/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10283523
You can always get space engine.

http://spaceengine.org

Granted, just the major ones. There's so many minor ones being found all the time that'd be near impossible to get up to date - though, knowing Space Engine's devs, they probably try.

>>10092204
real life asteroid belt takes fuck all energy to travel between despite the lack of density
you also forget that asteroids really are abundant

>>9677466
As opposed to that solar flare that was so strong that, if it had hit us, it would have flooded the radiation belts with plasma and funneled enough of it to cover the surface of the Earth, that missed us by less than three months in 2013?

Or those two asteroids large enough to cause a KT level extinction event that passed between us and the moon in the 90's that we didn't see until after they had passed?

People don't want to be reminded that the closest thing we've had to evidence of divine interference, is that we've only had five major global extinction events, and not five million.
There's just an unbelievable amount of shit that can go wrong, both terrestrial and cosmological, at any given time, many with no possible counter or warning.

Then you get into shit like false vacuum that isn't even worth worrying about, cuz even with magi-tech, you can do fuck all.

>>9580565
The difference between your definitions in theirs, is that a planet can't part of an asteroid field and can't have an equatorial orbit.

In the case of Pluto, in addition to not even being the largest object in the kuiper asteroid belt, it also is in double orbit with Charon - which mean it's technically a moon to boot.

Kids in the early 1800's used to have to memorize 17 planets, because we didn't there was an asteroid belt there. Oddly, they didn't get buthurt about this.

If everything in the asteroid belts is a planet, then you're looking at tens of thousands of planets, with a half dozen new ones being discovered every year.

>>9388392
which one?
or is it one of the three quarters we haven't found yet?

>>9370534
>Long term survival is inherently impractical - we shouldn't do it.
This is sadly the attitude of the day.

>>9371545
Like there's one fucking guy in a basement doing all the science somewhere, so we can only do one thing at a time.

Plus, if we had started trying to get to the moon back in 1500, we'd have ludicrous technology today (and hell, almost certainly would have made it a lot sooner, had we kept at it).

You simply can't solve all the problems on Earth without going into space, and you only get so much time to try at the futile effort.

>>9342443
We ain't got no ship capable ready to go.

>Or was the object only discovered when it was already too late to launch anything at it?
It was discovered after it already passed us by, and it's rather a miracle we did catch, when you consider we've only found about a quarter of the similarly sized rocks that are near us all the damned time.

>>9332938
Not necessarily. Lots of dinos appeared to be developing socially hierarchical behavior, and many of their ancestors demonstrate extremely sophisticated such. Might have taken longer without the cosmic golf ball, but it still easily coulda happened. Really, here at least, you just need a scavenger or pack hunter with social tendencies that has to organize or get creative to access fud - preferably with manipulative digits. (Which is also why city rats are much smarter than forest rats - larger and more complex social structures, and more need for ingenuity.)

>>9338865
...and maybe another one woulda hit us. Kinda surprised we don't get it by one every 30 seconds.

>>9317761
Nukes are extremely ineffective at destruction in space. They spread radiation a lot further, so they are better at killing life, but most of the destructive kinetic force of a nuke comes from superheated atmosphere. So, unless you can somehow bury the nuke deep inside the asteroid, closing up the hole you made in the process, all you're really going to do is make it hotter, which won't affect its mass much.

If we catch it REALLY far away, you can simply paint one side of it white, and the sun will do the rest for ya, how far that would be would depend on its rotation, size, and trajectory - but if we wanted to deflect, for instance, Apophis, and started about 15 years ago (bit before we first saw it), we coulda theoretically done it.

The next best bet is a gravity assist, but that requires nearly as much warning. It'd be more effort, as you'd need to take a heavy satellite and get it to orbit the asteroid synchronously.

A kinetic driver probe would be heavier still, but could be used later. In this case, tossing a heavy object at the asteroid at high speed is actually more effective than a nuclear bomb. We'd still need quite a bit of warning, as the delivery system to divert an asteroid large enough to be a threat would be larger than anything we've ever made, and we'd probably only get one shot at it. If you're really lucky there maybe another asteroid available to use in a similar effort - play some billiards.

Problem is, a lot of rocks are non-reflective, covered with carbon and other dust, and thus you don't get to see them that far away. Two asteroids larger than the KT event asteroid passed between us and the moon in the 90's, and we didn't detect them until after they were gone. We find, on average, twenty dangerous near earth objects every year, and that number has only been increasing as our scanning ability improves, but we know from the gravitational patterns we've only detected a fraction of those traveling about the inner solar system.

>>9275630
>>9276242
>>9276436
>The dinosaurs couldn't farm or build. IQ is a lot more useful than big teeth.
Doesn't help with the air is on fire due to raining molten glass heating up the atmosphere, cooking near anything not underground or in the ocean in a matter of hours.

And these events aren't nearly as rare as people think - there are indeed so many possible ones that the fact that there's been so few of them is the closest we have to evidence of divine providence. On top of that, there's been several events we don't really consider mass extinction events that would reduce our own population by 90% or more, and every now and again, we invent a new potential apocalypse ourselves.

>>9276436
Doesn't help with the air is on fire due to raining molten glass healing up the atmosphere.

And these events aren't nearly as rare as people think - there are indeed so many of them the fact that there's been so few of them is the closest we have to evidence of divine providence. On top of that, there's been several events we don't really consider mass extinction events that would reduce our own population by 90% or more, and every now and again, we invent a new apocalypse ourselves.

>>9242293
Spacecraft are kinda stealth by default - it's harder to make them visible than invisible. Any deep space probe that stops transmitting is pretty much just gone.

Even something as large as the fictional Bird of Prey you are imaging, even without the cloak, would be pretty much invisible to any modern technology, even with the lights on, in anything but extremely low orbit.

Every blip in this chart is two miles across or larger - notice how long it takes to detect them with an active search. Not much chance of detecting anything smaller, save by the occasional happy accident.

>>9027331
>Mass extinctions are not instant
That rather depends on the type of mass extinction. There are several possible ones that are not only instant, but hit us at the speed of light, and thus we'd never see coming.

Even the KT extinction event, a simple asteroid, while it is the sort of thing we could see coming, with some luck, there's quite a bit of evidence that it was rather instant from the impact on. That it wasn't a "nuclear winter" effect, but rather it kicked so much evaporated rock into orbit on impact, through the trail of vacuum it split in the atmosphere behind it, that when it cooled and rained back down, it heated the atmosphere to about 800F degrees worldwide, killing nearly everything that wasn't underground or underwater, in a mere two hours.

That theory has been gaining momentum for the most widely accepted explanation of the disappearance of the dinosaurs, plant life, and megafauna of the age, as there is no evidence in the archeological record for the slow wintery death so widely accepted in the past.

And further, you'd only need a meteor half that size to crash on land to have the same effect again.

Technology maybe tough to kill, but if it's one of those darker carbon covered asteroids, and if we thus have to survive the air going to pizza-oven temperatures in two hours with no prior warning, we ain't gonna make it to the bomb shelters.

To say nothing of GRB's, super solar flares, false vacuum, and all those other instant-death apocalypse scenarios.

>>9001677
Jupiter and Saturn haven't done shit for us in billions of years.

That said, despite the look of this animation, and the fact that two planet killers larger than the K-T event asteroid passed between us and the moon in the 90's without us even seeing them until after they passed, it isn't very likely, and is actually getting slightly less likely as time goes on (well, in terms of billions of years).

It is true it could easily happen without time for us to do anything about it, as a lot of these rocks are cold and dark, and at that distance, radar only works when you already know where the object is.

There are, however, a whole lot of other things that could go horribly wrong, with even less warning, or no warning, both cosmological and terrestrial, and a good chunk of those are much more likely to happen. Given everything we know that can go wrong, the closest thing we have to evidence of the divine, is that there's only been five major global extinction events, and not five million. (Plus, every now and again, we invent a new potential apocalypse scenario ourselves.)

But, even if this fantastic luck continues, and nothing goes wrong, and we don't kill ourselves, while we have about five billion years before the sun eats us, it'll get so hot that it'll remove all our oceans within one billion.

Whether the place is going to be fried in a billion years or before I finish writing this post, seems it would be wise to start on those backup plans.

>>8846868
>>8846779
There are actually asteroids large enough to effectively sterilize the Earth, one of which passed between us and the moon in the 90's, and we didn't see it until after it had gone by. This is not uncommon, as not all asteroids are particularly reflective, and radar doesn't really help unless you already know where they are.

But asteroids are probably among the least of our worries. X6+ solar flares, GRB's, germ warfare - there's a million different things that could kill us all or utterly wreck this biosphere. We tend to discover one or two new ones every decade, and once in awhile, invent a new one ourselves.

It's true, for most of those disasters, re-terraforming the Earth would be easier than terraforming or even just colonizing Mars, but unless you have a concentrated self-sustaining well-off population of 64K+ hidden somewhere deep underground, or on another planet, there'll be no one left to fix the Earth.

Further, eventually and inevitably, the Earth will be rendered even more inhospital than Mars, and further beyond that, the whole solar system will be dead. Sure, you've got nearly a billion years before one and another four before the other, but any number of catastrophic setbacks could happen before then, so the sooner you get started on the project, the more likely you are to have something going before sudden death possibilities give way to slow death inevitabilities.

We invest more for toys in fast food kid's meals than in our space program efforts, so it's not as if we don't have the resources to spare for a common sense effort.

It's just hard to motivate folks, as there's only so much profit in survival.

>>8726733
Because if the Earth "gets fucked up for some reason" there's no one left to fix it.

If you have a sizable self-sustaining population on Mars, and one of these fuckers hit Earth (or any of the other millions of things that can goes wrong does), at least there's folks left who can fix it, and further, said folks will already have experience in terraforming. Thus it'll be easier on multiple levels.

Plus, eventually, the whole solar system is going to be uninhabitable, so ya gotta start somewhere. The sooner you do, the less likely you'll miss your window of opportunity.