Monday, December 27, 2004

And on the Subject of Disasters.....

Asteroid may hit Earth...

....In 2029.

Unlike other such rocks, careful study by NASA seems to be putting the odds less and less in our favor. Its now a 1 in 37 percent chance as opposed to the less than 1% chance a few days ago.

This is not a world ending event but could still kill millions, perhaps over a billion indirectly (ejecta induced yearslong winter=famine ect).

Compared to earthquakes and tsunami's however, this problem is eminently fixable. In fact NASA is working on a fact finding mission to determine how best to deflect one of these fearsome Mcguffins. Since 2002 the US Govt has been seriously looking into this problem, though they were following the UK in this regard. Gyre has a whole thread devoted to this and Lawrence Livermore Labs hosted a symposium on this not long ago and a very informative and detailed summary is here.

Sadly, it is unlikely that THIS NASA proposal is really practical. ;)

No comments: