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.

 

[DBT]

Histoty has many exsmples of the collapse of civilisations, empires, city states, some rapidly, some slowly. We may see ourselves as more prepared, but circumstances may change rapidly. History shows that collapse was often due to a combination of climate change, warfare, resource depletion, and political instability rather than a single event, but doesn't that describe the situation we are now in?

Are we on the road to civilisation collapse?

Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us about the risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening.

www.bbc.com

 

[Elixir]

Human institutions are prone to doomed to collapse. They all have done, or are doing, so. Empires are not exempt.
But the actual and full collapse of ALL of what we now call civilization, will require giga-gallons of blood to be shed and/or a global catastrophe of Chixilub-ish proportions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Reality: dynamite is absolutely junk in energy density.

Explosives have been flight-tested, it works as expected. It just doesn't go very far because there's so little energy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

I think it can go down very quickly--grid down will take us out very quickly.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Dust in the atmosphere. 'nuclear winter'.

Watched a show on this.

Year Without a Summer - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1 °F).[1] Summer temperatures in Europe that year were the coldest of any on record between 1766 and 2000,[2] resulting in crop failures and major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.[3]

Evidence suggests that the anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) in April 1815. This eruption was the largest in at least 1,300 years (after the hypothesized eruption causing the volcanic winter of 536); its effect on the climate may have been exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines. The significant amount of volcanic ash and gases released into the atmosphere blocked sunlight, leading to global cooling.

Countries such as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Bourbon Restoration France experienced significant hardship, with food riots and famine becoming common. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Europe was still recovering from the Napoleonic Wars, adding to the socio-economic stress.

An event of the same type happened in 536 CE, devastating Europe and affecting all the world. It was also a volcano, believed to be in Iceland.

 

[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.

Reality: dynamite is absolutely junk in energy density.

Explosives have been flight-tested, it works as expected. It just doesn't go very far because there's so little energy.

An explosive that works as expected is definitely the sales pitch to go with over junk energy density. The dynamite engine was supposed to be a stationary earth bound device, and it was until they actually started it.

 

[DBT]

Dust in the atmosphere. 'nuclear winter'.

Watched a show on this.

Year Without a Summer - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1 °F).[1] Summer temperatures in Europe that year were the coldest of any on record between 1766 and 2000,[2] resulting in crop failures and major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.[3]

Evidence suggests that the anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) in April 1815. This eruption was the largest in at least 1,300 years (after the hypothesized eruption causing the volcanic winter of 536); its effect on the climate may have been exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines. The significant amount of volcanic ash and gases released into the atmosphere blocked sunlight, leading to global cooling.

Countries such as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Bourbon Restoration France experienced significant hardship, with food riots and famine becoming common. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Europe was still recovering from the Napoleonic Wars, adding to the socio-economic stress.

An event of the same type happened in 536 CE, devastating Europe and affecting all the world. It was also a volcano, believed to be in Iceland.

I wonder how we would handle such an event. It's happened before and it's likely to happen again.

 

[Elixir]

grid down will take us out very quickly.

I’d surmise that if it happened today it would take many of us or even most of us out, but it wouldn’t “wipe out humanity”.
I expect “the grid” to be increasingly redundant, increasingly diffused and therefore increasingly resilient as small, reliable power sources come on line.