[ExI] Asteroid on track for possible (probability of 1:25) Marshit

[Ian Goddard]

Kevin H wrote:

> Not to interrupt your discussion, but it seems to 
> me that detection is probably of much greater 
> importance than deflection at this stage of the
> game, given that our ability to deflect an 
> asteroid, comet, or other NEO is directly 
> proportional to the amount of advanced warning we 
> have that a strike is imminent or probable.  My 
> idea is a solar-system wide network of space 
> telescopes, whether they be optical, radio, x-ray 
> or other radiation, to improve our detection rates 
> and so we don't have to depend so much on
> earth-based telescopes.  


 Great idea! Perhaps many small low-cost space buoys
positioned widely throughout the solar-system that
scan a wide regional area and together build a dynamic
map of all the asteroids out there. Of course they are
working on such a map, but not with such a network of
mechanical 'observers'. You might not even need that
many observer buoys.


> What really strikes me is that we didn't even learn 
> about this asteroid until late November, and it 
> just shows how blind we are to such objects.


 In a way I hope it hits lifeless Mars with a
devestating impact because that might be the only
thing that will get people to take this very real
existential threat seriously. Hay, we could be next!


> Sorry to interrupt, the question on what to do with 
> such an object when we find it is also interesting 
> and valuable.  I just wanted to put my two cents
> in.

 Some do have the attitude that a third person can
intrude in a dialog between two on a list. I know
someone once said I was interrupt when I made a
comment like yours. But I think if a dialog is taking
place on a public list, there's no proper sense of
interruption. If two interlocutors don't want to be
interrupted, they should take it offlist. ~Ian


http://IanGoddard.net 

"All inferences from experience suppose, as their
foundation, that the future will resemble the past,
and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar
sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion, that
the course of nature may change, and that the past may
be no rule for the future, all experience becomes
useless, and can give rise to no inference or
conclusion." - Hume 



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