Russian Meteorite - Prediction and Protection

[gaa_ian]

With all the dramatic footage and the unprecedented damage from the Russian Meteorite it is a timely reminder of our vulnerability to these objects.
There are those who are taking action to detect these objects, such as the B612 Foundation (http://b612foundation.org/ed-lus-message-our-cosmic-challenge/).
I am amazed by how quickly this has slipped out of the news and off our collective radar. Perhaps it is something we do not like to think about ?
A kind of collective denial (it wont happen to me), I guess this is why there is a survivalist movement active around the world.
I for one am glad to know that there are organizations that are looking & putting together a plan !

[ZeroID]

Well, yes & no. The Russian hit was so fast and from an unexpected direction I wonder if we'd have had enough warning to do anything anyway. At 18,000 km hr even spotting it a couple of hundred thousand kms out with eg 10 hrs notice and given the unpredictabilty of it's trajectory and the effect of the atmosphere on it's path what could you in all honesty do ? Evacuate London ? To where ?
I can see the value in tracking NEOs with orbits over long term that could possibly be deflected or planned for but as one Russian commentator posted after it was announced that Russia was going to invest some huge mount of roubles to detect these things it would be better to spend the money on patching roads as the reduced death toll over 100 years ( the predicted hit rate ) saved by better roads would far bigger than the damage caused by a meteor hit.
Not that I'm against trying to detect them but to put it bluntly space is BIG and there is lots more of them out there than there is of us.

[gaa_ian]

Yep, I agree this one would have been hard to spot, coming out of the sun as it did. However a global effort is needed to adress the risk from the 50 to 100 meter classs asteroids that have the potential to cause regional catastophic damage. This meteor was a much smaller event than the Tunguska event of 1908. There is nothing to say this could not happen again, next week/Month/Year. I recall a few years back a small meteor that was detected about 1 day out & exploded over the desert in the middle east. Aircraft we diverted & the explosion observed from a distance. Worth the effort I would think !

[madbadgalaxyman]

I think the desirability and feasibility of any specific human effort to prevent a particular threat to human lives depends on:

- the dollar and social cost of the effort. There is an upper limit to what can or should be achieved, which is dependent upon the amount of money available and the willingness of people to put in an effort.

- the actual amount of benefit to humanity (economic, human, moral, aesthetic, environmental) of carrying out the action, as measured by the number of lives saved and the prevention of the disruption of the economy and the disruption of the non-human environment on which society and the economy depends (e.g. the biota, soils, photosynthesis, atmospheric chemistry and composition, etc.)

- the comparative urgency of the intended specific "life saving effort" as compared to the urgency of other "life saving" measures. As one (random) example; is spending money and effort on mitigating soil degradation and ensuring that trace elements in soils are not deficient, a more urgent life-saving action than some other preventative action such as installing a tsunami warning system or preventing global warming?

- the actual odds of being killed or injured by the specific event which we are trying to guard against . For instance, the probability of a person being killed or hurt by a 10 km asteroid is probably substantially greater than the probability of being killed in an airline disaster, but there is only a miniscule chance of a specific individual person being killed by a 50 metre asteroid.

[gaa_ian]

Great and well thought out reply Robert.
There are many thinge that need to be done for sure.
I believe that environmental catastrophe is much higher
on the risk matrix. High likelyhood & severe impact.
However the scientific gains in even attempting to detect
& mitigate against a rouge asteroid are hard to put a value
on. Taking a measure of control over something that for the
last 99.999% of human history we have had no control over.

[madbadgalaxyman]

Any kind of decision-making on 'environmental' issues (which can perhaps be defined as "non-human threats to humans' lives, liberty, happiness, and well being") is notoriously poorly done in our society.

Perhaps this is because nobody was at all concerned about these sorts of things till the 20th century, and there are a lot of new facts to absorb.

Furthermore, people have to become wealthy and powerful and well-educated, before they are able to even think about doing something about long-term threats to humans. (capitalism, for all its evils, is a fantastic "wealth and power creating engine")

Lamentably, most humans still have a "pre-Copernican" outlook which visualizes the Earth as effectively infinite in size and infinitely robust against various threats. Further, our most venerated philosophies and religions tend to strongly reinforce our instinctive prejudice that human beings are absolutely central in the scheme of things, and this greatly hinders thinking about non-human threats.

[mithrandir]

This is where people's misunderstanding of statistics fails them.

There has been one person reported to have been killed by a meteor in the last 100 years. That's 1 in ~7 billion.

Since records started being collected for Australia in 1791 there have been 216 fatal shark attacks. Say 1 in 140,000 for the population in those 200+ years, or 1 in 27 million per year.

About 400 people die a year on NSW roads. That's 1 in 18,000.

A Chicxulub sized meteor would most likely wipe out everyone either by the impact or the loss of habitat. You can't say this won't happen. It has at least once. That meteor was guesstimated at around 10km in diameter and we can be reasonably sure all objects with periods under a few hundred years of that size are known, and none are dangerous.

Which ones do the current affairs programs use as scare tactics?

[madbadgalaxyman]

Excellent statistics, Mithrandir.

So many "fashionable worries" and "public panics" regarding things that are very unlikely to happen, usually fanned by a frenzy of coverage in the media.

The town of Wethersfield, CT is reputed to have been hit by two meteorites in a period of 11 years. Just ask the residents of this town how often meteorites hit; they say "it happens all the time around here!"

Apparently, both meteorites caused damage to a house!

[adman]

Please tell me it wasn't the same house....:confused2:

[gaa_ian]

I am looking forward to seeing more reports on the russian meteorite. Already there is talk of a worldwide defence networks of space telescopes for this kind of 20 to 50m Asteroid. Well, the Russians are talking about it anyhow !

[ZeroID]

USA is talking about a system on Hawaii suddenly as well. Funny that ... :rolleyes: