Comet Collision

**Mayet** · July 3rd, 2005, 04:07 PM

*sigh, they say it is all in the name of science.....

anyhows, ok its not likely to happen but what if... the comet gets struck, a large peice breaks off and changes trajectory, heading straight for the planet Earth. It crashes, anyhwere..I am sure you can imagine the disaster wherever it happens, pacific ocean, asia, america ..anywhere..maybe even the same faultline that had the big tsunami, creating more shocks and waves.....that is after the first shock of the comet hitting....even if it doesnt hit Earth direct, what if it hits something else, which in turn has dire consequences for Earth..

i really think that leave well alone should have been the case here. Why bother, what does it really achieve....

They seem to just want to destroy...umm oh, in the name of science of course....

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...7/s1405861.htm

A US spacecraft travelling far in the solar system has successfully fired a projectile that will collide with a comet as part of a unique experiment to study its makeup.

The projectile, the size of an oil drum, was fired at 2:07am local time by US spacecraft Deep Impact that had undertaken a 173-day, 431-million-kilometre journey to get closer to the comet as large as half Manhattan Island.

Shortly after the separation, a camera-equipped probe peeled off from the projectile and set on a separate path that will get it as close as 500 kilometres to Tempel 1 shortly after the copper-laden impactor slams into it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/washpost/200...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

http://www.noao.edu/news/deep-impact/

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/de...ain/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

**confus-ed** · July 4th, 2005, 05:43 AM

I was watching this on 'sky at night' last night

So I still take it we don't know if it hit it yet ? It being supposed to blow a 'controlled hole' & not create global catastrophe as Mayet seems to think

.

The 'agenda' on this is not just being that they want to know whats in the comet for sure, but that they also need to study what happens if you try & blow up comets, which might be on collission course with earth

This is part of the 'deep impact mission' statement from here

Observe how the crater forms
Measure the crater's depth and diameter
Measure the composition of the interior of the crater and its ejecta
Determine the changes in natural outgassing produced by the impact

**Mayet** · July 4th, 2005, 06:56 AM

It hit

Pretty Spectacular

I really wonder about Pandora's box..ok it may go right THIS time...but

**confus-ed** · July 4th, 2005, 10:05 AM

That's a pretty good shot from 431-million-kilometre's away !!!

**Tecumseh** · July 4th, 2005, 03:48 PM

Let's hope that comet wasn't an alien outpost!!

**Jeff the Brit** · July 4th, 2005, 05:14 PM

Mayet, I wouldn't worry about the impact altering the orbit of the comet by very much. The impactor weighed only a couple of hundred kilos, and it hit a snowball fourteen miles in diameter. It's as likely to alter a comet's orbit as a mosquito splatting on your windscreen is to knock your car off the road.
Knowing what's inside a comet is useful though. Apart from clues to the early composition of the solar system, we might NEED to knock a comet off trajectory one day. Information about the nature of the object you are trying to nudge is needed to decide the best way to do the nudging.

**Mayet** · July 4th, 2005, 07:04 PM

I know so far it looks like we are ok this time.

But possible scenarios could be fatal to life. Like what if they, in the search to uncover what is at the comets centre, release a deadly virus, captured within the comets icy depths. or what if the icy depths were made of some highly explosive substance. The shockwave wouldn't do this planet too much good. I am just saying that to leave nature alone instead of prodding and prying is a better way to go....

**Larommi** · July 4th, 2005, 09:10 PM

Step away from the DVD player.

Besides we all know this comet was on a collision course and they corrected it with the impact.

**jaeger** · July 4th, 2005, 09:37 PM

Originally Posted by Mayet

I know so far it looks like we are ok this time.

But possible scenarios could be fatal to life. Like what if they, in the search to uncover what is at the comets centre, release a deadly virus, captured within the comets icy depths. or what if the icy depths were made of some highly explosive substance. The shockwave wouldn't do this planet too much good. I am just saying that to leave nature alone instead of prodding and prying is a better way to go....

Virus: Who cares, it is quite a ways away.

Explosion: Who cares, it is quite a ways away.

Shockwave: Through which medium would the shockwave travel to meet us? Vacuum? That doesn't work too well. In a vacuum, the shockwave would be limited to the matter thrown up by the impact which then has to travel a huge distance while constantly becoming less and less dense. It would be amazing if Earth managed to hit a single grain created by this impact at some point in the next few thousand years.

Mankind's very nature is to poke things with sticks. It is how we make progress.

**Mayet** · July 4th, 2005, 10:44 PM

Progress? Or destruction...........

**NooNoo** · July 5th, 2005, 03:52 AM

May... ask yourself that the next time you make an omlette

**JaxSon** · July 5th, 2005, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by Mayet

I know so far it looks like we are ok this time.

But possible scenarios could be fatal to life. Like what if they, in the search to uncover what is at the comets centre, release a deadly virus, captured within the comets icy depths. or what if the icy depths were made of some highly explosive substance. The shockwave wouldn't do this planet too much good. I am just saying that to leave nature alone instead of prodding and prying is a better way to go....

Omigod, Mayet's right!

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! RUN FOR YOUR...oh wait, there's no place to run. No place to hide!

WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?!?

[/END FREAKOUT SESSION]

**El_Squid** · July 5th, 2005, 03:56 PM

And now Nasa is being sued: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8474735/
$300 million worth of emotional distress? Deformed horoscope? If I had not read this was happening in Russia, I would have sworn it had to be an American phenomenon. Democracy is taking root in Russia for sure!

**Duke of Rezin** · July 7th, 2005, 07:15 PM

I'm more worried about the physicists' making mini black holes when the Large Hadron Collider goes online. They say they'll evaporate but there's about a 1 in 10,000 chance that one will swallow the planet. People win lotteries on worse odds than that.