Meteorite Threatens Earth: Citizen Alarmed (900 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.6 on 25 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by matnotharry (View user info) at 2008-02-05 04:45:16 EST
On the morning of the 28th of December the tail end of a news bulletin caught my eye as it flashed across my TV screen and caused me such alarm that I choked on my mid-morning beverage and stained my new shirt. Admittedly I do not always need a news bulletin, or indeed anything save a drink, to irreversibly stain an item of clothing but nevertheless I found this revelation somewhat unnerving. With eyes agog and orange juice dripping down my chin I let the news that the probability of the Near Earth Object (NEOs for short) WD5 hitting Earth had risen from 1.3 % to 3.9. That is just under 1 in 25.
Let me just point out that we are not in the incalculable probability ranges in which we normally live. This is not winning the lottery three weeks in a row, finding a diamond up your nose or conversing in Finnish with your gerbil - this is actually very real. I tried explaining this to those around me and was met with mid-morning indifference.
Somewhat irked by the lack of alarm I stomped off to a computer to unearth facts for people to get panicky over (it was one of those days...). One of the first things I found was that WD5 is actually heading for Mars, not Earth and that approximately 20 million particles and fragments of rock find their way into the atmosphere every 24 hours anyway. This knowledge, along with the placating effect of such an ungraspable number, calmed me slightly, though I didn't tell my unwavering family of my mistake.
It turns out that even if WD5 was heading straight for Earth there would very little to be worried about. For starters the rock is very small (at 50 m it barely qualifies as an asteroid, by comparison the monster that is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs was ~10 km wide) and would be vaporised by the heat generated by friction as it left the vacuum of space and entered the atom-happy atmosphere. That said the blast created by the vaporisation would be measure 10 megatons (1000x the Hiroshima bomb) and, even at an altitude of 5-10 km, would knock the socks off anyone in an 800 km radius.
Even if the asteroid was much bigger, say the 10 km diameter that is the accepted minimum mass required for world wide extinction, there wouldn't be much point in panicking since there would be very little we could do to avoid, well, world wide extinction (I apologise, by the way, if this is a little negative for a Thursday morning). There are a number of proposed solutions, known as 'Asteroid Deflection Strategies', to deal with such a predicament; ranging from wrapping it in plastic, dusting it in soot (I'm not making this up), fitting it with a solar parachute or blasting it apart with a nuclear bomb as depicted in the film 'Armageddon'. Though there is at least a little logic in each theory, the methods seem to get increasingly little hair-brained, not to mention highly costly and improbable (the sheer number of impossible events in 'Armageddon' has led NASA to allegedly show the film as part of their management training program - the employees have to pick out as many of the 168 violations of physics as they can).
Of course dealing with an impending doom, such as our tiny 10 km meteorite, assumes you know the thing is coming your way. Though scientists can scan the skies and identify Near Earth Objects (and as of last year there are 5100 of them, nearly 800 potentially hazardous), their eccentric orbits mean it is very difficult to know whether we are in trouble or not until two or three weeks before the now VNEO (the 'V' stands for 'Very', see what I did there?) makes its brief but spectacular entrance:
Since meteors have their own orbits in the solar system, they do not fall to Earth per se; instead it is more the Earth getting in the way as the rock orbits the sun. Thus when a meteor strikes the upper layers of the atmosphere it is already travelling between ~11 km/sec (25,000 mph) and ~72 km/sec (160,000 mph) - depending on whether the Earth is meeting it from behind, the side or head on. It won't really make any difference as the meteor will only be visible in the sky for a second or so as it is heated by the friction from the atmosphere before promptly slamming into the Earth. As it does so the air beneath the meteor will not have time to move out of the way, causing it to compress and heat up (this can be observed when using a bike pump but with less catastrophic results) to about 60,000 ºC, which is ten times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This would vaporise anything in the meteors path, including the meteor itself, and would punch a 1000 cubic kilometre hole in the Earth.
The debris and superheated gases from the impact would then shoot out in all directions destroying anything that stood before it for 250 km. Close behind would be a terrific shock wave that would wreak death and destruction on a Biblical scale on anything as far as 1500 km away. All of this would occur in mere seconds and perhaps out of a clear blue sky - I'd hope so as it would be last for many months as dust would blot out the sun worldwide within an hour or so. Earthquakes would rock the planet, tsunamis would hammer coastlines worldwide and an estimated 1.5 billion would die on the first day alone. It's a cliché but I'll say it: life would never be the same again.
So what's the upshot of all this? Should we live our lives in a constant fear of being obliterated or should we do the opposite and live life to the full, just in case it is snuffed out one day in the blink of an eye? Personally I will take the approach I usually employ for dealing with impending disasters, such as global warming and my exam on Friday, and pretend nothing is happening. Now, does anyone know how to remove an orange juice stain?
User Reviews
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2008-02-06 14:40:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2008-02-06 14:40:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by mordor666 (user info) at 2008-02-06 12:27:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
FUUUUCK
Submitted by DeMoNiC (user info) at 2008-02-06 00:14:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This gets a +2 for so many reasons. Including that fucking hilarious picture.
Submitted by HellRazer (user info) at 2008-02-05 19:28:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
HAHAHAHA@pic
Seriously though, what is our contingentcy(sp?) plan for asteriods? Missles? Drilling into it and planting explosives? Some other movie plot I didn't think of? Or are we all just boned once God gets his throwing arm warmed up?
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-02-05 14:21:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Of all the ways mankind could be obliterated, I believe my favorite is "wandering blackhole."
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-02-05 13:53:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Old news but the pic cracked me up, so +2.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-02-05 13:07:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
good title, decent premise, alright execution.
You should have made it a bit more of a modern day chicken little but funny.
Submitted by ConorJS (user info) at 2008-02-05 12:58:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
FUUUUUUCK!
Submitted by corn_nugget (user info) at 2008-02-05 12:16:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by rorrim (user info) at 2008-02-05 11:06:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Doomtime!
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2008-02-05 10:10:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Informative! I liked it.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-02-05 10:08:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Bellebrown (user info) at 2008-02-05 10:03:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Um, dont know and dont care on both your orange stain and our impending doom. Ive got other pressing shit to worry about - like... um, what to have for tea tonight.
However, I did like your post.
Submitted by czwij (user info) at 2008-02-05 09:52:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
live life like its your last day.
im off to shag the receptionist, get drunk and puke on the bosses shoes.
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-02-05 09:49:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for a kickass picture, I read about half the post.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2008-02-05 09:40:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by locksly (user info) at 2008-02-05 08:07:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
it ain't gonna happen dude, but i it did maybe the only people that would survive would be top level American, Russian and Israeli military people deep underground and then that would be cool cos the human race wouldn't have any weak bitches. That would be a mad video game
if that were the case it also wouldn't have any Doers. the people that actually know how to do stuff you know?
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2008-02-05 08:24:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2008-02-05 08:09:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Make a roller bearing coaster.
Submitted by locksly (user info) at 2008-02-05 08:07:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
it ain't gonna happen dude, but i it did maybe the only people that would survive would be top level American, Russian and Israeli military people deep underground and then that would be cool cos the human race wouldn't have any weak bitches. That would be a mad video game
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-02-05 07:13:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
purely for the pic (i'm not in a reading mood today...)
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2008-02-05 06:12:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this. I'm very worried but not enough to do anything about it.
And the picture is hilarious.
Orange juice should come out with ordinary carpet cleaner. If not, put a rug over it and forget it. Just like the meteor THAT IS GONNA KILL US ALL!!
:)
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2008-02-05 06:12:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by 8track (user info) at 2008-02-05 05:04:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
that picture is great. GREAT.
Submitted by Fartman (user info) at 2008-02-05 05:36:40 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
Don't just sit there complaining, do something about it!
Submitted by 8track (user info) at 2008-02-05 05:04:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
that picture is great. GREAT.