So Whats This 2012 Shit Anyway?

Originally Posted by Janus X

according to a panel I read at the vancouver planetarium, a meteorite will come as close as 40000 Km (the moon is 380 000 KM far) to the planet around 2012. Who knows if it will come closer...

NASA has debunked this as a total myth. There is no way a Meteor would come that close without them already basing warnings and preparing for it.

With hope though, maybe a few hundred or thousand people will take this seriously and commit ritualistic suicides in the same fashion as Heaven's Gate, and all the other cult organizations. Maybe the Scientologists will follow suit too (thats hoping for a lot though), and so, we may just solve the problem with overpopulation.

Clearly though, this is nothing but another y2k scare.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Um. A few hundred thousand people isn't going to do jack squat about overpopulation.

A few hundred thousand morons who believe everything though just might do something good for the world.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Nehmi

No way? Its more likely than you think.

Like the article says:

Originally Posted by National Georgasmic

100 Years After Tunguska, Earth Not Ready for Meteors
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
July 1, 2008

A hundred years after a mysterious and massive explosion struck Russia, experts are warning that Earth is ill prepared to face a cosmic catastrophe that could do similar damage.

The blast, known as the Tunguska event, leveled some 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest with the power of nearly 200 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.

Siberia explosion picture

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Remarkably few people witnessed the event, and debate has raged for decades about its cause.

One of the leading theories is that a comet or asteroid hit Earth or exploded upon entering the atmosphere above remote western Siberia.

"Had that same object exploded over a metropolitan area, there would have been millions of people killed," U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (a Republican from California) said yesterday at a briefing at the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

"Right now we have no plan in place to detect these objects far enough out to deflect them."

Odds Are Slim

Meteors in the form of about a hundred tons of dusty particles reach Earth every day.

In fact meteors seen on an average night or during an annual shower are mostly small particles burning up as they enter our atmosphere.

Because Earth is pelted with tiny objects all the time, assessing the probability of larger impacts is far more difficult and controversial.

Experts admit they don't yet know how many so-called Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) orbit close enough to pose a threat.

Most NEOs are asteroids, and NASA currently classifies about 959 asteroids as potentially hazardous.

We would know about now thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope or any outer space observatorial devices of such an object coming to hit the planet.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

Do you have any idea what an impossibly small fraction of space we have under consistent observation? Do you have even the slightest idea? The most detailed and thorough image we have from Hubble is the Deep Field. The Hubble Deep Field is thought to represent roughly one thirteen-millionth of the sky. The observe the entire sky at that level of detail would, with current technology, take over a million years.

Space telescopes are an important and useful development, but omniscient they ain't.

So what you're basically saying is "We won't see it until its right in front of our noses, and then its too late." right? Because what I am implying is we would have ample time to prepare for such an object converging on our planet's orbital trajectory and ample time to do something about it. Not like a NEO is going to just appear out of nowhere and we will just have to brace for impact...

(in before any matrix jokes)

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

But what about the mobile suits?!


Also see Sass' post for more info about changing trajectories and whatnot. It seems possible and likely. Also I am for sending mass amounts of weaponry into space to divert such crisis (Nuclear Missles that can reach outer orbital levels and collide with NEOS and whatnot). Hell, lets equip the International Space Station with reverse low-orbital Ion Cannons at this point and we are set!

I was speaking idiomatically.

Damnit Lehah, I was thinking about posting a Starship troopers reference, but I doubted its validity on being funny.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?