Is the human race currently adequately protected against annihilation by a giant meteor strike?

Question

The theorists say this is what wiped out the dinosaurs. We've seen it popularized in movies and it looks truly terrifying. I know we have some kind of global vigil going on to track large space objects as they might impact Earth. But are we really geared up enough to catch this in the skies before we get hit? Would we be able to divert a direct hit with our current capabilities in outer space? Would it take an atomic bomb to dessentigrate or vaporize one of these large asteroids or meteorites on it's way to Planet Earth? If we are not adequately prepared now, what do we need to do to safeguard the future of our planet from a disaster of this magnitude?

Answer 1

We are not adequately prepared today,but we are in the first stages of safeguarding it now.The first step is to locate them.This is a project that only began in ernest when we observed comet Shoemaker-Levy impact Jupiter.No credible scientist claims we even know the location of all of them,much less if their orbits will intersect Earths.

Right now,we are working on it,the odds of an impact next month are precisely the same odds that there were 65 million years ago,when the asteroid devastated the dinosaurs.Slim on any given day,inevitable given enough time.

We already have people searching for the "Earth killers".we also have people making various strategies should we detect an asteroid IN TIME to deflect it.The cold hard truth is,one could be coming around the sun at this moment,we simply don't know yet.

All of this so far has been aimed at detecting planet killers,another very real,and imminent threat would be a smaller one,such as the one that hit Tunguska in 1908.That size meteor could devastate a city,by sheer chance it hit one of the most remote areas of Earth.In todays edgy political climate,a blast over a major city,in the chaos and confusion that followed,could be misconstued as a nuke attack.Indeed,the US has went on high alert several times in the last decades because meteors exploded in the atmosphere.Being that the entirety of our "nuclear strategy"if you could call it that,is to get our ICBMs in the air before they get taken out,the possibility of an accidental nuke war,triggered by a smaller meteor,is very real.These smaller meteors come on a much more frequent scale than planet killers.The only thing I can think of that would prevent that is very good communication between the nuclear powers,and a very good understanding of the consequences of a mistake

Answer 2

We are not protected at all, except by the laws of probabability. There is very little chance that we will be hit on any given year. Sixty five million years ago there were two large strikes, the big one off the yucatan, and a smaller strike in Iowa. Since then there have been a number of smaller hits, but nothing to match those two.

Building an anti asteroid defense is possible but it would cost huge amounts of money. The lifespan of machinery is rather short, so it would have to be replaced on a regular basis: each time at horrible cost. How long would taxpayers pay for this system?

Some of the anti-asteroid technologies could also be turned into a weapon and the chances of a terrorist take-over of such a system are far higher than the chances of being hit by a rock.

And no, atomic bombs would probably be a bad idea. Many fragments that survive atmospheric entry would do far, far more damage than a single large strike.

Answer 3

Offficially, no, or at least barely.

Unofficially, maybe. Who knows, maybe they got a wave motion cannon or a heavy particle cannon in storage.



Anyway. The problem now is detecting the object, plus calculating the impact time and location.

To target the object, first you need to detect it.

To determine if the object is a threat, you need to calculate its trajectory.



As for the deflection strategies.

The problem with some bomb strategies are that they took too much explosive material. Until anti-matter explosive device is created, it's unlikely explosive can be use.

The problem with some non bomb strategies are that they took too much time. These strategies require lots of time, and time is probably not much in hand.


A good strategy I think that can be done quickly and with what the military officially got is this, use a propulsive method using nuclear bombs.

Instead of detonating bombs to destroy the object, the bombs can be use to propel the object away by detonating them near the object. A similiar method was used on the proposed old Project Orion.



As for the dinosaurs.

While the dinosaurs did died to the change in the enviroment, it's unlikely that it was caused by a meteor impact.

At least not by the meteor that impacted the Yucatan pennisulan.

Answer 4

Currently, we are not adequately protected, and atomic bombs are not the best way to protect ourselves anyway.

A variety of seriously thought out methods of deflecting an asteroid are described and evaluated on the Wikipedia page below. It was only the first of nearly 30,000 web pages responding to the search terms asteroid+deflection+strategies, so you can do a lot more reading for yourself, eh?

It is reasonable to expect that within 40 or 60 years, we will have sufficient surveying instruments and deflection methods to deal with any impact threat from the asteroids in our own solar system.

A large asteroid from outside the solar system could approach with too little warning for any of these deflection strategies to work, so there will never be complete protection. Just console yourself with the thought that if such an interstellar visitor ever appeared, then on its high-speed trip in towards the Sun and out again, the probability that the Earth would be in its way is almost exactly 1 in a billion.

Answer 5

We aren't protected. For an asteroid orbiting the sun, a typical flyby speed, relative to Earth, is 30 km/sec. The kinetic energy of an asteroid having a radius of 10 km, moving at 30 km/sec, is 5.6E+24 Joules, or 1.3 billion megatons TNT equivalent.

Now, you're thinking about sending a piddling little 100 megaton warhead to get rid of that thing? Even if you can break it up, on the fragments still will come, energy conserved. Heh. Might make the problem worse!

Answer 6

All of this is about mass and size, millions of nuclear weapons won't help if the mass of the meteorites are as big as the moon, and there do rogue planets haunting the interstellar space which orbit no stars. Who know one may strike us down.
Anyway bigger meteor are rarer than small one, so you don't need to worry too much.

Answer 7

No. Best thing we could do is establish a relatively self sustaining colony somewhere else in the solar system that could return to Earth without aid from ground control.

Answer 8

If we don't reach out and colonize other worlds our ultimate fate is to be destroyed on Earth. It will come, maybe in thousands of years time. If were still sitting on our backsides then we will be doomed in the same way the dinosaurs were

Answer 9

Hey, kid...

We've got 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world right now...it only takes a little over 100 to kill us all with a nuclear winter which would wipe out all plant life...Pakistan and India...both have more than 100 pointed at each other and others...

Now...

You tell me...

What are you more afraid of? The million to one chance that we'll get hit by a Meteor?

Or the 50/50 chance we'll all go out in a nuclear hellfire and nuclear winter?

I'd say a "meteor" is the least of our worries...

Answer 10

In the course of human development, we'll create the technology to take care of this problem.

It is not pressing.

The chances of that happening in your lifetime, your children's lifetime, their children's lifetime, ect, ect, based on the number of strikes over millions of years, is about zip.

The best way to prevent such a scenario happening is to make it a world wide quest for humanity to reach the stars. The byproduct of that would take care of the problem.

Peace

Jim

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