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Earth NASA Science

Expect a Major Asteroid Strike in Your Lifetime, Says NASA Head (cnet.com) 219

This week, as scientists work through an exercise simulating an imminent asteroid impact with Earth, NASA's administrator Jim Bridenstine warned the real-world threat should be taken seriously. From a report: Bridenstine acknowledged "the giggle factor," the dismissive response the topic has been met with in the past, at the start of his keynote remarks Monday at the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference in College Park, Maryland. "We have to make sure that people understand that this is not about Hollywood, it's not about movies," he said. "This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know, right now, to host life and that is the planet Earth." As part of the conference activities, space agencies will also be live-tweeting a fictional exercise simulating what it might be like if such an asteroid were discovered on a collision course with our planet.
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Expect a Major Asteroid Strike in Your Lifetime, Says NASA Head

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  • really... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GoTeam ( 5042081 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @05:05PM (#58518596)
    You should only ever be worried if he says this while boarding a rocket.
    • That's what I used to tell people who learnt I worked at CERN and were worried about the LHC creating Black Holes. That was until one guy told me that CERN had a space plane because he had read about it in a book. Apparently, it was that well-known reference book "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown. If people can't tell fiction from fact logic is not always going to work.
  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @05:12PM (#58518632) Journal

    ...time to get rich [teecraze.com]

    • We need to get this problem sorted ASAP... before Bruce Willis is too old to play a key role!

    • by J053 ( 673094 )

      You know, many years ago (back when there were actual printed magazines, with ads in the back - you know, the Dark Ages) I figured that with the right selection of magazines, a "meteorite insurance" scam would probably work pretty well. Actuarially, the chances of anyone being hit by a meteorite are infinitesimal (although it has happened, which could be used in the marketing material). I was thinking of selling a $100K lifetime policy for about $5-10 - until I discovered the size of the bond you need to pu

  • by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @05:19PM (#58518658)
    I'm moving. This planet is getting to dangerous.
    • Re:That's it... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @05:58PM (#58518836) Journal

      I'm moving. This planet is getting to dangerous.

      That reminds me of the time Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to comment on the claim that Earth seems perfectly designed for humans, per Creationism.

      His reply was, in part, that Earth is in a galactic shooting gallery and reminded the audience that we are here because the dinosaurs got smacked. Take heed. Aside from asteroids and comets, there's also potential supervolcanoes and nearby supernovae.

      • Mr Tyson. Read his book about astrophysics and the military.. And who is going to claim "first post" and "last post"?
      • Re:That's it... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kenwd0elq ( 985465 ) <kenwd0elq@engineer.com> on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @11:30PM (#58519874)

        The Earth _IS_ the perfect place for humans. Because we evolved here. If there are other life forms in the universe, they will be perfect for THEIR environments, because they evolved there.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Wrong. Humans evolved into a niche that existed in the past from a lineage of similar creatures. This convergence into a niche is based on a local imperfect optimization. Further, long term species die out because niches appear and disappear over time and few species can adapt without diverging into other species, with those divergent species out competing them. The point is, just because humans are alive today means merely there hasn't been enough selective pressure (or simply bad luck) that has wiped

      • the one I like is Doug Adam's puddle argument [goodreads.com]
  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @05:19PM (#58518660)

    Problem solved.

  • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @05:25PM (#58518690) Homepage

    If it's a really BIG asteroid, then it's guaranteed not to come until the very end of your lifetime anyway.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Sure, because that's how statistics work. But honestly, there's a lot of other things that is a lot more likely to kill me individually. Heck, even if a 100 MT nuke would wipe out my entire home town humanity would survive just fine. If you're talking about the one in a million/billion event that would wipe out nearly all of humanity I'm okay with not being part of the survivors. Without electricity and other basic functionality my skills are utterly worthless and honestly I got very little clue on how we g

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        True, but your risk of being killed by an asteroid or comet strike is probably better than being killed by a terrorist attack.

        • True. Because of the magnitude of the event. How many people have been killed by terrorists in the last 20 years? 20, 30 thousand? 9/11/2001 killed just under 3000; the Beslan school massacre killed about 300; the Bataclan theater attack killed under 200. Those have been the biggest ones to pop into memory. ONE asteroid strike could kill billions. So the risk is based on both the probability of the event and the number of potential deaths.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @05:38PM (#58518748)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • There have been so few major meteor strikes in the last few thousand years of recorded history that we can certainly expect another one pretty soon.

  • - Learn how to dig. Dig until you have a home underground
    - Learn how to gather/treat water
    - Learn how to grow food
    - Learn how to get electricity from the wind. Learn how to conserve energy.
    - Learn how to cooperate
    - Learn how to defend yourself
    - Learn how to live a drastically different and primal life.

  • As part of the conference activities, space agencies will also be live-tweeting a fictional exercise simulating what it might be like if such an asteroid were discovered on a collision course with our planet.

    Space agencies? It's definitely a fictional exercise if it's only the space agencies doing the tweeting. They should hire TimeCube guy to add his input for a more realistic take on the response from humanity in general.

  • by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @07:40PM (#58519248) Journal

    It's a good idea to be ready to protect the only known life-supporting planet and likely only home of what we call intelligent life from asteroids, but unless this guy knows about some particular asteroid on course to slam into Earth in the next few decades, history says we should not expect one in our lifetimes.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      I've talked to history too. The thing about asteroids is they are unpredictable as long as we ignore the usual meteor showers. History was very insistent on this point.

  • Does Chelyabinsk count as "major"? Or Tunguska?

    • Re:Chelyabinsk? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @08:20PM (#58519344)
      Tunguska was "major", but not really bad, only because of when and where. 2 dead, and a bunch of trees.
      That same one over or near any major city today? 20-30 megaton equivalent? Millions dead.
    • by Trogre ( 513942 )

      Since both of those exploded over Russia, I guess I'd be a little more nervous living there now.

      On the other hand, Russia is very, very, big.

    • Yes. It's actually what the title was referring to:

      Bridenstine went on to say that the cause of detecting, tracking and studying asteroids and other near-Earth objects began to be taken more seriously following the Chelyabinsk event of 2013, when a 20-meter (65-foot) meteor exploded in the atmosphere over a Russian city. The resulting shock wave damaged thousands of buildings and sent over 1,500 people to seek medical treatment, mostly for cuts from broken windows and flying glass. "These events are not rare; they happen," Bridenstine said, noting that one model shows we can expect an event of the same magnitude as Chelyabinsk about every 60 years.

      • by kenwd0elq ( 985465 ) <kenwd0elq@engineer.com> on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @11:14PM (#58519830)

        Fun fact; while most of the injuries were caused by flying glass (and a lot of the injuries were to the eyes), the injured were standing AT the glass windows wondering what the bright flash had been. Except in one classroom, where the old teacher, remembering her Soviet drills, ordered her students to hide under their desks. Nobody was injured in that classroom. Proving what we already knew; "Duck and Cover" is a valuable thing to know. Bright flashes in the sky are bad news.

        • "Duck and Cover" drills may have been a part of USian upbringing, but I know of nowhere else that bothered with them. What tiny bit of use could they possibly be? If the nukes come down close enough for you to see the flash, then they are targeted at something near your location, and the first flash you saw is most likely NOT the last nuke that will be targetted on that site. I grew up with a foreign nuclear weapons base (American) in cycling distance one way, Air Force bomber bases probably carrying our nu
  • by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @08:39PM (#58519382)

    Unless you know something that we don't ( and if you do, we're certainly all ears ), people have been proclaiming " The end is nigh " since the end was even a concept.

    Yet, here we are, still having this discussion all these years later.

    A significant impact ( significant implying extinction level event ) is certainly possible given a long enough time span but, at our current level of technology and general understanding of the universe, if it were to happen . . . . there really isn't a damn thing we can do to stop it. Hell, we probably wouldn't even see it coming until the last minute ( if we're lucky ).

    So I fail to see the benefit of worrying about it.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I'd call a hundred kiloton blast over a major city "significant." Airbursts of that size come around every thirty years or so, although none over a city so far.

      • I'd call a hundred kiloton blast over a major city "significant." Airbursts of that size come around every thirty years or so, although none over a city so far.

        For any individual, such an event would be very low on the list of most likely causes of death. For humanity, it would not be a threat.

        • Right, that's like a hurricane or something: city destroyed, send food and FEMA trailers, watch it on the news. Anything big enough to wipe us out is probably too big to do anything about, but a token effort to look into solutions seems more useful than plenty of other expenditures.
        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          And yet fairly far above some of the threats we spend an awful lot of money on.

  • Douglas Adams told us how in the 1980's:

    https://www.goodreads.com/quot... [goodreads.com]

    Funny enough, the Kremlin joke has held up remarkably well over the decades...

  • Not so long ago (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @09:03PM (#58519458) Journal

    I wonder if they are referring to this recent discovery of a massive impact crater discovered under Greenland ice [youtube.com]. Considering the age of the ice it is quite feasible that the Younger Dryas [wikipedia.org] event was from asteroid strike.

    We pass through Taurid [wikipedia.org] meteor shower twice a year so it would seem we have simply been lucky. Maybe governments will start to take this threat a little more seriously, we certainly have the technology to deal with it.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @09:20PM (#58519512)
    and the rest of the rust belt lead free water. There is no way in hell we're gonna protect against asteroid strikes.
    • Rest assured the rich and powerful will be a lot more interested in what might be raining down on their heads than what's in your tap water... and then there's all the pork to be had (aerospace yields far higher profit margins than water treatment).
  • He's not wrong... (Score:4, Informative)

    by BoogieChile ( 517082 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @09:36PM (#58519564)

    Just on a quick'n'dirty survey through this list [wikipedia.org] gives 10 events in the last hundred years that would have not been a good thing to happen over a large population centre, and one that did (and it was not a good thing, although not really what you'd call catastrophic).

  • by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @12:14AM (#58520010)

    What are the chances that our Twitterati unwashed masses will confuse the live tweet simulation for the real thing and go into a panic about a real asteroid strike ?

  • Donâ(TM)t tell me they unionized.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Bridenstine is a Republican, and he toed the Republican party line while in the House, including its denials of science and women's rights.

    When it became clear he was in line for the NASA job, he stopped doing his Congressional job.

    He may be right about the impact threat, but he has no credibility with me.

  • It hasn't happened for about 60 million years, why now? Others tell me I should expect Jesus to come back in my lifetime.

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