Re: [Utah-astronomy] Should NASA deflect asteriod MN2004?
What causes the most destruction from a nuclear bomb on earth is the blast wave traveling through the atmosphere. No atmosphere, no blast wave. So the bomb on the surface or nearby would only have the effect of from the light of the fireball. This would just put a fine pottery glaze on a silicate rich asteroid. What you need is for Bruce Willis to drill a hole to the center of the asteroid and seal the shaft before detonation. This would cause the formation of a plasma gas whose pressure would burst the asteroid like cherry bomb in a cantaloupe. Those who have done THAT experiment find that you end up with large chunks instead of small pieces. So you would end trade one large problem for several smaller problems the biggest of which could be half of the original asteroid. We need another plan. DT ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
I played drums in a few local clubs around town, that seemed to be void of any atmosphere, but man, did we bomb. ;) Looked like a scene right out of the Blues Brothers movie... ;) We still have plenty of time. If it becomes that big a threat, science will come up with something. But if we don't what the heck, I wasn't planning on living forever... Quoting daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com>:
What causes the most destruction from a nuclear bomb on earth is the blast wave traveling through the atmosphere. No atmosphere, no blast wave. So the bomb on the surface or nearby would only have the effect of from the light of the fireball. This would just put a fine pottery glaze on a silicate rich asteroid. What you need is for Bruce Willis to drill a hole to the center of the asteroid and seal the shaft before detonation. This would cause the formation of a plasma gas whose pressure would burst the asteroid like cherry bomb in a cantaloupe. Those who have done THAT experiment find that you end up with large chunks instead of small pieces. So you would end trade one large problem for several smaller problems the biggest of which could be half of the original asteroid.
We need another plan.
DT
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Guy, The only difference between one of us dying and all of us dying at once is the flippin' (Napoleon Dynamite-ese) big line up at the gate to which ever place you are going. Oh, that reminds me of an old Russian proverb: "You go to heaven for the weather, You go to hell for the company."... B) (BTW, this flippant answer is not meant to start a thread on the true implications of planetary destruction... B) 73 de n7zi Gary "Why buy something for ten bucks when you can make it for a hundred." JR ----- Original Message ----- From: <diveboss@xmission.com> To: <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 9:37 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Should NASA deflect asteriod MN2004?
We still have plenty of time. If it becomes that big a threat, science will come up with something. But if we don't what the heck, I wasn't planning on living forever...
Hey, speak for yourself Guy. My grandparents/aunts/uncles have been living into their mid 90s. I don't want to buck that trend. diveboss@xmission.com wrote: We still have plenty of time. If it becomes that big a threat, science will come up with something. But if we don't what the heck, I wasn't planning on living forever... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
To any on the list who expected, as I did, that I'd have a story in tomorrow's paper about the fascinating debate going on re. ID: the article isn't finished and won't be in for a while yet. Sorry, Joe
Joe Bauman wrote:
To any on the list who expected, as I did, that I'd have a story in tomorrow's paper about the fascinating debate going on re. ID: the article isn't finished and won't be in for a while yet. Sorry, Joe
Hi, Along those lines, this looked interesting. http://www.newsday.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-harvard-evolution,0,715695.s... Patrick :-)
Quote by Patrick...
Along those lines, this looked interesting.
Quote from the article: "My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. If you announce that you are going to investigate something, and then immediately predict the outcome, then what's the purpose of the investigation? Why waste the money? Quote from the article: "Evolution is a fundamental scientific theory that species evolved over millions of years." All I know is, based on the way Patrick climbs and swings from the old shutter rails on top of the old dome at SPOC, I would have to say he has a lot of 'Monkey' still in his genes... ;) o : - ) o
The purpose is to see if your prediction is in fact correct or if it's not. You don't know for sure until you do the investigating and experimenting. diveboss@xmission.com wrote: If you announce that you are going to investigate something, and then immediately predict the outcome, then what's the purpose of the investigation? Why waste the money? --------------------------------- Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
Quoting South Jordan Mom <sjordanmom@yahoo.com>:
Hey, speak for yourself Guy. My grandparents/aunts/uncles have been living into their mid 90s. I don't want to buck that trend.
That's a pretty good trend, so for you, I hope you live to be at least that old.
Daniel, sorry if I wasn't clear, I was talking about a surface hit, "near miss" meaning away from a 'geographical' center. Besides, it's only 1/3 of a kilometer in diameter. Several H-bombs could easily vaporize it if spaced appropriately on the surface, or at least make the resulting fragments small enough to not worry about. And last time I checked, Newtonian physics still worked even in the absence of an atmosphere. Surface detonations, on the right spot, would be a dandy reaction engine for deflection purposes even if it stayed in one piece. The bomb plan is still a good contender. --- daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> wrote:
What causes the most destruction from a nuclear bomb on earth is the blast wave traveling through the atmosphere. No atmosphere, no blast wave. So the bomb on the surface or nearby would only have the effect of from the light of the fireball. This would just put a fine pottery glaze on a silicate rich asteroid. What you need is for Bruce Willis to drill a hole to the center of the asteroid and seal the shaft before detonation. This would cause the formation of a plasma gas whose pressure would burst the asteroid like cherry bomb in a cantaloupe. Those who have done THAT experiment find that you end up with large chunks instead of small pieces. So you would end trade one large problem for several smaller problems the biggest of which could be half of the original asteroid.
We need another plan.
DT
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I just did some quick, back of the envelope calculations on the energy in MN2004. They show that its kinetic energy is equivalent to 8.17E8 tons of TNT - that's 817 megatons of TNT. This is based on a mass of 4.6E10 kg., and an impact velocity of 1.24E4 m/sec. Assuming ALL of the energy of three 50 megaton blasts went into changing the velocity of the asteroid, it wouldn't change the impact effect all that much. Of course, since its velocity changed, it would delay its impact until another revolution, or eliminate it all together. Unfortunately, since these blasts would be impulses, and not steady applied forces, chances of the velocity changing may be small, and the result only be that the mass of the asteroid still impacts the earth and its atmosphere. Now, however, it would be radioactive. What would be the effect of all those radioactive particles, boulders, and gases striking the earth? Would it destroy the upper layers of the atmosphere, and leave us without vital protection against UV, etc.? BTW, Krakatoa was 200 megatons. The 800 megaton blast would be very survivable for MOST (>99.999%) of the life on earth. Oh well, its going to miss us anyway. But the estimate is that it would be as bright as magnitude 3.3 as it passes by. That should be a real show! --- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
Daniel, sorry if I wasn't clear, I was talking about a surface hit, "near miss" meaning away from a 'geographical' center. Besides, it's only 1/3 of a kilometer in diameter. Several H-bombs could easily vaporize it if spaced appropriately on the surface, or at least make the resulting fragments small enough to not worry about. And last time I checked, Newtonian physics still worked even in the absence of an atmosphere. Surface detonations, on the right spot, would be a dandy reaction engine for deflection purposes even if it stayed in one piece. The bomb plan is still a good contender.
--- daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> wrote:
What causes the most destruction from a nuclear bomb on earth is the blast wave traveling through the atmosphere. No atmosphere, no blast wave. So the bomb on the surface or nearby would only have the effect of from the light of the fireball. This would just put a fine pottery glaze on a silicate rich asteroid. What you need is for Bruce Willis to drill a hole to the center of the asteroid and seal the shaft before detonation. This would cause the formation of a plasma gas whose pressure would burst the asteroid like cherry bomb in a cantaloupe. Those who have done THAT experiment find that you end up with large chunks instead of small pieces. So you would end trade one large problem for several smaller problems the biggest of which could be half of the original asteroid.
We need another plan.
DT
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Yes, an 800 megaton blast would be directly survivable for those not immediately affected by the impact, but what about possible collapse of the foodchain if enough particulates are injected into the stratosphere? Not to mention ecconomic collapse for a large portion of the world if it hits just about anywhere in an industrialized region? Wouldn't you rather go quickly, than slowly starve or freeze to death? Where does that leave us? So nuclear blasts won't deflect it (forget about an ion engine putting away in a crevasse), and they won't destroy it. Why spend money to land a beacon on it to refine it's orbit when there's nothing that can be done about it? Why bother tracking any near-earth objects at all? Have certain astronomers handed us propaganda just to secure funding (paychecks) for pet projects for which there is no solution if a large impactor is discovered? So we can throw trillions of dollars at new technology that won't do a thing, so we can feel good about doing "something"? Just curious, I'm not the pessimist here, but asking questions prompted by those who have suggested that our options are (extremely) limited. I've been trying to float ideas (albeit off-the-cuff), not shooting them down. What can be done, if anything? --- Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
I just did some quick, back of the envelope calculations on the energy in MN2004. They show that its kinetic energy is equivalent to 8.17E8 tons of TNT - that's 817 megatons of TNT. This is based on a mass of 4.6E10 kg., and an impact velocity of 1.24E4 m/sec. Assuming ALL of the energy of three 50 megaton blasts went into changing the velocity of the asteroid, it wouldn't change the impact effect all that much. Of course, since its velocity changed, it would delay its impact until another revolution, or eliminate it all together.
Unfortunately, since these blasts would be impulses, and not steady applied forces, chances of the velocity changing may be small, and the result only be that the mass of the asteroid still impacts the earth and its atmosphere. Now, however, it would be radioactive.
What would be the effect of all those radioactive particles, boulders, and gases striking the earth? Would it destroy the upper layers of the atmosphere, and leave us without vital protection against UV, etc.?
BTW, Krakatoa was 200 megatons. The 800 megaton blast would be very survivable for MOST (>99.999%) of the life on earth.
Oh well, its going to miss us anyway. But the estimate is that it would be as bright as magnitude 3.3 as it passes by. That should be a real show!
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Chuck Hards wrote:
Yes, an 800 megaton blast would be directly survivable for those not immediately affected by the impact, but what about possible collapse of the foodchain if enough particulates are injected into the stratosphere? Not to mention ecconomic collapse for a large portion of the world if it hits just about anywhere in an industrialized region? Wouldn't you rather go quickly, than slowly starve or freeze to death?
I'm reminded of a quote attributed to then Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev. It went something like "In the event of an all out nuclear exchange the living will envy the dead." Patrick
Brent is right in that 800 megatons is on the small side re: global devastation eccologically; I pointed out that the socio-ecconomic & political impact might be larger than has been admitted by the list engineers. It's certainly nowhere near the scale of an all-out nuke exchange between two highly armed industrialized nations. But it also appears that for the ion-engine deflection scheme to work, or dusting an asteroid white for a solar-sail effect (I posted "paint", for want of a better term) means confirming a strike so far in advance that computational uncertainties make accurate prediction impossible at the present time. In other words, there's nothing we can really do in the near future- we had better hope that Michael is right inferring that the likelihood of a significant impact in the near future (within a few generations) is extremely remote, because there is nothing we can do about it anyway, here and now. Barring a major technological breakthrough, NASA (or the Pentagon) can't deflect asteroid MN2004 in a timeframe of any personal significance to utah-astronomy list members. --- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
I'm reminded of a quote attributed to then Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev. It went something like "In the event of an all out nuclear exchange the living will envy the dead."
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Good summary Chuck, I agree 100%. --- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
Brent is right in that 800 megatons is on the small side re: global devastation eccologically; I pointed out that the socio-ecconomic & political impact might be larger than has been admitted by the list engineers. It's certainly nowhere near the scale of an all-out nuke exchange between two highly armed industrialized nations. But it also appears that for the ion-engine deflection scheme to work, or dusting an asteroid white for a solar-sail effect (I posted "paint", for want of a better term) means confirming a strike so far in advance that computational uncertainties make accurate prediction impossible at the present time. In other words, there's nothing we can really do in the near future- we had better hope that Michael is right inferring that the likelihood of a significant impact in the near future (within a few generations) is extremely remote, because there is nothing we can do about it anyway, here and now. Barring a major technological breakthrough, NASA (or the Pentagon) can't deflect asteroid MN2004 in a timeframe of any personal significance to utah-astronomy list members.
--- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
I'm reminded of a quote attributed to then Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev. It went something like "In the event of an all out nuclear exchange the living will envy the dead."
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I guess asteroids are like the weather...everyone talks about them, but no one can do anything about them. ;) This made me think about comet collisions. Projecting a comet's location into the far future is even more difficult, since comets already have their own, rather unpredictable "engines" to alter their orbits over the long-term...but at least they advertise their presence a little better! --- Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
I agree 100%.
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--- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote: <snip> I'm confused on this one. If 2004MN is 320 meters in diameter, the U.S., the Soviet Union and other major powers did about 450 open air tests during the 1950s-1960s < http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab15.asp >, including 1-2 megaton bursts that dug holes over 1000ft in diameter < Operation Plowshare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshares >, why is it a big deal to vaporize 2004MN? The point is to split 2004MN up into pebbles that will result in a really neat meteor storm that will not penetrate to the ground, instead of a single mass equivalent to a 800 megaton kinetic energy bomb that will reach the surface. The consequence of the U.S., U.S.S.R and other major power's reprehensible program of open air nuke testing was to induce, in the United States, about 120,000 cases of thyriod cancer and killing 6,000. < http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/index.html > The U.S. detonated about 200 atmospheric bombs, mostly between 10kt and 2 megatons, with the largest around 15 megatons in 1954. The Soviets one-up manshipped us with the Tsar Bomba 50 megaton blast in 1962. The result was the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty (prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons in outer space). As a child in the 1950s and early 1960s, I drank fallout-contanimated milk, and probably ended up with a 300 rad cumulative dose like everyone else did at the time in this country. I may or may not have a residual case of cancer from it. (Even if I did I would never be able to show it was caused by the atmospheric testing in the 1950s.) But the world didn't come to end from atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s-early 1960s. What's the big deal if you use a 1-5 megaton bomb to "pebbelize" 2004MN, if the alternative is a sub-continent killing 800 megaton blast? Even if the Earth plows into the radioactive cloud of the explosion, are the atmospheric effects going to be any worse from the U.S. in 15 megaton Castle Bravo blast < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravoatmosphere > ? If detonated several days out from Earth, part of the radioactive cloud would be trapped in the Van Allen Belt, which was the point of the StarFish Prime < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime > and Operation Argus test blasts < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Argus >. I'm no advocate of nuclear testing and feel nuclear weapons should dismantled as much and as quickly as possible. Just wondering about the physics. - Canopus56(Kurt) Doug Adams, _Mostly Harmless_ (1992): "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
participants (9)
-
Brent Watson -
Canopus56 -
Chuck Hards -
daniel turner -
diveboss＠xmission.com -
Gary Liptrot -
Joe Bauman -
Patrick Wiggins -
South Jordan Mom