The latest Asteroid scare

[Ian]

I was reading through the comments on the BBC News website; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2148730.stm

I am amazed at the general level of apathy...

[Rick]

I liked this one:

The Earth is due to be demolished on the 1st February, 2019 to make way for a hyperspatial express route. There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint...

Prostetnic Vogon Roland,
Planet Vogon

[Rick]

Seriously, I expect two things to be happening:

1) The orbit should be being refined as quickly as possible to determine just how likely a collision is.

2) Assuming the probability of a collision is significant then missions (more than one) to adjust the NEA's orbit should be started. That's a big enough chunk of rock that shifting it won't be something that can be done overnight...

... and given the energy an impact would probably have, "significant" would be anything more worrying than (say) one in a million...

[Sue]

The trouble is  that there are many large objects out there that are headed our way that no one has spotted yet.(Do you remember recently a large chunk of rock wasn't spotted until a couple of days after it had whistled passed our ears!) At least this interest in the media may spur governments into putting money towards Spaceguard or similar projects. If a fraction of the cash being poured into Seti was used on asteroid/comet protection programmes we may have a chance of avoiding a collision!
Why is so much effort and money being expended in trying to contact intelligent life with such a low probability of success? I think we need to put human space travel and the identification of earth like planets at the top of the list for resources. To 'boldly go' will be essential for our ultimate survival.
Now I shall climb down off my soap box and attack the weeds in the front garden!

[Rick]

I guess we've been lucky so far, so governments can't be bothered to spend money to keep it that way. I suspect that a mile-wide asteroid might just be enough of a threat to wake some governments up when its impact is imminent (by which time it'll be too late)...

The SETI programme is relying a lot on volunteers. The asteroid lookout could also rely to some extent on volunteers, but the smaller (and more numerous) chunks of rock out there are hard to spot with the kinds of telescopes most amateurs have access to. Maybe the business of analysing images could be farmed out in the same way as the SETI signal processing is?

[Sue]

Good idea. I think there would be quite a bit of interest in helping if PCs could be used in that way.

[Ian]

maybe if all of computers in the world were lifted up by a couple of metres, the Internet would be able to catch them.

Sorry.

By the way today is sysadmin day. Be nice.

//www.sysadminday.com

[Sue]

LOL!

Did anyone see the article in the last Sunday Telegraph about altering the course of asteroids?
NASA is going to hold a conference in September to address the problem.Apparently  nuclear powered tugs, solar sails, or neutron bombs are being considered to shift the offending rocks once detected with a defensive sheild of microsatallites .