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Korkki ,

I haven’t had much hope that if there was an major asteroid racing towards earth that there could be much done about it, but I also know that likelyhood of it is very small so there is no need to lose sleep over it.

rsuri ,

“Sustaining the space mission, disaster preparedness, and communications efforts across a 14-year timeline would be challenging due to budget cycles, changes in political leadership, personnel, and ever-changing world events,” the report says.

First administration: “We must do something about the asteroid. I’ve started a plan to divert it, but it’ll take several years.”

Second administration: “The asteroid is a corrupt globalist conspiracy. We never needed to divert asteroids in the past, why do we supposedly need to spend all your hard-earned tax dollars on this all of a sudden? I will prove my anti-elitist attitudes by cancelling the asteroid program as soon as I take office.”

Third administration: “Yes we recognize that the asteroid is a threat, but as we saw last time there’s just too much political resistance to solving it. Let’s focus on other priorities that we can solve.”

Dark_Dragon ,

Yea that and panic at the end !

wafflez ,

Sorry don’t you mean let’s fund AI?

/s

mriormro ,
@mriormro@lemmy.world avatar

We’ve already solved this. We just need to train a team of dysfunctional oil drillers to send up to the asteroid.

EddoWagt ,

I don’t even remember what movie that was

Button777777 ,

Armageddon, the mega block buster hit movie of 1998

EddoWagt ,

Thanks! I can’t for the life of me remember when I watched that, especially since I wasn’t even alive when that came out. Maybe we watched it in school or something

nomous ,

Not to be confused with the other mega block buster hit movie about an asteroid hitting earth released one month earlier in 1998, Deep Impact.

postmateDumbass ,

I would have sworn it was Space Cowboys. Shit.

YungOnions ,

Deep Impact is to Armageddon as Volcano is to Dante’s Peak.

CptInsane0 ,

Superior?

silasmariner ,

Yes

MeThisGuy ,

almost forgot about Dante’s peak. that was the shit!

Buttons ,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

🎵 Don’t wanna close my eyes 🎵

mriormro ,
@mriormro@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/351abbe4-7ea1-4965-8130-e10f448b8802.jpeg

Etterra ,

That’s okay, humanity had s good run. I imagine we’ll have extinctified ourselves way before a space rock could do it. A+ for trying though.

MindTraveller ,

Don’t look up

Jackhammer_Joe ,

It was a great movie - sadly, because it was so accurate. Provided that you can call a sci-fi movie accurate. But after the pandemic and shit, “don’t look up” looks like a playbook for a meteor extinction level event

MindTraveller ,

Actually they say that Comet Dibiasky is twice the size of the dinosaur killer, but they also say it’s 6-1 9 kilometres wide. 10 kilometres is the size of Chicxulub. Scientifically it was very inaccurate. But politically it’s flawless.

bionicjoey ,

What’s funny is that movie released during the pandemic, so it seemed like that was the thing it was commenting on, but actually it was filmed before the pandemic and was originally meant as a commentary on climate change. What it shows is that humanity’s modern tribalism is remarkably predictable. No matter what the problem, we will turn it into an us versus them situation where getting anything meaningful done becomes an uphill battle.

flying_sheep ,
@flying_sheep@lemmy.ml avatar

That’s the last three words of the article. The author didn’t miss the connection either.

I always wonder when people repeat something from the article or ask a question that’s answered in the article: did you not read it or did you just want to start a discussion about this connection and are somehow constrained in the number of words you can write per day?

MindTraveller ,

I didn’t read it. The Register has a drier tone than I felt like reading today. I mean seriously, putting the word tabletop in quotes? I am NOT the target audience for that writing style.

MonkderDritte ,

We are not at a point where the “global community” is more than a few competing, egoistic and greedy tribes with clashing world views, so that’s no surprise.

Cocodapuf ,

Yeah, I think that really it wouldn’t be the “global community” that ends up saving the world in an asteroid impact scenario.

It would likely be an organization that could operate on its own without endless committees. Say, the Chinese space agency, or SpaceX, or the Indian space agency. Someone would decide to just do it, without getting the whole world’s approval for the mission. Then the whole world would complain that the effort was made without any international cooperation or oversight. And the organization that literally saved the world would get chewed out by everyone because inevitably the plan will not have worked perfectly.

But I’m not worried, because even billionaires don’t want to die. Someone would do something.

MeThisGuy ,

would you trust Boeing to save you from an asteroid?

Cocodapuf ,

I’d trust them to try to intercept an asteroid… It’ll be harmless when they miss and achieve nothing, but in the off chance that they pull it off, yeah sure Boeing, go for it.

Boozilla ,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

Achievement unlocked: discovering the Great Filter.

uriel238 ,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

If an asteroid were to hit the Earth large enough to cause human extinction, it would save us the embarrassment of killing ourselves from poisoning the climate or microplastic pollution.

I’m pretty sure we navigated nuclear holocaust, but we haven’t fully ruled it out either.

Leg ,

Real talk, an asteroid wiping us out would only expedite the inevitable. If we could pull together and deflect an asteroid, there’s hope. If not, we failed the test and die with the consequences. But we don’t need the asteroid to fail this test. We’re making great strides towards destroying our home with home field advantage.

LaunchesKayaks ,
@LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world avatar

Gotta give it to humanity, though. We’re damn good at ruining everything we touch.

Cocodapuf , (edited )

I don’t think we ruin everything… We’re also the best around at improving things, certainly improving our environments.

I know it’s easy to be pessimistic about these things, but humans are evolutionary badasses. We’re capable of amazing things. I wouldn’t count us out just yet.

Besides we haven’t really ruined anything. We haven’t done any damage to the earth that won’t heal eventually. The earth has seen many heating and cooling cycles and plenty of mass extinctions before and it will again (with or without humans).

Gloomy ,
@Gloomy@mander.xyz avatar

but humans are evolutionary badasses

How so?

Cocodapuf ,

How many predators can take down prey 50 times their size? How many species can thrive in tundra, jungles, plains, forests, mountains and deserts? How many species can be found on every continent? How many species figured out how to fly despite never developing wings? How many species developed hundreds of distinct methods of communication? How many species have been to the moon?

Humans are fucking badass…

Gloomy ,
@Gloomy@mander.xyz avatar

How many predators can take down prey 50 times their size?

Ants and a couple of Insects I guess. Also Bacteria and Viruses.

How many species can thrive in tundra, jungles, plains, forests, mountains and deserts?

Well, obviously also most Bacteria. If we are speaking more sentient live then the answer is: mot of them. Birds, Mammals, Insects. It might take a generation or 10 to get them adopted to their new envirment, but almost every species. Is able to adopt to their evolutoany niche.

How many species can be found on every continent?

Most of them?

How many species figured out how to fly despite never developing wings?

Technology. Yes, that’s a human thing at last, at least at the level we use it.

How many species developed hundreds of distinct methods of communication

Various species have methods of communicating, from bees dancing to each other to whales having distinct regional dialects. Yes, humans have added some complexity to it by introducing technology, but that’s realy what it comes down to. Technology.

How many species have been to the moon?

Technology, once more.

So your point is that humans have learned to use technology, therefor they are badass.

I disagree. We are living in an absolut singularity tight now. Humans have learned to use finate resources (oil for example) to amplify the energy that we have at our hands. A single humans beeing today can use energy that would be equal to thousands of men’s work every day.

Since we are drawing on finate resources there are two ways how this will go: we will learn to exploit other, less finate sources of energy (say, fusion) and the groth path will continue (to the stars, eventually). Or we will run out of energy or ruin the livable world by doing so and will fall back to an earlier level of development. Since most of the resources needed are used up we will not be able clime back up. At this moment we are on the second of those paths.

And in our way in getting here we have started the sixt mass extinction, accidentaly started turning the climate into something less sustainable for humans and polluted every single space on this planet, including areas like the deep ocean that we have never even touched physically.

Humans are not badass, in my opinion. We are fucking cancer.

Cocodapuf , (edited )

Um, I think you’re mistaking species with kingdom.

“Birds” are not a species, “mammals” are not a species. I don’t think viruses are even described in terms of species because they don’t reproduce sexually. I think you’ll find that when you actually consider species, most of my points hold.

Various species have methods of communicating, from bees dancing to each other to whales having distinct regional dialects. Yes, humans have added some complexity to it by introducing technology, but that’s realy what it comes down to. Technology.

Yes, many species have some rudimentary way of communicating some kinds of information. But obviously bee dances don’t compare to any human language, of which there are literally hundreds. A bee for instance has no way to express appreciation or derision for the English language. My whole point here was that humans, on hundreds of distinct occasions, developed languages capable of conveying complex ideas. No other species has developed a language half as capable as any of ours.

Rather than picking the rest of that post apart, I’m just going to stop here. It’s pretty self evident that humans are impressive as hell. Denying that is… pretty dumb, and purely rhetorical.

As a side note, don’t get too excited about fusion, it’s largely a dead end. I expect it will only be really useful in niche applications (like spacecraft). It will be far more expensive than nuclear fision and not really offer any benefits besides abundance of fuel. There’s still a huge radioactive waste problem. On the other hand, the sun provides all the energy we’ll ever need, and we’re getting better at collecting it. I’m really not concerned about increasing energy demands.

macarthur_park ,

Link to the NASA study

Atelopus-zeteki , (edited )
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

Also there's this survey that shows we actually would prefer stopping climate change instead of fighting war.
https://kbin.run/m/[email protected]/t/505138/Most-people-in-petrostates-want-quick-switch-to-clean-energy

EvilEyedPanda ,

We’d rather bomb each other than save the planet.

OsaErisXero ,

If ace combat has taught me anything, it's that there's no reason we can't do both

EvilEyedPanda ,

Ace combat 4 is still on if my favs

peanuts4life ,
@peanuts4life@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Call me an optimist, but I think that if an android was actually going to destroy life as we know it, nations would do everything in their power to advert the disaster.

polonius-rex ,

you really think ONE android could wipe out life as we know it?

ObviouslyNotBanana ,
@ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I mean it’d at least need to be two androids, right? I’ve seen terminator.

peanuts4life ,
@peanuts4life@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

🤣 just visualizing the United Nations Assembly talking turns curb stomping some poor android.

rtxn ,

Now, if we were talking about one Nokia…

Allonzee ,

“According to The Atlantic, an asteroid that weighs more than 1.7 quadrillion metric tons could sterilize Earth by raising the temperature of its water above 100°C. This asteroid would be 10–1,000 times heavier than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and would be between 60–96 kilometers (37–60 miles) wide.”

The Atlantic article itself is paywalled, but yes, and it’s entirely dependent on the mass of said Asteroid.

polonius-rex ,

i'm not worried because an android that heavy couldn't even stand up

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Id imagine it doesn’t have to really move fast, just has to sit in the right spot and wait for our orbit around the sun to smash us into it?

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

I know one that definitely can.

Land_Strider ,

Well, if you allow CELL to gobble up that one android…

WatDabney ,

I’m roundaboutly reminded of one of my favorite novels - Greener Than You Think, by Ward Moore.

It’s a science fiction story about the end of the world that was written in the late 40s. The proximate cause of the end is all of the landmasses of Earth being smothered by a gigantic and very aggressive strain of Bermuda grass, but the real cause is the utter and complete failure, due to ignorance, greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, incompetence, arrogance and so on, of every attempt to combat it.

hperrin ,

Half the population would believe the asteroid is a hoax spread by the [insert ethnic or religious group here].

c0smokram3r ,
@c0smokram3r@midwest.social avatar

Thanks Obama

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