/sci/ - Science & Math

Lots of nuclear missiles used to divert its course?

Let's all jump at the same time and divert the course of earth!

We spend the next 10 years stripping down resources and putting all available funds into a lunar base which can support 1/10th of the world's population; waiting for the day when the atmosphere clears and live can once more return to our humble abode.

>>3352678
Also, enslave the third world nations for good measure.

Figure out how to make black holes that dont immediately evaporate.

Test on the moon. If we're successful it eats the moon. we'll be the only planet in the universe to have a black hole orbiting the planet.

Then we make the asteroid into a black hole like armageddon style.

Asteroid-black-hole flies through earth. Earth doesn't move because the mass of the astertoid isn't big enough to divert it. the black hole eats only like a 1cm diameter circlular hole going from side of the planet to the other

>yfw you realize this is all possible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

We have lots of rockets and bombs. diverting it or at least blowing it to smaller bits should be doable.
10 years is a long time if people are motivated.

>>3352715
with 10 years, just a small deviation in course is good enough.

Lets just relax a bit.

We could produce dozens of nuclear warheads capable of destroying this planet multiple times over within a few years of the object being noticed. Diverting it with -everything- we have is manageable, we're safe.

A weaponized Orion vessel is the only thing we are capable of building that could obliterate an extinction scale asteroid on short notice. It's why NASA, to this day, keeps a supply of bomblets on hand along with the schematics from the Orion Project.

http://www.ted.com/talks/george_dyson_on_project_orion.html

>>3352715
>blowing it to smaller bits
That's a terrible idea...

you guys dont seem to realize that it's basically a kill vehicle, we dont have the weapons nessecary to blow it off track, and breaking it up into bits probably wont help much at all unless you do it REALLY far away so they dont hit earth at all

>>3352695
>black hole as a defense
>the moon becomes a black hole
>imaging what solar/lunar eclipses would look like

>>3352701
>510MT
like I fucking care

>>3352695
>If we're successful it eats the moon
you don't want to see what happens to earth without moon

>>3352753
Why do you say that?

Wouldn't they just become meteorites at that point?

>>3352762
again, you just need to deviate it's course. If it's ten years out, launching a hydrogen bomb in 6 months from now to meet it would likely be sufficient enough to deviate it's course.

It's not like earth is a sitting duck in this.

>>3352804
The black hole would still have the same mass as the moon. Unless I'm mistaken it will still have the same effect on the earth that the moon had.

>>3352820
I'm not expert in the field of artificial blackholes, how about you?

Send up a spaceship with some oil riggers and a token wacky russian.

Then, when they fail, the second spaceship commanded by some old fucker will suicide into it. Then Frodo fucks his girlfriend.

>>3352835
Black holes have the exact same mass, minus an extremely extremely slow hawking radiation which evaporates them [it would take like 10^100 years for the moon to evaporate]

it literally would not affect us in the slightest, except you couldn't see the moon. And the flag would disappear

>>3352835
No... but there are theories about black holes and we can choose between reading science fiction or these theories.

>>3352695

Can we make it hit the white house? the impact would probably destroy all of DC.

Tell them the impact area is like antarctica though so Obongo doesn't evacuate.

we have nothing but oil rigs and banks. might as well but rockets on them and crash them into it to see if it changes it course.

>>3352868
>impact
>black hole
pick one, the point is that it would travel through the earth in bugs-bunny like cartoon fashion. maybe eating a VERY small hole, depending on its schwartzchild radius.


ACtually, i forgot but it may be that the black hole would actually evaporate before it gets to us. that could probably save us too since the energy dissipated would go as r^2. or it might kill us.

What happens if flux lines pass through a black hole

>>3352842
nights on the earth would be pitch black and FAR FAR colder.

black holes don't reflect light like the moon does.

all nocturnal animals die out, ecosystem is destroyed.

Spend 10 years drafting an assertive, but polite letter asking the asteroid to not hit us.

>>3352893
i dont think the moon radiates significant heat to the earth, pretty sure that's trapped by the atmosphere

i guess some animals might die though, be funny. not gonna affect humans though. i suppose if it was that big of a concern we could just test it on a space ship on an orbit which will take it away from earth

  ▲
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newfags can't triforce

>>3352842
>>3352845

-you create a black hole capable of devouring moon
-if you don't plan to wait for it to do so kilogram by kilogram you must make it massive
-if it's massive enough to take out moon for dinner it's pretty much massive (with the moons mass added) enough to to suck in the earth or at least do some pretty serius shit shit with gravity field, more serious than some middle sized asteroid

>>3352878

Uh, black holes have incredible mass and thus momentum. The impact of it on the earth would still be fucking insane.

>>3352951

But the black hole has no way to transfer its momentum except through gravity. You can't bump into a black hole.

>>3352806

Not that small.

What you'll accomplish is turning a single projectile into a mass of buckshot.

>>3352912
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land an unmanned probe on the asteroid that has a large unfurling lens. the lens focuses the suns light into a beam that burns a particular spot on the asteroid causing a jet to shoot out changing trajectory

We could hurl all of the JWST threads on the front page at it, that should do 'er.

WHAT IF WE TAKE THE EARTH

AND MOVE IT OUT OF THE WAY

we nuke the asteroid to change it's corse

>>3353214
>unmanned probe

why can't we have a man on it?

>>3353268


because getting computers to do shit for you is more /sci/ related.

Apparently /sci/ really is full of retards who don't know what they are talking about. All we would do is get a heavy unmanned spacecraft close enough to the asteroid that their gravities would interact with each other, and use engines on the craft to keep them from actually falling together. This would easily change the course of the asteroid by a lot. LOL at people saying blow it up. I mean this is shit you can learn from the discovery channel.

>>3353300
>>3353214
we can change the course of planetkiller rock flying at 30km/s with some engines?

WE TAKE THE EARTH

AND PUSH IT SOMEWHERE ELSE

someone prolly said that already

How big of an asteroid are we talking?
It's pretty straightforward to determine the thrust that would be necessary to just push it out of the way, just use some F=ma. We just need to give it a nudge.

mfw when people think that nuclear explosions actually create the big boom like it does on earth (in an atmosphere).

Nuclear weapons would do next to nothing against an asteroid, we're better off attempting to build rockets with as much mass as possible in order to through off the asteroid through sheer momentum by hitting it over and over in the same spot.

In event a process by which people can kiss their own asses.

After all nothing would actually get done, Murica would be too busy being dumb and every time another nation tried they'd be 'defended against' by Murica who thought they were trying to put weapons in space to use against Murica

>>3353314

Then earth's orbit is fucked and we go flying off into space.

Paint the asteroid and let the sun push it out of the way.

>>3352839
I fukken lold

>>3352634
Read this:
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Skies-These-Ways-World/dp/0670019976

Thank me later.

paint the Earth black, so then when the asteroid comes it cant see us then will just pass by. by the time the asteroid realises it will have traveled too far to turn around. situation averted

>>3353431
You're great.

>>3353422
now that's a good read
interesting way to desribe those events
thanks

>Call Bruce Willis

I'd say our best chance lies in early spotting it and sending some rockets that push the asteroid into a slightly different orbit. Perhaps sending a device with solar sails that attaches itself to the asteroid could help too.

>>3352727
> False statement.

If we detonated the world's supply of nuclear/energetic material that we're capable of harnessing, we wouldn't be able to destroy a land mass the size of Arizona.

You've been watching too many sci fi movies that pretend we have planet breakers. We don't.

10 years. The luck required to spot the asteroid is almost non-existing.

>>3352727
>>3352715
Listen to
>>3352753

we come to an understanding that life is ephemereal, that death is not to be feared, that there is great beauty in the universe and that our existence is non-essential

then we go home to be with our family and friends, and we serenely accept our end

...

just kidding, we're humans, LOOT, RAPE, PLUNDER, ANARCHY, DRUG POWERED RAVES, AND BACCHANALIA!!!!!

>>3353606
Oh, sorry. (How retarded do i sound?)
I meant "The odds of spotting the asteroid are almost non-existing."
Didn't think what i typed through

ITT: illiterate inbreeds

Pic related is the only possible answer.

This asteroid...
How big is it? I mean volume, not mass.
How fast is it traveling relative to Earth?.

Just for the sake of argument, let's throw some numbers out there. A planet killer asteroid has to be relatively large. Not school-bus sized, or even Los Angeles-sized. Let's say it's as big as Texas. I think we can all agree that if a Texas-sized, solid rock asteroid hit the Earth, we would be talking the end of human life. This asteroid has a diameter, then, of about 800 miles.

It's also got to be moving pretty quickly. If it weren't, if it were just floating along at 10 m/s out in space, it would hard to determine that it's heading this way, much less that it's going to hit us. In other words, it's gotta be moving fast enough that different images of the same object show a significant change in position. Let's say this thing is flying through space at 10 miles per second. That's really super slow, in space terms, but it means that over a week, the Texas-sized asteroid moves 6 million miles, or about 6% of an AU.

So this sphere of rock 800 miles across is heading this way at 10 miles per second. To have ten years of warning, this asteroid would today be 3.1 billion miles away from Earth. That's 34 AU. Neptune is 30 AU from the Sun. Pluto, at it's nearest approach to Earth, is about 28 AU away. So this object that's going to hit us is out beyond Pluto today.

Which brings me to my point: There is no way, even under reasonable conditions, that we would have TEN YEARS warning of an extinction-event asteroid hitting Earth. The resolution of the best optical telescopes on Earth are not enough to pick out an 800-mile wide object beyond Pluto.

>>3353637
>800 miles

100 is already more than enough brah

>>3353631
>Nokia

>>3353637
>10 miles per second.
Not fast enough.

>>3353091

Best post ever.

>>3353631
sell a million phones a day?

>>3353637
a rock 6 miles in diameter killed 75 percent of life on earth
why take it to such ridiculous lenghts as 800 miles?

>>3353736

Well that's the end of these shorts...

Find out where it's going to hit and buy a bat

Can't believe people still think blowing an incoming asteroid up is a decent solution.

What you do is, as previously mentioned (twice?), send a bunch of unmanned ships up and have them dock all on one side. This will, providing large enough ships, alter the asteroids course due to the gravity between the objects.

I don't see this to be at all impossible if we have 10 years. Then again, that provides people are ready to pour money into the project.

>>3353993
well greeks won't participate, I guess

>>3353993
how exactly you dock ship on piece of rock flying at 30 to 60 miles per second FROM THE SIDE?

just asking

>>3354029
The same way you dock to ISS or any other object that goes fast. You go to it and dock.

>yfw there are less than 30 people in the world working full time on searching for potentially hazardous objects...

feels motherfucking safe man

>>3354045
ISS is on orbit

the rock is flying towards earth

>>3354029
when it attracts you, it's usually pretty fucking easy.

>>3354059
So? The orbit is still predictable. You go to it, mach it's speed and then dock.

Besides the idea presented in this:
>>3353993
Doesn't require a smooth landing so there is one less thing to worry about.

>>3353655
>>3353689
>>3353736

Morons who do not realize my point was to envision an asteroid as large and slow as possible.

Fine, you want this asteroid 100 miles across travelling at 1,000 miles per second? Then our chance of having ten years warning goes from low to exactly zero.


tl;dr - the whole thought experiment is flawed; we don't have ten years warning

>>3352634

Get a teleporter to finally transport a human to another planet?

I hope it's been said but

>send rocket to orbit close to the asteroid
>Asteroid changes trajectory

10 years? Plenty.

A tiny nudge in the trajectory makes a hell of a difference. This is space we're talking about.

We could knock together an Orion mission in a few years. And this could literally land on the thing, and use it's engines to nudge the rock. Problem solved.

>>3356122
>1,000 miles per second
did it got a flinch from God or something?

As long as it hits the Ocean, we're safe. Just find a way to rotate the Earth a bit faster?

Orion, Orion everywhere. Not to blow the rock apart, but to divert it. This would be our best chance by a a long way.

>>3356527
Yup. The whole world will just love that gigantic tidal wave of hugs and kisses.

We blow up the earth so the asteroid has nothing to it

>>3356622

*hit

>>3356527

If it is of sufficient size [say that one that hit Jupiter a while ago and left a crater larger than Earth], it won't matter where it hits.

>>3356640
be careful
last time Teacup showed in asteroid thead it ended up with 300 replies and shit so fucked up you would think you're on /x/

We load a rocket up with nukes and use Bruce Willis to suicide-bomb the thing.

>>3356671
the guy is 56 years old he might be dead in 10 years the what?

>>3356689
then*

>>3356566
>>3356640
No, if it hits the ocean, it'll probably just trurn some water into ice and kill some animals. Worst case scenario, changes currents and kills entire species.

>>3356657
What? That thread had nothing to do with /x/.

>>3356711
GET THE FUCK OUT!
GET THE FUK OUT RIGHT NOW!
I DON'T WANT TO LIVE THROUGH THIS SHIT ONCE AGAIN!

>>3356711
*turn

>>3356720
I'm not going to let some hater ruin my chance to post in this thread.

>>3356720
>>3356711
>>3356657
is there a save of the thread somewhere?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o
take it away tyson

>>3356742
OH, FUCK NO.
lol, made me rage

ANYHOWS, ignoring the teacup,
a nudge should do the trick, Orion not even needed.

>>3352701
>As of October 7, 2009, the odds of an April 13, 2036 impact are considered to be 1 in 250,000.

I don't like these odds.

We could always use magnets...

>>3356122
>>3353637

Fuck off. It's assholes like you why we can't just amuse ideas for entertainments sake.

>>3356921
well this is /sci/ and you should take your shit somewhere else if you don't want a realistic answer, faggot.

>>3356921


Shut the fuck up fucking faggot

>>3356921
ITT: amusing ideas for entertainments sake.

This is theoretical, right?

Science fiction. Not science. Go watch Armageddon or Deep Impact. reported

>>3356964

lol what a massive dick
asteroid defense is a scientific concern

>>3356964

Do you have Asperger's?

>>3353637
I'm going to let you in on a not-so-secret secret.

We have the ability to detect space rocks a few meters in diameter at hundreds of thousands of kilometers distance.

Watch this video:
http://youtu.be/S_d-gs0WoUw?hd=1

It shows the number of asteroids we've detected. We are only getting better as time progresses.

>>3357089
>hundred of thousands of kilometers

You do realize that once an asteroid is a few hundred thousand kilometers from us we are basically fucked, right dickwad? 10 years my sweet ass....

I'm making an underwater fortress to live in if an asteroid hits. It'll also be helpful in a nuclear winter or zombie situation.

>>3357089
HOLY FUCKING SHIT HOW COULD VOYAGERS GET THROUGH THIS?

>>3352650
>Lots of nuclear missiles used to divert its course?

The way I understand it, this wouldn't work. It's because there's no air to carry a shockwave, so all we'd do is irradiate the asteroid.

I'm given to understand that we could plant a bomb inside the asteroid and it could split the asteroid in two, with the two halves pushing off each other.

>>3357360

You don't blast if off course with a shockwave. What happens is the heat of the blast vaporises the surface of the asteroid, which boils off of the asteroid, pushing it away from the blast.

>>3357089
Is it possible that another planet could potentially form from the asteroid belt?

>>3357792
I suppose that really depends on how you'd define a planet. There's already a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt called Ceres, and it comprises about 1/3rd the total mass of the belt.

>>3357360
Nuclear bombs when detonated in space still emit an incredible amount of electromagnetic energy. Detonated close enough to an asteroid, or any other object, they will flash vaporize the surface of said object, it may even create enough thermal stress to crack the material or cause thermal shockwaves within it. The flash vaporization essentially pushes the object away from the nuclear explosion.

>>3357215
There are estimated to be up to ~1.5 million asteroids in the asteroid belt. That video shows that we've discovered ~500,000. While it seems like the asteroid belt is a soup made of rocks, ready to smash into any unlucky spacecraft that ventures through it, the reality is quite different. In fact, the distance between individual asteroids in the belt measures in hundreds to thousands of kilometers, and were you standing on one arbitrary asteroid, you would likely be unable to see any others.

>>3357151
You mistakenly assume the asteroid is magically set on a collision course with the Earth immediately. Apophis for example, might hit the Earth in 2036, but that does not mean it is past the orbit of Pluto and flying towards us. It is in an orbit around our star, just like any of the other objects within our solar system, but its orbit just happens to intersect with that of the Earth's periodically.

An asteroid could be within Near Earth Orbit, and still not hit us for twenty years.

As for altering the trajectory of an asteroid? It's a simple physics problem. Alter the trajectory of the object early enough, and over the course of 10 years, that 1cm difference turns into 300,000km's from where it would have originally been had it stayed in its previous orbit. So we don't even necessarily need high explosives or nukes. We could attach some rockets, use a gravitational tugboat, or sling a solar sail on it. Just so long as it is done early enough to alter the objects' trajectory significantly over time.

>>3358345
Oh wow I can't believe I've never heard of this until now and we even have a probing heading towards it set to arrive in 2015!

I guess I have a lot of reading to do on the subject, thanks.

We build massive fucking underground bunkers all over the world that could house about 1/20 of earths population.

>>3358354

Thank you for bringing some actual science to /sci/

>>3358569
and let the RAGE begins!
oh wait... the elite got thier hi-tec space arc... fuckers