How NASA Plans to Deal with Killer Asteroids

[SpaceyBoi19]

Very interesting, I wonder what deflection/planetary defense technologies we will have in the near future. It is extremely scary to know that a threat may someday exist. May just be me or I am getting really paranoid from these Asteroid Collision Simulations. Anyways, nice thread. Hope to see some updates with DART and maybe even it in action.

 

[Catastrophe]

Of course beyond a certain size there is absolutely nothing which can be done.

In the past scarcely any planet in our Solar System has avoided being hit by something very large.
Mercury has an oversize core. Probably an impact resulted loss of mantle, much of which probably went into the Sun.
Venus rotates slowly and retrograde - probably due to impact
Earth was hit by Theia to form Moon
Jupiter was hit by comet Levy-Shoemaker-9 in 1992 as seen by millions on Earth
Uranus has been knocked over by about 90 degrees and rotates sideways

Most of these happened billions of years ago when there was much more large stuff floating around (Late Heavy Bombardment 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago) but a comet hitting Jupiter in (most of?) our lifetimes shows it can still happen.
Who knows what is still out there? Planet X is supposed to be pretty large.

What worries me is that however good the calculations

1. Dangerous objects may still be deflected by Jupiter or some other body
2. Not long ago two passed by us in the same day and one we did not see until it was on its way off.

Never mind. I think we are still pretty safe. The human race will probably be extinct in 200 years from its own stupidity viz overpopulation, starvation, global warming etc etc.. Just my opinion.

Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

Two days notice, and within Moon orbit.

Whatever happened to the couple of years of gentle nudging?

 

[Geomartian]

To understand the threat from asteroids you need to have an accurate record of how often they hit and with what magnitudes of energy. There is a problem.

There are many ancient asteroid impacts that have become filled with organic material which later becomes oil. The existence of these asteroid/basins is proprietary information with government agencies worldwide respecting inalienable corporate rights by maintaining their secrecy. The US Geological Survey puts the survival of the human race behind oil company profits.

Interstellar asteroids can hit with velocities that can be as much as 500 kms. They can have 100 times more energy (per kilogram) than local asteroids and comets. Interstellar asteroids have only been publicly recognized since Oumuamua (about 3 years).

Interstellar asteroid impacts can produce temperatures that exceed one million degrees. Over billions of years these high temperatures acting with gravity have caused the heavy isotope enrichment (of all elements) of the Earth’s upper crust. The lighter isotopes tend to escape the Earth. Heavier elements like Uranium are often concentrated in the fall back.

The uranium found in the source rock for oil is heavy isotope enriched. The source rock (black shale) often coincides with global or local extinctions.

By the 1970’s the geological record had provided the US government with absolute scientific certainty about the existence of interstellar asteroids. But the public is not notified until 50 years later (when they can longer hide them)?

NASA is headquartered in Houston Texas the oil capital of the world.

NASA is not the organization you want protecting Earth from asteroids. Their history shows them doing the exact opposite, hiding asteroids from mankind.

 

[Mental Avenger]

To understand the threat from asteroids you need to have an accurate record of how often they hit and with what magnitudes of energy. There is a problem.

False. The record of how often they hit and magnitude is irrelevant to what any future asteroid will do. The energy can be calculated when the asteroid is tracked long enough to determine the parameters.

There are many ancient asteroid impacts that have become filled with organic material which later becomes oil. The existence of these asteroid/basins is proprietary information with government agencies worldwide respecting inalienable corporate rights by maintaining their secrecy. The US Geological Survey puts the survival of the human race behind oil company profits.

Asteroids have nothing to do with the oil supply or the oil market. There are no hidden or secret“asteroid” deposits on Earth.

Interstellar asteroids can hit with velocities that can be as much as 500 kms. They can have 100 times more energy (per kilogram) than local asteroids and comets. Interstellar asteroids have only been publicly recognized since Oumuamua (about 3 years).

Not true. The major velocity component of asteroids is from the Earth in it’s orbit striking an asteroid, not the asteroid coming in an hitting the Earth.

Interstellar asteroid impacts can produce temperatures that exceed one million degrees. Over billions of years these high temperatures acting with gravity have caused the heavy isotope enrichment (of all elements) of the Earth’s upper crust. The lighter isotopes tend to escape the Earth. Heavier elements like Uranium are often concentrated in the fall back.
The uranium found in the source rock for oil is heavy isotope enriched. The source rock (black shale) often coincides with global or local extinctions.

Asteroid impacts are not concentrating any useful elements.

By the 1970’s the geological record had provided the US government with absolute scientific certainty about the existence of interstellar asteroids. But the public is not notified until 50 years later (when they can longer hide them)?
NASA is headquartered in Houston Texas the oil capital of the world.
NASA is not the organization you want protecting Earth from asteroids. Their history shows them doing the exact opposite, hiding asteroids from mankind.

NASA is in no way whatsoever connected to the oil industry. The location of any NASA facilities has nothing to do with either oil company locations or oil reserve locations. None. Zero.

 

[Geomartian]

There were two asteroid impacts in the Mexico region at about the K/T boundary. One is about 200,000 years before the boundary which was determined from oil company records. That impact was Chicxulub which caused environmental problems for about ten years. The second created a large igneous province in north eastern Mexico creating an impact plume which burned a path through the oil fields of Texas. The plume transformed oil into graphite as the continent moved westward and south across the plume.

At that time Mexico was much farther east and north. The impact plume is now sitting under New Madrid Missouri.

That dead band from Big Bend Texas through the southeast corner of Oklahoma is the path of the impact plume. Only interstellar asteroids have the energy to punch through the crust and create a plume this large.

Texas geologists are not stupid (incredibly evil but not stupid). Using geochronology and isotope science developed after WWII they figured out the process. That is why there are 7 oil companies who have this information while all the rest of them (and the public) were given false information.

 

[Geomartian]

Without the toxic metallic rich fallout from an interstellar asteroid impacts there would not be any oil. Organic material is food and blaming anoxia for the creation of oil had one big flaw. What about the anaerobic bacteria which would find it quite tasty? The metallic contents of oil shale are toxic to all living things and acts to preserve any organic material including meat. Think of oil as metallically pickled dinosaur. In reality it would have preserved any organic material reaching the ocean floor.



Here is what happens when you drop an alligator into one of the “anoxia” zones in the oceans. The Image is from the Daily Mail in the UK. Curiously nearly every image for these Giant Isopods has location codes which run for several pages.



Giant Isopods have a different form of blood which allows them to function in very low oxygen environments. Their metabolic rates are adapted to zones of anoxia. So much for anoxia creating oil.

 

[Catastrophe]

I don't understand this about oil.

Are you saying oil is not the remains of the Carboniferous forests?7
This seems a very plausible explanation.

 

[Geomartian]

If there had not been a connection between asteroids and oil there would not have been any motivation to write a false scientific narrative. Oil men are competitive (cutthroat) and keeping the secret of how oil is created (and more important where it will appear) was worth over a trillion dollars.

Until recently only seven oil companies and their scientific minions had this knowledge. I am trying to inform their smaller oil business competitors that the US government has been transmitting factual data to the Seven Sisters while giving the smaller oil companies incomplete or deceptive geological data.

I suspect that this will lead to a frank discussion between the victimized smaller companies and the Seven Sisters. (This is Texas I am taking about so I recommend wearing hearing protection since gunfire can permanently damage your hearing).

Eugene Shoemaker dated the seas on the Moon as being about 300 million years old based on crater counting. The seas are actually vast pools of frozen basalt that were created by the impact of an interstellar asteroid. NASA decided to use the date given to them by the Houston controlled geochronology labs. NASA lied to protect an oil company secret. They assigned a date and created a fictional event “The Late Heavy Bombardment” so that the molten material on the lunar surface was ruptured from the liquid core of a young moon.

Eugene Shoemaker got the age right. NASA/Houston lied.

 

[Geomartian]

We go into space or we die. Only a space civilization will have sufficient resources to mount a credible defense against interstellar asteroids.

NASA has a dark past and zero credibility.

 

[Catastrophe]

If there had not been a connection between asteroids and oil there would not have been any motivation to write a false scientific narrative. Oil men are competitive (cutthroat) and keeping the secret of how oil is created (and more important where it will appear) was worth over a trillion dollars.

Until recently only seven oil companies and their scientific minions had this knowledge. I am trying to inform their smaller oil business competitors that the US government has been transmitting factual data to the Seven Sisters while giving the smaller oil companies incomplete or deceptive geological data.

I suspect that this will lead to a frank discussion between the victimized smaller companies and the Seven Sisters. (This is Texas I am taking about so I recommend wearing hearing protection since gunfire can permanently damage your hearing).

Eugene Shoemaker dated the seas on the Moon as being about 300 million years old based on crater counting. The seas are actually vast pools of frozen basalt that were created by the impact of an interstellar asteroid. NASA decided to use the date given to them by the Houston controlled geochronology labs. NASA lied to protect an oil company secret. They assigned a date and created a fictional event “The Late Heavy Bombardment” so that the molten material on the lunar surface was ruptured from the liquid core of a young moon.

Eugene Shoemaker got the age right. NASA/Houston lied.

"The seas are actually vast pools of frozen basalt that were created by the impact of an interstellar asteroid."

Are you sure you mean interstellar asteroid? When I last looked there have only been two interstellar objects identified = Oumuamua and Comet Borisov.

Astrophysics > Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
arXiv:1909.06387 (astro-ph)
[Submitted on 13 Sep 2019]
Authors:Malena Rice, Gregory Laughlin

Abstract: The discovery of 'Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1), the first interstellar interloper, suggests an abundance of free-floating small bodies whose ejection into galactic space cannot be explained by the current population of confirmed exoplanets.

Apart from which, how would you know if an asteroid were interstellar when the occurrence was billions of years ago?

Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

You also posted:
They assigned a date and created a fictional event “The Late Heavy Bombardment”

How do you explain the facts that Mercury has been stripped of much of its mantle, Venus rotates in the opposite direction to the other planets (and much more slowly), Earth was struck by Theia resulting in the formation of the Moon, Uranus rotates 'on its side' ?
The answer of course is that they were all struck by large objects early in the existence of the Solar System.
What do you call this event? It happened some billions of years ago whilst there were yet vast quantities of orbiting debris, enlarging by impacts. A few still remain as 'killer asteroids'

 

[Geomartian]

The only evidence for the late heavy bombardment are bogus dates for the moon rocks. Yes the solar system is a battle field and some of the damage is quite recent geologically speaking.

While I am harping about interstellar asteroids I agree that there are worse things out there. We have almost no chance of doing anything about them except move.

The materials and isotope ratios in black shale require temperatures, energies and impact velocities higher than escape velocity. Some local long period asteroids might be able to create a moderate size plume and possibly black shale.

Any asteroid with enough velocity to create a plasma flare can wipe out all surface life for a hemisphere. Line of sight to a plasma flare that reaches several thousand miles is half the planet. A moderate impact flare might emit 100 megatons of energy per second.

This threat was hidden because money was involved.

 

[Catastrophe]

The only evidence for the late heavy bombardment are bogus dates for the moon rocks. Yes the solar system is a battle field and some of the damage is quite recent geologically speaking.

While I am harping about interstellar asteroids I agree that there are worse things out there. We have almost no chance of doing anything about them except move.

The materials and isotope ratios in black shale require temperatures, energies and impact velocities higher than escape velocity. Some local long period asteroids might be able to create a moderate size plume and possibly black shale.

Any asteroid with enough velocity to create a plasma flare can wipe out all surface life for a hemisphere. Line of sight to a plasma flare that reaches several thousand miles is half the planet. A moderate impact flare might emit 100 megatons of energy per second.

This threat was hidden because money was involved.

I understand a lot of that, except for the last line.
Can you clrify please?

 

[Geomartian]

Pictures of galaxies make them look fluffy and serene. Theories about stars not following elliptical orbits are not factual. Bad example: If a star is rising up through the galactic plane it might encounter another star falling back into the galactic plane. Star on Star collisions seem to be quite rare. The planetary systems around those stars are not so lucky.

These near misses tend to strip off a lot of outer comets and asteroids which then encounter other stars and get their velocity vectors randomized. This is why the galactic plane is an interstellar asteroid shooting gallery.

Venus is spinning the wrong direction (flipped) and Uranus’ axis of rotation is more than 90 degrees off (its rotating on its side). Radar images of Venus showing recent cratering indicating that the entire planet surface was essentially liquefied about 600 million years ago.

An asteroid can be deflected. Deflecting a planet is several magnitudes harder and may not be possible with any technology we may ever possess. A space based civilization without a planetary home is possible. Moving into space might be only available option. The loss of Earth’s biodiversity might still doom such a civilization.

 

[Catastrophe]

"Star collisions seem to be quite rare"

I would say very very very very rare.
The Galactic Plane and the Ecliptic are simply line of sight phenomena when it comes to apparent clashes. You can have the Moon and a particular star apparently aligning (an occultation) but the Moon is approx. 238,900 miles and an aligning star or galaxy or whatever might be 238,900 light years or parsecs or whatever.
Because they align they do not crash.
That is why star collisions are very etc rare.
That explains your first and second paragraphs.

What has paragraph 3 to do with the price of muffins on Titan?

Planetary collisions, like star collisions are very etc rare, so don't worry about that one.
"An asteroid can be deflected. Deflecting a planet is several magnitudes harder and may not be possible with any technology we may ever possess."
Agreed, but unnecessary for same reasons.
Don't worry about some petty little demi-civilisation absolutely irrelevant in terms of the galaxy. If something hits it in a few billion years time, tough! or - if they have had the sense to anticipate it by then - good on them!
If an asteroid hits it earlier then either they cope or they don't.

Cat