ChatterBank1 min ago
Did anyone watch Horizon, Asteroids, the good the bad and the ugly last night?
What a fantastic program and what great insight into the mysterious life of an asteroid, i have several questions regarding this program.
They say that after the earth turned solid after the lava had dried it would've been dry as a bone and water had to ave came from asteroids r comets, just how big or how many would've had to have hit to have filled all the worlds seas and rivers?
They also have replicated the building blocks of life being made in the lab which shows that with the water WE could've came from elsewhere making US the aliens on this planet, what do you say about that?
They showed that the asteroid hit that exploded and flattened Tunguska in Russia, at about 7:14 a.m. June 30th or so in 1908 was from a smaller asteroid, as was the one that slammed into the nubian desert of sudan which was only seen 24 hours before impact taking us, nasa and many other agencies completey by surprise. According to the program we cannot track these smaller ones until it is too late.
What is the likelyhood of several of these asteroids slamming into the earth after being dislodged from the asteroid belt, or just one small enough not to be detected but big enough to end life as the quote yesterday was an asteroid several hundred meters across and made from dense iron nickel had the explosive force of hundreds of Hiroshima bombs. Is it likely that one of these smaller ones could end life here? What would be the damage if one of these hit a major city and/or hit a deep part of the sea?
Final question, should we stop spending billions and billions on war and weapons when the enemy that destroys us is going to be an asteroid, all the weapons in the world wont help us then will they so let us stad together as we will on the day that a big asteroid is going to obliterate us and let us devise ways to work together and try and think up of ways of trying to stop us being extinct which is not a matter of *if* but a matter of *When*
They say that after the earth turned solid after the lava had dried it would've been dry as a bone and water had to ave came from asteroids r comets, just how big or how many would've had to have hit to have filled all the worlds seas and rivers?
They also have replicated the building blocks of life being made in the lab which shows that with the water WE could've came from elsewhere making US the aliens on this planet, what do you say about that?
They showed that the asteroid hit that exploded and flattened Tunguska in Russia, at about 7:14 a.m. June 30th or so in 1908 was from a smaller asteroid, as was the one that slammed into the nubian desert of sudan which was only seen 24 hours before impact taking us, nasa and many other agencies completey by surprise. According to the program we cannot track these smaller ones until it is too late.
What is the likelyhood of several of these asteroids slamming into the earth after being dislodged from the asteroid belt, or just one small enough not to be detected but big enough to end life as the quote yesterday was an asteroid several hundred meters across and made from dense iron nickel had the explosive force of hundreds of Hiroshima bombs. Is it likely that one of these smaller ones could end life here? What would be the damage if one of these hit a major city and/or hit a deep part of the sea?
Final question, should we stop spending billions and billions on war and weapons when the enemy that destroys us is going to be an asteroid, all the weapons in the world wont help us then will they so let us stad together as we will on the day that a big asteroid is going to obliterate us and let us devise ways to work together and try and think up of ways of trying to stop us being extinct which is not a matter of *if* but a matter of *When*
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It was on, but I wasn't giving it the attention I should have done. I complain there is not enough science programmes and then don't make use of the ones there are :-(
How big/many would need to have hit ? I suspect the only reasonable answer is "many". Would depend on how much water each held.
What do you say about that ?
"Very interesting, but I thought already well known life may have been brought here. There rather a discussion about whether Earth life started on Mars, and it could have started in intergalactic space".
The odds of getting hit by anything significant during your lifetime must be small since the papers are not reporting this every year. And you can see that the devastation of a smaller one is limited by considering the Tunguska account. The human race has been around a fraction of the time the dinosaurs were so I don't rate the chance of oblivion for our race very likely in the near future. Certainly not worth worrying about.
The money spent of war drives scientific advancement since otherwise it would go towards welfare and the incentive to advance much reduced. War is an evil but has that silver lining. In any case the risk of hostility isn't going to go away if you unilaterally opted not to have a military. Chances are you'd just get invaded and then not be able to control what you did or did not spend on. If you want peace you must prepare for war.
Anyway who is to say this will be an issue anyway ? By the time the next large collision occurs we may have left the planet, or know how to change the course of the oncoming asteroid.
How big/many would need to have hit ? I suspect the only reasonable answer is "many". Would depend on how much water each held.
What do you say about that ?
"Very interesting, but I thought already well known life may have been brought here. There rather a discussion about whether Earth life started on Mars, and it could have started in intergalactic space".
The odds of getting hit by anything significant during your lifetime must be small since the papers are not reporting this every year. And you can see that the devastation of a smaller one is limited by considering the Tunguska account. The human race has been around a fraction of the time the dinosaurs were so I don't rate the chance of oblivion for our race very likely in the near future. Certainly not worth worrying about.
The money spent of war drives scientific advancement since otherwise it would go towards welfare and the incentive to advance much reduced. War is an evil but has that silver lining. In any case the risk of hostility isn't going to go away if you unilaterally opted not to have a military. Chances are you'd just get invaded and then not be able to control what you did or did not spend on. If you want peace you must prepare for war.
Anyway who is to say this will be an issue anyway ? By the time the next large collision occurs we may have left the planet, or know how to change the course of the oncoming asteroid.
What a lot of Questions!
Let me ee if I can help with some of them
1/ Not to take the mick but it depends on how big they were - you can't really compare the conditions now with those in the heavy bonbardment period. at that time there was a lot of material that hadn't initially formed part of planets and was getting swept up by young planets - so although they're being referred to as comets here they could easilly have been much much bigger than the sort of comes we are used to seeing today.
2/ I didn't see the program but this doesn't really make a lot of sense. There is a huge difference between the "building blocks of life" and life. The sort of amino acids that are often referred to this way are easilly formed - put some chemicals in a container, pass an electrical current through it and you'll get the "building blocks of life" - to compare that to something self replicating like RNA is like comparing a transistor to a PC.
There are extremeophiles that have been shown to survive a long time in space but not really long enough to travel from another solar system.
I think the consensus of opinion is rather that this is possible but pretty improbable 100:1 against sort of odds.
3/ its difficult to calculate the probability of a big Asteroid strike because it's mathematically impossible to be precisely certain about orbits - a bit like weather forecasts - however if you look back in the past and make the over assumption that all mass extinctions were down to large Asteroid strikes then there are 10s of millions of years between them so the odds are pretty long
4/ I don't think it's a question of worrying about a plet distroying event - It's pretty improbable and there's probably not much we could really do about it anyway - More interestingly should we worry about moderate size objects that we could detect ahead of time and specifically in the computing power to pedict where they might impact - we could then possibly evacuate a major city.
This could perhaps also predict where old satellites and space stations might land!
That is not a matter of probability but is certain and seems to be getting worse
Let me ee if I can help with some of them
1/ Not to take the mick but it depends on how big they were - you can't really compare the conditions now with those in the heavy bonbardment period. at that time there was a lot of material that hadn't initially formed part of planets and was getting swept up by young planets - so although they're being referred to as comets here they could easilly have been much much bigger than the sort of comes we are used to seeing today.
2/ I didn't see the program but this doesn't really make a lot of sense. There is a huge difference between the "building blocks of life" and life. The sort of amino acids that are often referred to this way are easilly formed - put some chemicals in a container, pass an electrical current through it and you'll get the "building blocks of life" - to compare that to something self replicating like RNA is like comparing a transistor to a PC.
There are extremeophiles that have been shown to survive a long time in space but not really long enough to travel from another solar system.
I think the consensus of opinion is rather that this is possible but pretty improbable 100:1 against sort of odds.
3/ its difficult to calculate the probability of a big Asteroid strike because it's mathematically impossible to be precisely certain about orbits - a bit like weather forecasts - however if you look back in the past and make the over assumption that all mass extinctions were down to large Asteroid strikes then there are 10s of millions of years between them so the odds are pretty long
4/ I don't think it's a question of worrying about a plet distroying event - It's pretty improbable and there's probably not much we could really do about it anyway - More interestingly should we worry about moderate size objects that we could detect ahead of time and specifically in the computing power to pedict where they might impact - we could then possibly evacuate a major city.
This could perhaps also predict where old satellites and space stations might land!
That is not a matter of probability but is certain and seems to be getting worse
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