asteroid strike 100% likely, but... (warning - physics post)

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 10:16 am

because the cocofairy mates in gingermoon

Post by **Fender** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:28 pm

Denz wrote:Why not use a suction cup and some string to grab it and pull it from the appending doom of the earth?

That's actually another theory, if the asteroid is far enough away. Send out a small spaceship to rendezvous with it, anchor itself on the surface and unfurl a huge solar sail. Given enough time, that would work.

Post by **andyman** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:42 pm

um No one worried about this sort of thing 1000 years ago. If an asteroid is set to hit earth, it will.

Post by **seremtan** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:19 pm

andyman wrote:um No one worried about this sort of thing 1000 years ago. If an asteroid is set to hit earth, it will.

lol, medieval astrophysics. how much simpler life was when stars were pinpricks in the celestial dome through which the light of heaven shone

Post by **Ryoki** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:33 pm

Pinpricks big enough for a man to climb through, provided he held on to a great bird to carry him there?

Post by **MKJ** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:57 pm

he flew too close to the sun with wings of pastrami

Post by **seremtan** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 2:19 pm

he should have flown closer to the other sun then, the one without wings of pastrami

dumbass of the ancient world :icon3:

Post by **Grudge** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:20 pm

[xeno]Julios wrote:
Denz wrote: Detonation on the surface would do no good other than putting a blemish on the surface. I believe drilling a hole then a detonation is better. Where is Bruce Willis when you need him?
a 200 metre sized rock would probably experience significant effects with nukes. It's the unpredictability which is the problem. The tugging approach allows for fine tuning with precision.

Exactly, nukes in (near) vacuum are less efficient than you might think. Since there is no air to transmit a shockwave, the main impact will be from a photon shower in the shape of (visible) light, infrared and gamma radiation, which probably won't do much against a big solid piece of rock. Even drilling into the rock and detonating from within might not do much, you probably need to vaporize quite a lot of rock in order to achieve some kind of explosive expansion.

The task of launching a nuclear device into orbit in the first place might probably prove more dangerous than getting hit by a meteorite.

Post by **Nightshade** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:31 pm

If a nuclear weapon detonated on the surface of an asteroid, we wouldn't care about shockwaves traveling through a vacuum, no would we?
Then you're faced with the remaining bits still traveling on pretty much the original path. So lots of small asteroids still headed towards Earth.

Post by **iambowelfish** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:34 pm

I think there's a little confusion here.

As far as I can see Julios is right if the ship flies alongside the asteroid until it definitively misses earth.

If the ship flies alongside for a limited time before that point, then I think mjrpes and feedback would be right. Even with the force removed the asteroid keeps moving along the y axis at the speed it's been accelerated to. In that case the ship wouldn't need (following julios's figures) 5 hours of time alongside the asteroid, provided it caught it early enough.

Post by **Ryoki** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:35 pm

But small asteroids is less of a problem than one big one - they'd partly burn up in the atmosphere, right?

Post by **Nightshade** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:52 pm

That would depend on how small the chunks were.

Post by **l0g1c** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:14 pm

Gigantic Rocket-powered Tennis Racket

Post by **Tsakali_** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:19 pm

Nightshade wrote:That would depend on how small the chunks were.

and the composition of the object(s) :icon3:

Post by **Tsakali_** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:24 pm

on a side note, I was having a conversation with my 23 year old college graduate brother last night and he didn't know that our moon was smaller than earth, I felt obligated to spend about an hour against his will, going over some basics seeing as he will be propagating within my family tree.

Post by **Nightshade** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:59 pm

That's pretty sad.

Post by **Duhard** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:13 pm

Tsakali_ wrote:on a side note, I was having a conversation with my 23 year old college graduate brother last night and he didn't know that our moon was smaller than earth, I felt obligated to spend about an hour against his will, going over some basics seeing as he will be propagating within my family tree.

Just tell him Wabbit's bigger than the moon...he'll understand.

Post by **DTS** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:14 pm

Sending a spacecraft up of the same mass of the asteroid would double the risk of a mass that size hitting the Earth, cause the spaceship could crash.
An alternative would be to send many smaller mass ships up that would join together once out of the gravitational pull of the Earth.

Post by **Tsakali_** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:20 pm

why not just shoot some missiles it's way and blastpush it out of trajectory

Post by **Duhard** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:22 pm

Tsakali_ wrote:why not just shoot some missiles it's way and blastpush it out of trajectory

YOU MEAN LIKE IN THE MOVIE ARMAGEDDON WHEN BRUCE WILLIS KICKED THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE METEOR LOLZ!?

Post by **MKJ** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:23 pm

or why not let it crash on earth and let the flying spaghetti monster sort us out
we have it coming anyways

Post by **Duhard** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:25 pm

Bush will take care of the meteor's weapons of massive destruction...he won't find 'em but maybe he will find some oil inside the meteor

Post by **Tsakali_** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:29 pm

ooh, that gave me a good conspiracy idea

Post by **Tsakali_** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:30 pm

no, never mind it was crap

Post by **Duhard** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:31 pm

war on...