Close Asteroid Pass

[Tigers!]

Amazing that even today objects can get so close before we pick them up.

The energy released by a collision would be b-i-g huge. Pity we cannot store it for later.

It is stored for later.

What is your storage mechanism?

Curved spacetime.

Yet how would we access reliably and slowly all that energy? A big bang is rather destructive. Good sugar hit for a once-off.

 

[Bronzeage]

Amazing that even today objects can get so close before we pick them up.

The energy released by a collision would be b-i-g huge. Pity we cannot store it for later.

When Alfred Nobel found a way to process nitroglycerin into Dynamite, the immediate benefit was ships and trains were less likely to vanish in a large cloud of dust. Quite a few inventors tried to use dynamite as fuel for various engine designs. None proved to be practical. While dynamite does contain a great amount of energy in a small volume, and besides the obvious engineering challenges, dynamite, releases that energy too quickly for it to be of any use, unless one wants to destroy stuff in the area.

 

[Bomb#20]

Amazing that even today objects can get so close before we pick them up.

The energy released by a collision would be b-i-g huge. Pity we cannot store it for later.

It is stored for later.

What is your storage mechanism?

Curved spacetime.

Yet how would we access reliably and slowly all that energy? A big bang is rather destructive. Good sugar hit for a once-off.

Reliably and slowly? Who said anything about that? You're totally moving the goalposts, dude!

According to my calculations the asteroid is coming back in 2831. Will pass within a hundred thousand miles. By then DART technology is bound to be up to making it hit any point on the earth's surface we choose. I nominate whacking Chelyabinsk again.

 

[DBT]

What state are we going to be in when 2381 comes around? Maybe the Great Filter will have done its work. Or, if we make it, we'll have built a paradise world.

 

[Elixir]

What state are we going to be in when 2381 comes around? Maybe the Great Filter will have done its work. Or, if we make it, we'll have built a paradise world.

Why are all (most) of our projected futures of that binary nature? It never works out that way. Barring natural, sudden population decimation I would bet every dollar I have in 2381, that not much will change. There will never be a totally egalitarian human society, let alone a global one. But unless all empathic and benevolent impulse is suppressed by survival urgency, earth could be pretty nice for a lot of - maybe most - people. Others will suffer badly, even in the best paradise scenario. All that changes are the percentages, and the ever-evolving notions of hardship and ease.

 

[DBT]

What state are we going to be in when 2381 comes around? Maybe the Great Filter will have done its work. Or, if we make it, we'll have built a paradise world.

Why are all (most) of our projected futures of that binary nature? It never works out that way. Barring natural, sudden population decimation I would bet every dollar I have in 2381, that not much will change. There will never be a totally egalitarian human society, let alone a global one. But unless all empathic and benevolent impulse is suppressed by survival urgency, earth could be pretty nice for a lot of - maybe most - people. Others will suffer badly, even in the best paradise scenario. All that changes are the percentages, and the ever-evolving notions of hardship and ease.

Given our impact on the planet and its ecosystems, it seems that our business model - profit driven consumerism, upwardly mobile wealth distribution - can't be sustained in the long term. If so, we either radically transform our society, our business model, or we crash/the Great Filter.

 

[steve_bank]

Civilizations rose and fell.

It is looking like the American experiment may be relatively short lived.

COVID and now Trump shows how fragile we and our system is. Trump is having disastrous effects on the world and republicans do nothing.

Listen to what is going on in Africa.

We know a killer asteroid is when not if. You would think we would be going full scale to develop ways to intercept asteroids.

And Musk is spending a lot of money to go to thee Moon and Mars.

Planetary Defense at NASA - NASA Science

science.nasa.gov

Planetary Defense at NASA

In 2016, NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to manage the agency's ongoing mission of finding, tracking, and better understanding asteroids and comets that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. Here you can stay informed about the PDCO, NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program, and upcoming planetary defense flight missions, including NASA'S NEO Surveyor mission.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-dart-mission-changed-orbit-of-asteroid-didymos-around-sun/

The Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube traveled alongside NASA’s DART to capture the spacecraft’s collision with Dimorphos. In this LICIACube image, taken moments after impact on Sept. 26, 2022, rocky debris can be seen fanning out from the smaller asteroid below its larger binary partner,

 

[Elixir]

we either radically transform our society, our business model, or we crash/the Great Filter.

I believe that dynamic is in play, but “crash” implies a sudden-ness that I wouldn’t expect to see. And as it occurs, the awareness of it rises and counter-measures come into play.
Radical transformation is the result in the long term, but that can always be assumed, regardless.