Nov27
How The World Almost Ended
on November 27, 2012 at 7:24 amApparently we had a very close call in 1883.
It’s amazing to me how unseriously we take this threat, at least judging by our policy choices.
Apparently we had a very close call in 1883.
It’s amazing to me how unseriously we take this threat, at least judging by our policy choices.
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Which is why we should get serious about colonizing Barsoom.
The reported risk seems grossly overhyped. If their explanation of the observations was correct, the fragment stream was less than 8000 km wide, but long enough to take two days to transit the sun. The Earth would pass through it in less than half an hour, so less than sixty fragments hitting. If we were unlucky one would hit an urban area: bad, but not the end of the world.
It wasn’t even close!
I’m not saying we wouldn’t have gotten our hair mussed — but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops — depending on the breaks . . .
Three thoughts.
First it will be interesting to see if additional articles support this analysis.
Second, is there enough information to determine the orbit of this debris cloud to see if its coming back for a second try like Shoemaker-Levy 9?
Third, if something like this happened in the pass would there be any geological record? Or would the only record be a mass extinction event?
The point isn’t that this one could have killed us. It is that we are living on a billiard table and could do nothing about it. We don’t have to go back to the 1800s either. We were hit yesterday, today and will be tomorrow. These are Hiroshima events, every day in our upper atmosphere.
We just don’t know when E.L.E. will happen. Perhaps we should do something before, because after is not an option.
I agree and Congress tried in the 1990′s to push NASA to do something, but they are so focused on life on Mars and science they basically ignored it except for low level funding for searching. Really the USAF has done far more just as a part of its routine tracking of space objects.
If the cluster was 8000 miles wide but missed the Earth by 800 miles, it seems likely that we should have got at least one or two of the BB’s out of that shotgun blast, according to their own theory. At the least, there should have been a noticeable meteor shower.
These guys are Mexicans: it’s nationalistic science. I still lean toward the bird theory. Lots of birds migrating through Mexico…
1883 was the year of the Krakatoa eruption which blew up so much dust and gases in the atmosphere that people in London got familiar to seeing green tinted sunsets and black rain. In retrospect the comet probably didn’t get that much attention.