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1 in 450...I like those odds!
13 year old corrects NASA's prediction about Asteroid Apophis's chances of colliding with the Earth. I liked theirs better.
"BERLIN (AFP) - A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.
Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.
NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right."
What's a couple 0's between friends, really? /:O
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Change it back! Let my ignorant mind believe we're invincible plz!
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lonelily
Change it back! Let my ignorant mind believe we're invincible plz!
No, lets all worry about the fact that we'll die in 2036 every day for the next 28 years
But, if Satellites can move the orbit of the Asteroids, then a couple of rockets to move the orbit away should do the trick. no?
So, US will save the world, again.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Cue up aerosmith, we're going up! Scary stuff. Guess I shouldn't worry about my retirement after all.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Thanks, Sunday! I love science. And it's even better when little kids get to correct actual rocket scientists. And it's even better-er when the rocket scientists show that science is not like religion and publicly admit that, yes, in fact... the kid is right.
This bit of news brings up an important decision, however, and perhaps might call for a poll.
Who can save us now?
Bruce Willis?
Or Will Smith?
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Oh shit. I'm a little :bong: right now, so maybe this is a Stupid Question, but do any of you think that'll really happen? Like one day some damn asteroid will just come and destroy the planet? Hope it doesn't happen anytime soon!
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
^ Two weeks ago we had a young boy correct a display on paleontology at the Smithsonian that had been up for many years.
The part I like best about these stories is that these kids are not just accepting what is fed to them. They are acting like good scientists. The classical bedrock of all science is doubt.
Doubt everything; subject everything to a test or experiment; make it reproducible so everybody else can either confirm or refute you at any time.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Other Owner
^ Two weeks ago we had a young boy correct a display on paleontology at the Smithsonian that had been up for many years.
The part I like best about these stories is that these kids are not just accepting what is fed to them. They are acting like good scientists. The classical bedrock of all science is doubt.
Doubt everything; subject everything to a test or experiment; make it reproducible so everybody else can either confirm or refute you at any time.
QFT. Also, do ya have a link to the story about the kid correcting the Smithsonian? I collect stories like that. It makes me feel a little bit better about our brains.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cutey5032
Oh shit. I'm a little :bong: right now, so maybe this is a Stupid Question, but do any of you think that'll really happen? Like one day some damn asteroid will just come and destroy the planet? Hope it doesn't happen anytime soon!
Well, that's the consensus theory on what triggered the demise of the dinosaurs.
Ever been to the Gulf of Mexico? That's where the dinosaur-killing rock landed. Of course, it wasn't a gulf before that...
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cutey5032
Oh shit. I'm a little :bong: right now, so maybe this is a Stupid Question, but do any of you think that'll really happen? Like one day some damn asteroid will just come and destroy the planet? Hope it doesn't happen anytime soon!
Unlike other Catastrophes, we'd usually know about it years ahead. Although there was an incident where an asteroid missed earth pretty close (In celestial bodies measurements anyway) and scientists found that after the fact
Also, Small asteroids can actually be diverted away by rockets. So, at least, some of your tax dollars are really working for you.
Again, you should all be worried about Car accidents, Cigarette smoking, Binge Drinking, & Unhealthy living more than anything else. The odds of these items killing you are much greater than any of Global Warming, Asteriods, Terrorists, Hyperinflation, & Alien Attacks combined
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
^What makes you think we're NOT worried about those things? :P
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cutey5032
Oh shit. I'm a little :bong: right now, so maybe this is a Stupid Question, but do any of you think that'll really happen? Like one day some damn asteroid will just come and destroy the planet? Hope it doesn't happen anytime soon!
Yes, one day a major asteroid will slam into the planet. Guaranteed. It's a good thing that this happened 65 million years ago because the asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula wiped out the dinosaurs and pretty much all life on Earth, opening the way for the rise of other species, including our distant forebears, early mammalian species (they were hanging around in trees at the time). But these impacts are separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.
Of greater concern are the smaller asteroids, like the one that flattened huge areas of forest land in Siberia. The last estimates I heard were that the models showed something like 1,000 asteroids of this size, or smaller, will strike Earth in the next 500 years.
Briefly: The entire solar system is in orbit around our galactic center. This orbit brings us into contact with regions with a high-meteor population on the 10 - 100 million year scale. So the likelihood of one of these impacts occurring during any given human lifetime, or even the span of human life on earth, is extraordinarily small.
This concludes today's episode of Screaming Geeks outa Control. We now return you to non-nasal verbalizations.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cutey5032
do any of you think that'll really happen? Like one day some damn asteroid will just come and destroy the planet? Hope it doesn't happen anytime soon!
It's happened in times past, although not to "destroy the planet" scale, and it'll happen again, absent intervention. With all that stuff flying around space, even at great distances, given enough time, they'll smack into each other.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Sorry, TOO, we posted at the same time.
To further geekify, the Age of the Dinosaurs was helped along by a meteor impact at the end of the Permian era, 250 million years ago, which wiped out 90% of the species then on the planet. Super mass extinction. Then the dinosaurs took over. But the meteors giveth, the meteors taketh away, and 185 million years later, another pesky object, the one that TOO referred to, took out much of the active life on the planet then.
The Tunguska event that he referred to was the most recent one, and thankfully occurred in a deserted area. It blasted 800 square miles of trees. Imagine if it had fallen on a population center, such as ....
... in the 15th century, when 10,000 people in northern China were killed by a hail of meteorites, probably from the breakup of a meteor entering the atmosphere.
To see, up close and personal, what a good-sized meteor can do, visit Meteor Crater in Arizona. It's 50,000 years old but well preserved. Imagine that occurring in a city, and not just the area of the impact crater itself, but the energy and shrapnel and dust generated. Ouch. You can easily see what an effect that things out of our control can have on climate, politics, and life in general. We only pretend to be in control.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
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Originally Posted by
xanfiles1
Again, you should all be worried about Car accidents, Cigarette smoking, Binge Drinking, & Unhealthy living more than anything else. The odds of these items killing you are much greater than any of Global Warming, Asteriods, Terrorists, Hyperinflation, & Alien Attacks combined
We do worry about those things of course as more immediate concerns, but there is a lot to be said for societies investing some common funds and efforts into survival of the society, and in this case, the species, as a whole. Chances are we won't benefit from asteroid detection and diversion research, but almost assuredly a future generation would. In the mean time, research in most fields tends to have secondary, unexpected benefits for the current society.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Man, this thread is a great read. I love this stuff. :yes:
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jay Zeno
Sorry, TOO, we posted at the same time.
To further geekify, the Age of the Dinosaurs was helped along by a meteor impact at the end of the Permian era, 250 million years ago, which wiped out 90% of the species then on the planet. Super mass extinction. Then the dinosaurs took over. But the meteors giveth, the meteors taketh away, and 185 million years later, another pesky object, the one that TOO referred to, took out much of the active life on the planet then.
The Tunguska event that he referred to was the most recent one, and thankfully occurred in a deserted area. It blasted 800 square miles of trees. Imagine if it had fallen on a population center, such as ....
... in the 15th century, when 10,000 people in northern China were killed by a hail of meteorites, probably from the breakup of a meteor entering the atmosphere.
To see, up close and personal, what a good-sized meteor can do, visit Meteor Crater in Arizona. It's 50,000 years old but well preserved. Imagine that occurring in a city, and not just the area of the impact crater itself, but the energy and shrapnel and dust generated. Ouch. You can easily see what an effect that things out of our control can have on climate, politics, and life in general. We only pretend to be in control.
But I thought baby Jesus made the earth 6000 years ago?
Whaaaaaaaat?!
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
Funny, off-topic (kinda) story: My prof and some front-row chick got into a screaming match in my bio lecture about evolution vs. creation. It was so sad and so funny at the same time because creation chick had the nerve to file a complaint with the Dean about how evolution shouldn't be taught because there's no scientific basis for it.
Huh?! There's so much evidence of evolution! I hope she failed the course.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
^ It's unfortunate that the professor engaged in a screaming match. It's unprofessional and, much more important, a lost opportunity to reach out and perhaps connect with somebody.
Most religions are closed belief systems (except Buddhism, which is so cool it doesn't even need a God) while science, properly understood, is an open one. It's unlikely he would have convinced her of anything on the spot, but he might have been able to encourage her to expand her horizons a bit. Which is the whole point of higher education. Right?
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
I occasionally peek at the moon to remind myself that we live in a universe where big rocks smash into other big rocks at random.
We were fortunate to have lived in a time and place where we could witness even bigger rocks smashing into Jupiter not so long ago. If anyone needed eye witness proof, that is about as close as I'd want to be to the actual event.
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
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Originally Posted by
TheSexKitten
Man, this thread is a great read. I love this stuff. :yes:
Me too! I love being reminded what a bunch of brainy folks we are here. Mmmm sexybrainmeats....
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Originally Posted by
Morgan_TX
Pffffft. Just screams "cover up" all over. ;D
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!
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Originally Posted by
lizlizliz
But I thought baby Jesus made the earth 6000 years ago?
Whaaaaaaaat?!
Yes, and then rearranged the laws of radioactive reduction, sedimentation, and fossilization on this planet for the sole purpose of making us believe that things are far, far older than they really are. That, the platypus, and the placebo effect were the biggest divine practical jokes ever.
(Have you noticed how these fundamentalist types like quantum physics when it comes to putting up giant video displays in megachurches or warming up their coffee in microwaves, but scoff at science when it comes to dating things by those same principles?)
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Re: 1 in 450...I like those odds!