25 thoughts on “Chelyabinsk”

    1. Yup. It’s not like anything bad could happen. It only looked very much like a nuclear attack, after all… and what sort of trouble could that possibly trigger in a time of heightened Russia-US tensions?

      Much more important to worry about the declining population of polar bears that’s not, actually, declining.

  1. It’ll take a big, smoking hole with incinerated MSM newsies before the story really gets traction. Or, maybe that’s just me being hopeful. About the newsies, I mean.

  2. Interesting to see space advocates using the same funding algorithm as climate hysterics. Proclaim an existential threat, demand money to solve it. Forget the odds are essentially zero of a major disaster happening in the next 100 years. Now all you need is to blast anyone who disagrees as being in the pay of big religion or the construction industry.

    1. Except it is not a religion and it will not cost as much nor will it fundamentally change world culture. Global Warming is a hoax and part of the left’s Cloward & Pivin efforts to destroy world civilization.

      You must be a asteroid denier. Phasers on stun. Consider yourself blasted.

      1. On the other hand, Pan-Starrs, Neo-Wise, etc, have already detected an estimated 95% of the potentially hazardous asteroids > 1km in diameter, which suggests that an “existential threat is unlikely. As for regional threats, Pan-Starrs is on track to detect 99% of the asteroids >300 meters in diameter, and 90% of the asteroids > 140 meters in diameter.

        1. “an estimated 95%”

          We are always so sure and always utterly surprised to learn that we what we didn’t know.

          That 95% brings me a lot of comfort every time I read an article about a mountain size asteroid appearing out of nowhere unexpectedly…

          “which suggests that an “existential threat is unlikely.”

          Except you can look at the Moon or almost any other body in our solar system and see the effects of unlikely encounters. Are we in danger tomorrow? Not especially but what kind of society do you want to have, one that lasts as long as the great civilizations of the past or one that sputters out because some of its people didn’t think it should exist in the first place?

          1. The second colored chart at the following link should give you some degree of comfort: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/
            Even though the number of observations per year has increased, the rate of detection of asteroids capable of killing everyone on Earth has decreased. The rate has decreased almost certainly because we’ve already found most of them. I just wonder if this ongoing accomplishment has been noted by space advocacy folks.

          2. ” The rate has decreased almost certainly because we’ve already found most of them. ”

            Don’t fool yourself. Space is a big place but it isn’t empty. Any number of things can happen to send asteroids our way.

            A couple of months ago there were articles about how their might be earth sized planets beyond Pluto. I don’t know if there is. There evidence were the orbits of other bodies. But I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find there are more Pluto sized objects out there.

            We haven’t even scratched the surface, let’s not pretend we know more than we do.

          3. Wodun, I was only talking about Near Earth Asteroids, above a certain diameter. And even there, I was wrong, as discussed below.

        2. OK for asteroids. But what about comets, which can appear out of nowhere and which seem to be in unlimited supply in the murky depths of the outer solar system?

          I offer as an example Comet Hyakutake from 1996. It was first spotted less than two months before it zoomed 10,000,000 miles above the North Pole. When discovered, it was headed almost straight for us.

    2. “Interesting to see space advocates using the same funding algorithm as climate hysterics. Proclaim an existential threat, demand money to solve it.”

      This is a troubling trend. I have noticed it too.

      The problem is that advocates are using too much sensationalism to sell their points. The apocalyptic sensationalism is a big turn off.

    3. Fenster, who, exactly, is calling for the same sort of funding/costs that the climate hysterics do?

      The most I’ve seen is calls for ONE spacecraft, sentinel. Contrast this to the numerous climate research sats in orbit and due to launch. The difference also is that the threat of asteroids is very real, as Chelyabinsk showed. Had the angle of entry been steeper, the death toll would have been enormous, but even that pales in comparison to the danger an object that size poses; it could trigger a nuclear war. However, if spotted even hours before entry, the risk of the impact triggering a war drops to near zero – so it’s certainly worth doing.

      Once in 100 years? Even if that’s the case, it means a 1% chance every year of catastrophic damage that might include a nuclear war. This is decidedly non-trivial.

      However, the danger may be far worse than once in 100 years. For example, there’s that mile-wide crater in the antarctic ice shelf that may very well be an impact circa 1996, plus this article mentions another one, an air burst, in 2004.

      http://www.livescience.com/49398-antarctica-ice-meteorite-crater-found.html

      1. What puzzles me is that Pan-Starrs is already on track to find 90%+ of the NEO population larger than 140 meters, which is exactly the same goal listed on the Sentinel mission website. (Don’t get me wrong, I would always say yes to any telescope proposal on Earth or in space,, but what do you say to the unconvinced?)

          1. Now I’m trying to find out whether Sentinel can do anything (in terms of detecting hazardous asteroids) that Neo-Wise isn’t already doing.

        1. Bob, my usual way of phrasing the Sentinel concept is that it’s a lot easier to see and track things with the light at your back than to your front. From the perspective of Venus’s orbit, NEOs are fully lit against a black background. However, from Earth, even an orbiting telescope has the issue that, when looking insystem, it’s seeing mainly the dark sides of the NEOs. .

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