Astronauts: Only thing Preventing a 'City-Killer' Sized Asteroid Hit is Blind Luck."

Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22, will be an interesting and sobering day for us all. Three former NASA astronauts will be presenting evidence at a talk given at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. They will be explaining the most recent scientific information about asteroid impacts on earth and they will be talking about the need for better observation of asteroids.

Physics Org - Astronauts Reveal Sobering Asteroid Impact Data

This Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22, three former NASA astronauts will present new evidence that our planet has experienced many more large-scale asteroid impacts over the past decade than previously thought… three to ten times more, in fact. A new visualization of data from a nuclear weapons warning network, to be unveiled by B612 Foundation CEO Ed Lu during the evening event at Seattle's Museum of Flight, shows that "the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid is blind luck."

Since 2001, 26 atomic-bomb-scale explosions have occurred in remote locations around the world, far from populated areas, made evident by a nuclear weapons test warning network. In a recent press release B612 Foundation CEO Ed Lu states: "This network has detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts. It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare—but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought. The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid is blind luck. The goal of the B612 Sentinel mission is to find and track asteroids decades before they hit Earth, allowing us to easily deflect them."

It's just a matter of time ...

Hello Chicken Little.....interesting paranoid thread.....I guess they need more of our tax dollars to justify their existence at NASA......heres some doom porn folks....now give us more money.......meh

originally posted by: stirling
Hello Chicken Little.....

If you look at the information, you'll see that they aren't crying 'the sky is falling' like Chicken little. The sky actually has fallen MANY times more than we knew about.

heres some doom porn folks....now give us more money

I'd rather put my tax money into science projects like this ... put our engineers and scientists to work ... rather than waste it on White House frivolities and endless pork projects for politicians to get reelected.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Obviously it's just a matter of time. That is well understood. Maybe we are due for a city killer real soon -- say in the next 1000 to 5000+ years.

In astronomical time spans, 1000 or 5,000 years is just a blink of an eye. However, while in astronomical terms 1000 or 5,000 years could be considered "imminent", that really is not "imminent" on human lifetime scales, so the threat does not seem that meaningful.

a reply to: FlyersFan

It's just a matter of time ...

Ofcause it is, look at the Moon, it clearly shows that huge boulders fly around us and the risk of them hitting is relatively high but the time untill another one hits Earth could be forever as there is a risk they miss to.

But it doesn't hurt keeping an eye on them... if we can see them...

originally posted by: stirling
Hello Chicken Little.....interesting paranoid thread.....I guess they need more of our tax dollars to justify their existence at NASA......heres some doom porn folks....now give us more money.......meh

Nah, we should just wait until one smashes a city and kills millions of people. That would get everybody's attention.

26 since 2001 is a big number. Doom porn, hardly. The numbers speak for themselves.

I would rather my state of Illinois give the hundred million dollars proposed for the Obama library to these guys, and we are broke, but it doesn't stop them from spending money.

While we cannot control this (although we can try), I would like to see more money put into the sky. We need to have more eyes on it so we can potentially evacuate if something is headed for a populated area. There is a lot of money in the world. Much of it is hoarded or put into frivolous things so I say bring it on.

originally posted by: liejunkie01


Nah, we should just wait until one smashes a city and kills millions of people. That would get everybody's attention.

Why? If and when it happens, we can't do a carp about it anyways...

Then, statistically, we're good for a few more thousand years.

Maybe by then we'll have developed some sort of capability by funding something like thruster technology instead of this.

Maybe someone knows something we don't.
What if this scheduled talks are their way of raising awareness of the people, so we can be more prepared when SHTF.
I'm already picturing an asteroid in my mind runing through space on the journey to Earth.
OMG it's real, it's going to hit us, I can see it...

originally posted by: FlyersFan
Since 2001, 26 atomic-bomb-scale explosions have occurred in remote locations around the world, far from populated areas, made evident by a nuclear weapons test warning network.

It's just a matter of time ...

A relatively small asteroid, just a couple of meters across, can create an atomic-bomb-scale aerial explosion. Most of such impacts happen in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and have no effect on the surface. The Chelyabinsk meteor, about 17 meters across, produced a more powerful explosion, but only resulted in broken glass and some structural damage. An asteroid probably needs to be 25-30 meters across to actually make it to the ground and produce a crater and wide destruction. While there is a chance that we might completely overlook the approach of such object, I think it's more likely that it will be noticed at least a day or two before the impact.

But raising awareness is good. We need more dedicated networks of observatories to monitor the sky for these visitors.

~~~

And now I'm waiting for SayonaraJupiter to post his von Braun / Dr Rosin prediction again.

a reply to: wildespace

Yup, raising awareness that we are helpless apes in constant mortal danger from flying mountains from space is nothing but good... heh.

But yes, we should prioritize our resources to attempt to avert this as we actually CAN do something about it for the first time due to our nifty tech (okay, maybe we could before the last planet killing rock knocked us back to the stone age... and there may have been a time before that, etc.... but that's a poorly evidenced argument for another thread!).

I know some folks would rather get their roads fixed and/or feed the needy rather than funding some anti-asteroid boondoggle... until they hear about the planet killer bearing down on us all.

I'm glad to hear astronauts talking about this. After all, they're just telling me what I'd hear all the time when I was a kid in Catholic church. "Lift up your eyes". Glad to be living in an age when I talk to my 11 yr old grand daughter, and she tells me why we (angry monkeys) can't stay here. And that she'll be growing up in the age of "commercial space flight". Now that people know you can make a buck from manned space flight, the world can settle down a little bit. I'm not a big tree hugger, but protecting the Earth from rogue astronomical bodies is do-able right now. Maybe our kids will be the ones that say, "screw the F-35, let's build an asteroid detection and deflection system". One can always dream ....

originally posted by: Baddogma
a reply to: wildespace

Yup, raising awareness that we are helpless apes in constant mortal danger from flying mountains from space is nothing but good... heh.

Not completely helpless. If the impact location can be calculated within enough time, people can evacuate or at least find somewhere safe to hide. Rescue and relief efforts can be organised in advance. It's better to be prepared than unprepared.

So, what if we see it coming? What can we do about it? There's nothing we can really do, and Bruce Willis is a little too old to go flying up there on a super-secret space shuttle now.

At best, we could try our hand at predicting where it would land and getting people out of the way, but that wouldn't stop the aftermath which would also be pretty bad depending on the size of the rock in question.

Maybe there are just some things that are better left unseen.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Some of the protection from asteroids has to do with our atmosphere. A lot of them burn up before reaching the surface. Yet, considering the vastness of space and our planet being on the small size, the chances of anything the size of a city not being detected and on a collision course with earth is rather small to say the least. The number of astronomers and armatures gazing into space would surely notice something that size. It's why all the scare about planet nibiru being seen in the sky was ridiculous. Considering anything that could be seen with the naked eye would be approximately the same distance as the sun or moon or even further out in space.

NASA has already experimented with landing on an asteroid and forcing it out of it's orbit. It only takes a small amount of push on an object in space to change its trajectory. I think that experiment shows NASA has the capability to change the trajectory of an asteroid if needed. Than again, if it's meant to be, it will be.

Another big one explodes over Russia! www.iflscience.com...

I feel like people forget how large the earth actually is compared to the size of cities. The probability of a city sized astroid hitting a city on a planet 75% Ocean is really low but it does exist which is why awareness and faith in our astrophysicists is really important. The only thing we can do is listen and if they see something coming we have to be smart enough to listen and get out of the path of destruction.

a reply to: FlyersFan

FlyersFan, great thread mate and very important topic -don't know if you've read the book 'The Short History Of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson but it has a really good chapter on the subject and I think most folks would be genuinely shocked if they realized just how lucky we've been in the past.

CHAPTER 13:

Analogy 1: Think of the Earth’s orbit as a kind of freeway on which we are the only vehicle, but which is crossed regularly by pedestrians who don’t know enough to look before stepping off the curb.

Analogy 2: In 1991, an asteroid passed the Earth at a distance of 106,000 miles—the cosmic equivalent of a bullet passing through one’s sleeve without touching the arm. It wasn’t noticed until after it passed the Earth

Link

Cheers.

Reminds me of this scene.


Dumb luck and Mars & Jupiter .

originally posted by: ketsuko
So, what if we see it coming? What can we do about it? There's nothing we can really do, ....

If we'd put money into projects that can find them and do something about them, then that would be money well spent. But you have to find the asteroids first in order for the gov't to spend the money on projects that can divert the asteroids. Like I said .... I'd rather spend the tax money on these projects which will give our brightest and best minds (Scientists and Engineers) employment in a positive direction, rather than see the gov't spend it on the kind of crap that they spend it on now.