NationStates Jolt Archive

I was glancing through NEAs(Near-Earth Asteroids) and Eros in particular. Eros interests me because of it's role in one of my favorite stories, 'Ender's Game'. Anyhoo, One of the more interesting features of Eros is a massive crater where it got smacked by a meteorite about a billion years ago.

It then occurred to me that with all the NEAs out there and the difficulty in tracking them, the virtual inability to track much else in the solar system that might swing our way and probably because only a few deranged wackos( http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/aetsch/cheeky-smiley-005.gif ) would even bring up the subject, if they are even able to consider the possibility of a collision of one asteroid into another deflecting one into our path. It doesn't seem likely, does it?

By the way, Eros' closest approach to Earth in the near future will be January 31st, 2012. But don't worry, it'll still be about 16 million miles away. ...unless something hits it. Have a Happy Easter! :D

AFAIK, any two objects big enough not to get obliterated by hitting one another would not do a ‘billiard bounce’, but due to gravity they would start orbiting one another, or at least be affected enormously. They'd spin around or past one another, rather than collide.

I’m sure someone else can explain this a whole lot better, and a whole lot more accurately, but the idea of two huge asteroids hitting one another is, I believe, pure Hollywood.

Get ye to AboveTopSecret.com with yer wacko theories and all of that :p

And aye, it's a bit of a close call. Ah well.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/SaintB/masspanic.jpg

What... its relevant!

But don't worry, it'll still be about 16 million miles away. ...unless something hits it. Have a Happy Easter! :D

Probably the whacko who'll send in his bulldozers to turn it into a parking lot so he can charge NASA for its NEAR Shoemaker satellite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/433_Eros#Legal_controversy
http://www.erosproject.com/appeal/apindex.html

Probably the whacko who'll send in his bulldozers to turn it into a parking lot so he can charge NASA for its NEAR Shoemaker satellite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/433_Eros#Legal_controversy
http://www.erosproject.com/appeal/apindex.html

That cracked me up. It takes balls to try something like that. :)

I for welcome our heavy metal overlords :)

IIRC correctly should this asteroid hit, the British isles will be obliterated however we will be taking France and the Netherlands out with us!

easter is good, chocolate is good.
I can already forsee this asteroid will be too late to crush the puny human mortals, because they still think buying smaller phones is a good idea, little do they know of the simple danger of all those phones ringing at the same time! it would cause a paradox so severe it would rip a space in the time continum stream, leaving a gaping hole in the fabric of the universe. Yes chocolate is good, mango's are better.

I'm not going to worry about it. If there is a collision out there, there's nothing we could do about it at this stage anyway.

The problem with using another astroid to deflect one is that first, the ammount of thrust needed to move such a large mass would be incredible, which is why most people suggest just using a nuclear warhead to explode the thing into smaller bits, however, the problem with this idea is that we have no idea what the hell they're made of.

It's the same problem that existed with the first lunar missions; NASA had no idea if their lander should land on solid rock, or dust, and if the dust was not very dense, whether or not it would sink. In the same thread, a asteroid may look like a solid rock, but turn out to be two large rocks and a ton of gravel sized rocks held together by gravity; all the nuke would do is break the thing into two or more masses, as the gravel would absorb all the energy released.

2012 you say?!

*Holds sign saying "The End is Nigh!"

I was glancing through NEAs(Near-Earth Asteroids) and Eros in particular. Eros interests me because of it's role in one of my favorite stories, 'Ender's Game'. Anyhoo, One of the more interesting features of Eros is a massive crater where it got smacked by a meteorite about a billion years ago.

It then occurred to me that with all the NEAs out there and the difficulty in tracking them, the virtual inability to track much else in the solar system that might swing our way and probably because only a few deranged wackos( http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/aetsch/cheeky-smiley-005.gif ) would even bring up the subject, if they are even able to consider the possibility of a collision of one asteroid into another deflecting one into our path. It doesn't seem likely, does it?

By the way, Eros' closest approach to Earth in the near future will be January 31st, 2012. But don't worry, it'll still be about 16 million miles away. ...unless something hits it. Have a Happy Easter! :D

It's clear that Jesus is living within Eros and will return to us to herald the apocalypse in 2012.

it's a mall world after all ...

(response to "eros project", not to mention absurd jurisdictional assumptions)

=^^=
.../\...

I for welcome our heavy metal overlords :)

IIRC correctly should this asteroid hit, the British isles will be obliterated however we will be taking France and the Netherlands out with us!
Well at least we spare the world from Dutch or French rule of the European markets, eh?

That's nice of us.