Killer Astreroid Coming Sooner Than Expected

[Pinkie-Dawn]

It is not a question of if a killer asteroid will strike our planet, devastating at the very least a city, and at most the entire race. It is just a question of how soon. The current consensus: it won't be too long now.
A new study by a group called the B612 Foundation—a group dedicated to fighting the asteroid menace, which is a pretty weird mission, but its leadership includes real live astronauts and scientists, so let's take them as reasonable—finds that relatively large asteroids strike the earth with a pretty high frequency. Since 2000, earth-based sensors have detected 26 asteroid explosions at least as powerful as a nuclear bomb. None of them have landed upon our heads... yet. But the group's extrapolation of how often really, really big and bad asteroids hit our planet is pretty scary. From USA Today:

None of the 26 asteroids in Brown's data was big enough to destroy a city, because of their size and composition and because all exploded high in the atmosphere. But Lu says this database of harmless asteroids can be extrapolated to shed light on the frequency of their fearsome cousins. The results suggest that a city-killer strikes once a century, though Lu says he wouldn't be surprised if the true rate were actually less worrisome, perhaps once every 150 or 200 years or less frequent still.
​

Scientists quoted in the story say the data is somewhat scarce, and conclude that asteroids that can actually wipe a city off the face of the earth strike us with a frequency of once every...somewhere between 100 and 1000 years.
Still, this is a lot. Even if it's once every 500 years. Why build things? They'll be vaporized in spectacular fashion just a few centuries from now. Why have kids? Their great great great X 5 grandkids will just be burned up in a blinding explosion. Why try? We're just a tiny little marble in a washing machine of boulders, man.
Get that free love while you still can.

source: https://gawker.com/killer-asteroid-coming-relatively-soon-1566522498

Video: https://news.msn.com/videos?videoid=03675276-fa6a-74be-107e-a3974b9d595b

This may sound scary, because granted that it won't happen until 100 to 1000 years from now, we won't have to experience such a natural disaster, but I'm kind of worried about our next generation. Any thoughts about killer asteroids in general and technologies to destroy them before they destroy a city?

 

[The Void]

I'm sure that by the time the asteroid arrives, scientists would already have invented the technology necessary to blow the asteroid to smithereens or at least blow it off course the Earth. If not, then maybe the Godzilla in your avatar would come in useful {XD}

 

[maccrash]

I'm just taking a look at the other headlines on this gawker website and it seems to be a bit questionable. some of them are a bit tabloid-y.

also:

"Still, this is a lot. Even if it's once every 500 years. Why build things? They'll be vaporized in spectacular fashion just a few centuries from now. Why have kids? Their great great great X 5 grandkids will just be burned up in a blinding explosion. Why try? We're just a tiny little marble in a washing machine of boulders, man."

that paragraph is really dumb. sounds nihilistic, man.

anyway, we shouldn't just stop reproducing or trying to advance anything because a killer asteroid's gonna be coming in a few hundred or thousand years, which is what that last paragraph kinda hints at. we all knew the world was gonna end sometime so this isn't really a monumental news story to me.

 

[Eevee3]

The whole world ending and killer asteroid thing always sounds kinda silly to me. I'm not really a firm believer in these things until I see them with my own eyes but even if this does happen, the world MIGHT have even "ended" by then. A thousand years from now is a long time.

 

[Oryx]

I'd find the idea of a city-destroying asteroid much more interesting than a world-destroying asteroid. There's nothing to get in order in the latter case, everyone will be dead no matter what so who cares?

We should keep in mind that it's very unlikely an asteroid would hit a city - remember, we are 75% water. That would probably cause a tsunami in nearby islands, but we know how to deal with tsunamis because it's an understood natural disaster.

 

[Talon]

Well, ♥♥♥♥. I'm out. *Pulls trigger*

I don't think that there will be one in that amount of time. I know something will happen. Some big natural disaster will wipe out a lot of us, or all of us. Maybe when we collide with Andromeda. But an asteroid? I don't that one is coming yet. I mean, I realise that there is one headed our way, but I don't think it will hit. I'll think it'll miss.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

Um, guys, this asteroid isn't going to destroy the whole world; it's only going to destroy a whole city. It's still a bad thing though, and I'm not sure which unlucky city will be leveled in the next 100 years.

 

[Oryx]

Um, guys, this asteroid isn't going to destroy the whole world; it's only going to destroy a whole city. It's still a bad thing though, and I'm not sure which unlucky city will be leveled in the next 100 years.

To be fair, the article you quoted starts by talking about how an asteroid may destroy the human race.

What makes you say that it will destroy a city? Can scientists predict where it's going to hit, ensuring that it's going to hit a city and not in the middle of the 97% of Earth that isn't urbanized? This is what our population density looked like in 2000 (the most recent map I could find that was more detailed than country-by-country):

Assuming, as we should, that the water isn't populated at all, it's incredibly unlikely that the potential asteroid once every 500 years will hit a populated or developed area and cause significant loss of life and property, and if we factor in the odds of the asteroid landing on a populated area, the rate of city-destroying asteroids becomes so minimal as to be negligible. Unless I'm missing something here.

 

[bobandbill]

The above is a good point. What are the chances that an asteroid that can destroy a city would actually hit a city? Not much, really.

Of course, it doesn't mean everywhere else is safe. If it hits the ocean, it could trigger a tsunami, and if that's near a coastline that's no good either.

There's also a key point here - the claim is that such an asteroid could hit every 100 to 1000 years. The thing with probability is that it can also just never happen (and also you could argue happen within 100 years). At the moment though, large known asteroids are already being tracked (even mentioned in one of those links in the OP/article), so the main worry is just objects entering our solar system. And they have a far bit to pass through to get to Earth.


And yes, that paragraph near the end of the article is pretty darn poor.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

To be fair, the article you quoted starts by talking about how an asteroid may destroy the human race.

What makes you say that it will destroy a city? Can scientists predict where it's going to hit, ensuring that it's going to hit a city and not in the middle of the 97% of Earth that isn't urbanized? This is what our population density looked like in 2000 (the most recent map I could find that was more detailed than country-by-country):

Assuming, as we should, that the water isn't populated at all, it's incredibly unlikely that the potential asteroid once every 500 years will hit a populated or developed area and cause significant loss of life and property, and if we factor in the odds of the asteroid landing on a populated area, the rate of city-destroying asteroids becomes so minimal as to be negligible. Unless I'm missing something here.

Have you at least watched the video I linked below the article I quoted? That talks about the asteroid destroying a city just in case you find the gawker article unreliable. They're theoretically assuming that the asteroid could hit on land rather than a body of water, which is why they're planning to build a device to destroy the asteroid.

 

[Oryx]

Have you at least watched the video I linked below the article I quoted? That talks about the asteroid destroying a city just in case you find the gawker article unreliable. They're theoretically assuming that the asteroid could hit on land rather than a body of water, which is why they're planning to build a device to destroy the asteroid.

I didn't watch the video, but what you've described is exactly my point, the assumption - say 80% of the world (low estimate) is unpopulated. Then let's say we take the 500 years estimate for how often an asteroid will hit. It will take 4 asteroids before the chance of just one of them hitting a populated area is over 50%; 6 asteroids before we hit a 75% chance of one impacting somewhere populated. So the actual waiting time is more like 2000-5000 years (5000 is where it gets to 90%), or 400-10,000 years before a city-destroying asteroid hits the Earth.

When we're talking about our potential grandchildren not seeing our structure, it's one thing. It's an entirely other thing when talking about our potential great-great-great-grandchildren not seeing it.

 

[Tek]

I'm not sure how the data here was obtained. Given the professional and educated nature of the people involved with the project, one would think that they've done things in a logical and rational manner. But then again, they are human, with human emotions and fears, and even very smart people can get caught up in very silly things.

The question that comes to my mind is this: if these asteroid strikes happen every 100-1000 years or whatever, why are there no records of cities suddenly vanishing from the face of the earth? There should have been anywhere from 10 to 100 of these strikes during our history, but no one saw any?

In addition, we have advanced satellite imaging of the entire surface of the planet. We should be able to detect recent strikes from large asteroids fairly easily.



At the same time, I think it's obvious that this sort of thing could happen basically at any moment. If it does, we will do what we always do: Fall down seven times, get up eight times.

It is nice to know, however, that people are watching out for large objects like this. Knowing that tornadoes happen sometimes is one thing, but knowing that one is headed your way is another.

As for safety measures, the events presented in the movie Armageddon are not outside of our present technological capacity. We could also put a missile launcher in orbit, and send an explosive out to collide with the asteroid, although I for one would want definite proof of the launcher's destruction after the mission was finished. Obviously, all of that requires advance notice, and to have the best chance of that notice we need as many eyes in the sky as possible.

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

I think one thing to point out as well is that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs landed in an area in shallow water. Even if humanity wasn't able to redirect the asteroid to not hit earth (which shouldn't be too difficult in the first place if it's caught early enough), they could make it target the deep ocean, where the biggest effect would be tsunamis - and if that was the case they would likely have the time to evacuate the appropriate coastlines. It wouldn't be great but I highly doubt that all of humanity would die. It would be a bigger problem for specialist species though, and it would tear apart biodiversity as we know it.

In addition, even if it hit land and obliterated a whole continent's human population, because humans can harness energy outside of the sun, it is completely possible that they would be able to form an "ark" of sorts that can fuel animals and plants during the winters caused by the blanketing of the ashes.

Humans probably wouldn't go extinct since we have the materials and foresight to prepare for such things. It would SUCK and probably could end civilization but not humanity itself.

 

[PokemonLeagueChamp]

It would take an enormous asteroid to ensure humanity's end at this point. We have the technology to, if necessary, grow food and maintain ourselves in an artificial environment until the fires burn out and the ash finally comes down. And that's assuming a major impact that doesn't completely destroy the planet.
Anything less would be a terrible event, but society would go on.

And that's assuming we don't just use nukes to divert them or turbolasers to turn them to ash before they even get close.

 

[twocows]

"Group dedicated to fighting non-existent threat claims threat is not actually make believe. Story at 11."

1. Most of the world's landmass is water. A non-doomsday asteroid scenario (which is what they're talking about) is most likely going to hit the water and cause a tsunami or something. Not a good thing, but there should be warning.
2. If it does hit land, it'll be roughly equivalent to a large volcanic eruption: devastating for several miles around, but not much impact past that.
3. It sounds like the methodology behind their numbers is flawed, and it wouldn't surprise me, because as a group whose sole purpose is to "solve" this problem, they have a stake in it actually being, you know, real. Conflicts of interest don't usually lead to sound statistical methodology.

They didn't mention doomsday scenarios because those are far, far less common. As far as I know, there have been maybe half a dozen at most since life started, and none of them in the past few thousand years where we as a species have been relevant.

 

[JaredJEstes]

Cool stuff. Humans are so small. So worthless in the scheme of billion year old asteroids that could end us oh so quickly! LOVE

 

[Plumpyfoof]

I don't know one asteroid every 100 to 1000 years is pretty small. I mean like the majority of Earth is covered in Ocean, that place where people don't live. I'm not terribly worried. I shall continue to procreate and teach my children and their children to follow suit.