Chicxulub, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
21°20'N, 89°30'W; diameter: 170 km; age: 64.98 million years - This one is actually prime suspect for the extinction of the Dinosaurs..

Aorounga, Chad, Africa
19°6'N, 19°15'E; diameter: 17 kilometers; age: 200 million years

Mistastin Lake, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
55°53'N, 63°18'W; rim diameter: 28 kilometers (17.4 miles); age: 38 +- 4 million years

Manicouagan, Quebec, Canada
51°23'N, 68°42'W; rim diameter: ~100 kilometers (62 miles); age: 212 +- 1 million years

Clearwater Lakes, Quebec, Canada
Clearwater Lake West: 56°13'N, 74°30'W; rim diameter: 32 kilometers (20 miles)
Clearwater Lake East: 56°05'N, 74°07'W; rim diameter: 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) ages: 290 +- 20 million years

Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
46°36'N 81°11'W; rim diameter: 200 kilometers age:1850 ± 3 million years

Gosses Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia
23°50'S, 132°19'E; rim diameter: 22 kilometers (13.7 miles); age: 142.5 +- 0.5 million years

Kara-Kul, Tajikistan
38°57'N, 73°24'E; rim diameter: 45 kilometers (28 miles); age: <10 million years

Hmm Canada suddenly doesn't look like such a good place to live

I think the most recent was Tunguska in Siberia 1908, I think the last theory I know about was that it didn't really make a full impact somehow, but it still managed to flatten hundreds of square miles of forest..

The cosmic game of roulette contines..