Dubai Forums Dubai Discussions Dubai General Chat

Russia considering sending spacecraft to knock asteroid off path and prevent Earth collision

Hope they don't have a screw-up and redirect it right at earth! Space programs never have been a 100% sure thing.

http://tinyurl.com/yhbvyuf

Where is RC these days?

Well you'd be very naive to think that this kind of thing wasn't going to happend sooner or later, afterall we have near misses every single day.

Tunguska event

dont tell me that expected year of impact is 2012

No I believe its 2036. Since they can only track 70% of the sky we could get smacked with something at any time. They do not even look for ones the size that hit Russia in the fifties. They are too small. They are looking for the "planet killers" May as well have your bowl of cornflakes in the morning and carry on. The experts say you will get about a 10 secomd warning. They'll be noisy coming through the atmosphere.

canuckbid wrote:No I believe its 2036. Since they can only track 70% of the sky we could get smacked with something at any time. They do not even look for ones the size that hit Russia in the fifties. They are too small. They are looking for the "planet killers" May as well have your bowl of cornflakes in the morning and carry on. The experts say you will get about a 10 secomd warning. They'll be noisy coming through the atmosphere.

70% ??? I recently read that when it comes to tracking non-stellar objects, all governments combined add up to less than 4%. In fact, due to the staggering speeds at which asteroids and comets can sometimes travel, even if we spotted an object, we would have little time to do anything preventative anyway, even if we had the technology, which currently we do not.

However, before people start building underground bunkers and stocking them with cheese and chive Pringles, it's worth noting that space is really really really big. Almost uncomprehendingly big. So whilst there might be a lot debris flying around, luckily for us, most of it never has a chance of coming anywhere near us. Let me give you an illustration of the scale of just our solar system.

Far from being like the school model we were all taught about, our system is massively spread out at exponentially vast distances. To put it to scale, imagine that the Sun is an orange on your desk. Mercury, would be the size of a fleck of dust and would sit about 6 inches away from your orange sun. Then Venus, barely bigger than Mercury would be about another 12 inches away, and this is where it starts to get interesting (if you're a bit of a nerd), whilst the Earth would only sit a few metres away from Venus (in scale), Mars would be way across the other side of the street, up to 50 metres away. Saturn, Mars' neighbour, is 1.2 KILOMETRES (in scale) from Mars and so it goes. It starts to get a bit ridiculous after that. Until you get to Neptune, (so remember, if Mercury is 6 inches away) Neptune is the distance from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. I shan't mention Pluto as it's no longer classified as a planet.

So there you have it. Lots and lots of empty space and more importantly, lots of celestial bodies with gravities greater than ours. You're more likely to be hit by a car whilst travelling at 30,000 in a jet, than you are to be hit my a comet.

Dr Strangeglove wrote:

canuckbid wrote:No I believe its 2036. Since they can only track 70% of the sky we could get smacked with something at any time. They do not even look for ones the size that hit Russia in the fifties. They are too small. They are looking for the "planet killers" May as well have your bowl of cornflakes in the morning and carry on. The experts say you will get about a 10 secomd warning. They'll be noisy coming through the atmosphere.

70% ??? I recently read that when it comes to tracking non-stellar objects, all governments combined add up to less than 4%. In fact, due to the staggering speeds at which asteroids and comets can sometimes travel, even if we spotted an object, we would have little time to do anything preventative anyway, even if we had the technology, which currently we do not.

However, before people start building underground bunkers and stocking them with cheese and chive Pringles, it's worth noting that space is really really really big. Almost uncomprehendingly big. So whilst there might be a lot debris flying around, luckily for us, most of it never has a chance of coming anywhere near us. Let me give you an illustration of the scale of just our solar system.

Far from being like the school model we were all taught about, our system is massively spread out at exponentially vast distances. To put it to scale, imagine that the Sun is an orange on your desk. Mercury, would be the size of a fleck of dust and would sit about 6 inches away from your orange sun. Then Venus, barely bigger than Mercury would be about another 12 inches away, and this is where it starts to get interesting (if you're a bit of a nerd), whilst the Earth would only sit a few metres away from Venus (in scale), Mars would be way across the other side of the street, up to 50 metres away. Saturn, Mars' neighbour, is 1.2 KILOMETRES (in scale) from Mars and so it goes. It starts to get a bit ridiculous after that. Until you get to Neptune, (so remember, if Mercury is 6 inches away) Neptune is the distance from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. I shan't mention Pluto as it's no longer classified as a planet.

So there you have it. Lots and lots of empty space and more importantly, lots of celestial bodies with gravities greater than ours. You're more likely to be hit by a car whilst travelling at 30,000 in a jet, than you are to be hit my a comet.

Haven't read a better post on any topic in absolutely ages

Next week: Why the cattle prod is mightier than the sword....

Dr Strangeglove wrote:Next week: Why the cattle prod is mightier than the sword....

That might not be QUITE as interesting

lol Not a bad topic even with my typos (spelling mistakes) I watched a program that interviewd a NASA scientist who seemed quite informed. I believe he said 70% of the night sky. We do get hit with small ones all the time. The ones that do not get burnt up on entry. Just shows how senseless all the wars and conflicts on earth are. We should combine all the effort and money on the real threat that could well be on a path to us from space already. I just do not know how they can predict all the asteriod courses. There could be a collision in space or gravitational pulls that alter the course of any object they already have charted. Or why is our magnetic poles constantly changing from true north? Just ask any pilot as they have to adjust their compass from true north every year.

I saw the movie already. Armagedon. So wont be paying attention sequels are rarely good.

Movies are hollywood. I'm talking about real stuff. They always say you should not keep all your eggs in one basket. We should be colonizing other planets just in case. If we want the human race to continue. A nuclear war could be big damage also. Thats not make believe either. There is enough arsenal to blow up the world several times over. These are real facts. I have no problem discussing them. Better than being like an ostrich and sticking your head in the sand. They think if you can not see it then it does not exist.

canuckbid wrote: We should be colonizing other planets just in case. If we want the human race to continue.

You make it sound so easy

The simple fact is that the conditions on our planet (that support life as we know it) are so fantastically rare in the known universe that finding another planet like it is just about impossible. That planet would have to be of similar size (because it would need to have similar gravity), it would need to have an atmostphere, to collect the gases we need to survive.

It would need a consistent, slightly eliptical orbit around a star that gave us either the seasons we're used to, or at least, a consistent temperature that isn't too hot and isn't too cold. To give you an indication of how hard that is, if our planet was a mere 500,000 miles closer of further away from the sun, life would not be able to exist here.

It would need to be in a system that was relatively old, and therefore free of global extinction sized comets (like our milky way). The planet itself would need to rotate at roughly the same speed, to give us night and day. The planet would need the same internal structure (an iron core) that creates our magnetic poles which help protect us from the harmful rays thrown out by nearby stars. We would need water free from toxic contaminates, oxygen and nitrogen to enable us (and plants to breathe).

So when you put it all together, you understand what an amazing accident it is that we're here in the first place.

I haven't even mentioned the moon, and it's effects on our tides which are key to life in our oceans.

One thing is for certain though, our planet has a use by date. In around 500 million year, the sun will run out of energy. When it does, it will collapse under it's own gravity and the resulting explosion will likely incinerate Earth, and then things will really get nasty. The Sun will expand until our planet is within it's own atmostphere and it will slowly roast in super hot temperatures.

On the plus side, we're not likely to be around by then, although on the negative side, it will probably be because we're extinct. Even the most successful species do well to reach 1 million years before they die out. There are some exceptions, crocodiles for instance, are prehistoric and have been around (amazingly) for 200 million years, give or take. Our human species are mere toddlers by comparison, we're only roughly 200,000 years old and we're already struggling to survive. We're massively dependent upon natural resources and are busy consuming them until they're gone, we're affecting the environment so badly by our use of fossil fuels that we're either likely to trigger another ice age or at the least, raise sea levels high enough to cause huge issues with submerged land areas, which would result in overpopulation and food production problems.

Ultimately, we definitely should be looking elsewhere in the universe, but given the vast distances to even our nearest stars, it's unlikely that even in our lifetimes we'll have the technology to get outside our own solar system. Perhaps the best bet, should our planet be in peril, is for us all to pile onto massive spaceships (battlestar galactica style) and just roam the universe until we find somewhere.

But don't get me started on a mass planetary migration

Good stuff, although Dr S, don't forget that our galaxy or the Mily Way, is constantly moving. There are belts of debris located within it. Our little solar systemt, moves up and down within the galaxy and every few thousand years gets put at more risk as it moves into these belts of mass debris.

I never said colonizing other planets would be easy. I'm sure it will happen one day in the future if we last long enough. I don't think it will happen in my life time. A human life span is just a wink of an eye in the big picture though. We have not even really explored the deep oceans yet. Its a harsher enviroment than space in some ways.