Technology, Science and the Environment.

[Grebfromgrebland]

18 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/b2e7ee32-ad28-4ec4-89aa-a8b8c98f95a5

 

A case for ignorance being bliss, but knowledge (and action) being necessary, I think.

I feel like this. 

[Buce]

 

Renewed hope for the Tasmanian Devil:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47659640

[Buce]

 

A snapshot in time - stunning new evidence of the death of the dinosaurs:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47755275

 

[Buce]

Found: fossil 'mother lode' created by asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/01/found-fossil-mother-lode-created-by-asteroid-that-wiped-out-dinosaurs

[leicsmac]

On 01/04/2019 at 15:32, Buce said:

Found: fossil 'mother lode' created by asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/01/found-fossil-mother-lode-created-by-asteroid-that-wiped-out-dinosaurs

Darkly fascinating stuff, really.

 

Thanks to where we are now, however, we stand at least a decent chance of finding and stopping something similar happening to the Earth as it is now.

[Suzie the Fox]

3 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Darkly fascinating stuff, really.

 

Thanks to where we are now, however, we stand at least a decent chance of finding and stopping something similar happening to the Earth as it is now.

Do you think so? How would we go about stopping a giant asteroid from hitting the earth now? Unless i am being dumb and we have some super powered lazor guns hovering around the space station ready to shoot it down. 

 

Apologies for sounding condescending, i'm genuinely interested.

Edited 2 April 2019 by Suzie the Fox
to add last paragraph

[Buce]

33 minutes ago, Suzie the Fox said:

Do you think so? How would we go about stopping a giant asteroid from hitting the earth now? Unless i am being dumb and we have some super powered lazor guns hovering around the space station ready to shoot it down. 

 

Apologies for sounding condescending, i'm genuinely interested.

 

We have the ability to spot something that big quite a long time before it actually gets here (I think there is even an active search program for just such a threat). Assuming we saw it soon enough, even a slight nudge would be enough to alter its trajectory, which could possibly be done by a nuclear device being exploded in its near vicinity.

[Wymsey]

If global warming is going to affect the UK greatly at some point in the future, would it be potentially true that parts of it could be under water?

[leicsmac]

8 hours ago, Suzie the Fox said:

Do you think so? How would we go about stopping a giant asteroid from hitting the earth now? Unless i am being dumb and we have some super powered lazor guns hovering around the space station ready to shoot it down. 

 

Apologies for sounding condescending, i'm genuinely interested.

Don't worry, you didn't sound condescending and I never marked you as the type to be so anyway.

 

To expand on Buce's salient points above, detection well in advance is the key aspect here, and in terms of the very big ones - the ones bigger than 1km in diameter, the ones that could cause global disaster - we've done pretty well on that score. There have been many different detection projects, and thanks to their ongoing efforts NASA had catalogued over 90% of them (887 found, around 50, perhaps, left to find) by 2011 - we know where they are, and (for the most part) where they will be in a decade, a century and anywhere in between. Of course, there's always that <10%, however.

 

Knowing their trajectories gives us the key element in this case, which is time. More time means not only more time to plan a mission, but also less effort needed to move a potential world-killer from hitting the Earth to narrowly missing - much easier to apply the same amount of force over a much longer time, after all. If we were to spot that one of these giant asteroids were going to pay us an intimate visit in, say, a decade, that would be ample time to plan, build and land a mission on or near that asteroid with years still to go (average mission planning time from design board to launch barring politics is around four years). At that distance and with that much time, you wouldn't even need a spectacular lazorrrr or nuke to get the job done - merely landing a probe with some mass on the side of the asteroid would affect its own mass and trajectory enough for it to miss Earth entirely - the change in mass would be negligible and so would the change in trajectory, but over that kind of distance it would mean a change big enough to fly right past us. If you wanted to be absolutely sure, you could equip the probe with an low-impulse ion thruster and fire that up, adding to the change in trajectory.

 

The above wouldn't be all that difficult to do (even perhaps numerous missions for the sake of redundancy) given adequate time.

 

Of course, if you don't find out that the asteroid is going to hit until, say, less than a year before it does, then you're into disaster movie territory - then you need a much bigger impulse to move it out of the way before it hits. Simply blowing it up wouldn't do unless you absolutely vapourised it or reduced it to bits small enough to burn up in the atmosphere - you break it up, you're still going to have thousands of smaller pieces on the same trajectory hitting Earth. So, again, moving it to the side is the solution, which would need either a landing with very high-impulse thrusters or, yes, nuclear detonation on the side, perhaps. But in that case, tbh the situation is pretty desperate anyway; rushed mission, untested tech and a variety of other factors push the odds of success right down. If it doesn't work...well, that's what those big nuclear shelters could be used for, and so at least humanity might not go out like the dinosaurs and be able to rebuild decades or whenever into the future.

 

I'm repeating myself but I can't state this enough; with this matter the key element is knowledge and time. The more of both we have, the much much better chance we stand.

 

3 hours ago, Wymeswold fox said:

If global warming is going to affect the UK greatly at some point in the future, would it be potentially true that parts of it could be under water?

It's certainly possible depending on the degree that warming occurs and sea levels rise.

 

At the very least, there may well be increased flooding and drought events due to larger extremes of weather which will cause plenty enough damage on their own.

[The Bear]

What about the fact that all bodies out there big or small, rotate. Could you just land a probe on it and thrust it out if the way accurately with it spinning constantly? 

 

I guess any direction other than straight at us is preferable. But you'd have to do it in calculated bursts to maximise the deflection angle. Especially if you had limited time. 

[Buce]

@Wymeswold fox This is the UK if all the ice melted:

 

Edited 3 April 2019 by Buce

[Buce]

9 hours ago, Wymeswold fox said:

If global warming is going to affect the UK greatly at some point in the future, would it be potentially true that parts of it could be under water?

 

This is what the world would be like if the ice melted:

 

[Strokes]

1 hour ago, Buce said:

@Wymeswold fox This is the UK if all the ice melted:

 

Can we wait until Skegness is gone before we take action?

[Buce]

1 minute ago, Strokes said:

Can we wait until Skegness is gone before we take action?

 

 

Seems fair to me.

[Grebfromgrebland]

From what I can gather there's pretty much nothing we can do to stop the melting of the ice caps. It's a snowball (!) effect where the more the ice melts the faster the rate of climate change. More methane released into the atmosphere etc., less white surfaces to reflect the sun's heat.

 

It's already happening, low lying islands are flooding and there seems to be more hurricanes and hot weather which go hand in hand. It's only a matter of time before we get extreme weather in the UK.

 

 

[Buce]

30 minutes ago, Grebfromgrebland said:

From what I can gather there's pretty much nothing we can do to stop the melting of the ice caps. It's a snowball (!) effect where the more the ice melts the faster the rate of climate change. More methane released into the atmosphere etc., less white surfaces to reflect the sun's heat.

 

It's already happening, low lying islands are flooding and there seems to be more hurricanes and hot weather which go hand in hand. It's only a matter of time before we get extreme weather in the UK.

 

 

1

 

Since nine of the hottest years in recorded history have been in the last ten years, it could be argued that we already are.

[leicsmac]

4 hours ago, The Bear said:

What about the fact that all bodies out there big or small, rotate. Could you just land a probe on it and thrust it out if the way accurately with it spinning constantly? 

 

I guess any direction other than straight at us is preferable. But you'd have to do it in calculated bursts to maximise the deflection angle. Especially if you had limited time. 

I'd hazard a guess that for most objects of that type they haven't been past a big gravitational source for some time, so if they are rotating they are doing it slowly.

 

Definitely something to consider though, and when a probe landed on the object the rotation time would have to be calculated carefully and thrusts filled in bursts to ensure you're supplying the same lateral movement each time, yes.

 

It would be a complication (as well as a rotating object could interfere with line of sight communication) but a manageable one, I think.

[Strokes]

47 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Since nine of the hottest years in recorded history have been in the last ten years, it could be argued that we already are.

On the plus side, gingers will be extinct soon

 

[yorkie1999]

3 hours ago, Grebfromgrebland said:

From what I can gather there's pretty much nothing we can do to stop the melting of the ice caps. It's a snowball (!) effect where the more the ice melts the faster the rate of climate change. More methane released into the atmosphere etc., less white surfaces to reflect the sun's heat.

 

It's already happening, low lying islands are flooding and there seems to be more hurricanes and hot weather which go hand in hand. It's only a matter of time before we get extreme weather in the UK.

 

 

Don't worry, the seas will start retreating again as we reach the next ice age. There's been 5 already and we're nearing the end of the current 11000 year old one, it's what planets do and no amount of government tax on co2's is going to stop it. Man's ego eh!

[yorkie1999]

5 hours ago, Buce said:

@Wymeswold fox This is the UK if all the ice melted:

 

Looks like Hinckley will be on the coast, way hey.

[Kopfkino]

11 hours ago, leicsmac said:

The above wouldn't be all that difficult to do (even perhaps numerous missions for the sake of redundancy) given adequate time.

 

 

Apart from when the politicians get involved of course

[leicsmac]

18 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Don't worry, the seas will start retreating again as we reach the next ice age. There's been 5 already and we're nearing the end of the current 11000 year old one, it's what planets do and no amount of government tax on co2's is going to stop it. Man's ego eh!

The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than at any point in the last 2.6 million years (approximately the time that the current cycle of glacial and interglacial periods has been going on) and possibly a lot longer - though not, it must be said, as high as levels hundreds of millions of years ago when life still did pretty well too.

 

What effects that will have in the future is still not 100% certain (though reasonable guesses can be made), but it's a bit daft to suggest that humanity isn't having a significant effect on the Earth.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

 

Apart from when the politicians get involved of course

[Buce]

23 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Looks like Hinckley will be on the coast, way hey.

 

Yeah, it’s rough enough to be the new Skeggy. ?

[Buce]

5 hours ago, leicsmac said:

The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than at any point in the last 2.6 million years (approximately the time that the current cycle of glacial and interglacial periods has been going on) and possibly a lot longer - though not, it must be said, as high as levels hundreds of millions of years ago when life still did pretty well too.

 

What effects that will have in the future is still not 100% certain (though reasonable guesses can be made), but it's a bit daft to suggest that humanity isn't having a significant effect on the Earth.

 

 

 

 

By coincidence, I read this today.

 

The last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere, there were trees growing near the South Pole.

Edited 3 April 2019 by Buce

[leicsmac]

18 hours ago, Buce said:

 

By coincidence, I read this today.

 

The last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere, there were trees growing near the South Pole.

Yeah, having ice caps at all is in fact something of an aberration if you take the entirety of Earth's history into account.

 

As such, I don't really doubt the ability of life to outlive humanity, but I do doubt the ability of humanity to adapt to the many stresses (both self-inflicted and otherwise) that will be placed upon it by future changes.