Space and stuff

[Rich1878]

Massive, i hope astronomers are right about not impacting us. Otherwise we may have the same fate of the dinosaurs.

Thought the same ! Could be this "planet X" what they were on about years ago ?

 

[Sassy Colombian]

So we'll have..what.. 5 or 6 years in the new stadium before we're obliterated by this thing?

Was longer than I expected to be fair....

knowing our luck it probably happens the day we are claiming the league title

 

[ste d' indica]

knowing our luck it probably happens the day we are claiming the league title

4-0 up with 20 seconds to go.

 

[Yarrgh]

They get an asterisk, we get an asteroid. Everton that.

 

[maccavennie]

When they say it's big, how big is big?

The length of 2 buses?
3 football stadiums?
4,537 pieces of chicken all in a line?

 

[Sassy Colombian]

When they say it's big, how big is big?

The length of 2 buses?
3 football stadiums?
4,537 pieces of chicken all in a line?

You have to think bigger, Mac. That’s not enough pieces of chicken

It is supposed to be and I quote “At least 62 miles (100 kilometers) across — about 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet.”

 

[maccavennie]

You have to think bigger, Mac. That’s not enough pieces of chicken

It is supposed to be and I quote “At least 62 miles (100 kilometers) across — about 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet.”

Yep, I may have slightly under estimated how many pieces of chicken this big momma of a comet could crush lol

 

[Paris]

Nasa adviser quits and thousands protest at naming of telescope​

A Nasa advisor has quit in protest at a $10 billion telescope being named after a former administrator who oversaw a purge of gay and lesbians from the federal Government.

Lucianne Walkowicz, who is nonbinary, wrote an open letter to Nasa’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee (APAC) accusing them of lying about the decision-making process that led to the naming of a new flagship telescope after James Webb.

Ms Walkowicz said the decision showed the agency “does not deserve my time”.

Nasa named the telescope after Mr Webb, he served as Nasa administrator during the period that saw it work to put humans onto the Moon as part of the Apollo programme.

After the decision was announced, 1200 scientists, students and LGBTQ activists signed a petition calling for the telescope to be renamed.

Mr Webb was undersecretary of state from 1949 to 1952 during a period known as the Lavender Scare, when thousands of LGBT+ people were forced to leave their jobs at the federal government.

Nasa said that its historians would open an investigation into Mr Webb’s conduct. It has not said how it conducted the research or how it came to its conclusion – but told NPR that the investigation had concluded that a name change was not necessary.

“We’ve done as much as we can do at this point and have exhausted our research efforts,” senior science communications officer Karen Fox said.

“Those efforts have not uncovered evidence warranting a name change.”

In the open letter, Walkowicz said Nasa had acted in bad faith.

The decision “sends a clear message of Nasa’s position on the rights of queer astronomers”, Walkowicz said in the open letter.

“It also speaks clearly to me that NASA does not deserve my time,” they said.

“It is evident from this choice that any promises of transparency and thoroughness were, in fact, lies.

“It also seems clear that NASA would prefer a committee of Yes Men, a committee that co-signs things that NASA had already planned to do, or perhaps chides them about moderate course corrections that don’t actually challenge NASA at all.”

Nasa say the Webb telescope “will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space”.

“It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe,” the space agency said.

 

[SerenityNigh]

Maybe this needs to move to the CA forum because it involves war and such, but can anyone explain to me in layman's terms the significance of the Chinese hypersonic/orbital missile launch?

 

[PKwalnuts]

You have to think bigger, Mac. That’s not enough pieces of chicken

It is supposed to be and I quote “At least 62 miles (100 kilometers) across — about 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet.”

How big would an asteroid or comet have to be to end life on Earth?

Answer (1 of 84): The last suspected asteroid inducing extinction event took place 65–66 mya and closed out the Mesozoic. The object held responsible for this dino-disaster, was a 9.7 km rock traveling at an estimated 20 km/sec, which created the 177 km wide Chicxulub crater. Researchers Kaiho a...

www.quora.com

 

[Rob17896]

knowing our luck it probably happens the day we are claiming the league title

The chances are similar

 

[Dylan]

Maybe this needs to move to the CA forum because it involves war and such, but can anyone explain to me in layman's terms the significance of the Chinese hypersonic/orbital missile launch?

Aside from the actual capabilities of the missile, its getting politically muddy due to one thing

MAD

Mutually Assured Destruction - That absolutely wonderful policy that guarantee's a nuclear war can never happen.

With the fall of the USSR the US has stepped up its BMD efforts, which is one thing that it gave up during the cold war, to ensure MAD continued. Being the US and USSR (and by extension Russia) are signatories on all the START/SALT treaties, etc.......we were restricted in things like number of launchers, warheads, platforms etc.

So when the US came up with the 'Star Wars' and BMD programs, it meant the thread of MAD wouldn't apply to them, and we would go bonkers on the world and that scared the Sovs. So, in a wonderful show of compassion, both sides agreed to give each other concessions to ensure there wasn't a massive escalation. So the US gave up BMD and Star Wars (or SDI i think it was called) and the Soviets gave up their hypersonic missiles.

Soviets go away, Russia becomes a shell of its previous self and China is left as a rising power with a fledgling nuclear weapon program. The US resume BMD, and now we have several successful tests of it.......our system shooting down decaying orbit satellites and test ballistic devices launched from Vandenberg successfully.

In a sense, the Chinese arsenal is useless.....obsolete before its even made. Keeping in mind they aren't signatories to any of these nuke treaties, they went back to something that could get through the defences being put up to the US.

Hypersonic missiles.

It remains to be seen if the US BMD would be able to deal with a hypersonic threat that potentially doesn't have much warning, but i think a lot of this is media doing its best to make money. With the way the Chinese is modernizing their Air Force and Navy, i don't see why they wouldn't be making the same strides in nuclear weapon delivery technologies.

But the TL;DR version is

Media sensation......remains to be seen the effectiveness of this new weapon system.

 

[SerenityNigh]

Aside from the actual capabilities of the missile, its getting politically muddy due to one thing

MAD

Mutually Assured Destruction - That absolutely wonderful policy that guarantee's a nuclear war can never happen.

With the fall of the USSR the US has stepped up its BMD efforts, which is one thing that it gave up during the cold war, to ensure MAD continued. Being the US and USSR (and by extension Russia) are signatories on all the START/SALT treaties, etc.......we were restricted in things like number of launchers, warheads, platforms etc.

So when the US came up with the 'Star Wars' and BMD programs, it meant the thread of MAD wouldn't apply to them, and we would go bonkers on the world and that scared the Sovs. So, in a wonderful show of compassion, both sides agreed to give each other concessions to ensure there wasn't a massive escalation. So the US gave up BMD and Star Wars (or SDI i think it was called) and the Soviets gave up their hypersonic missiles.

Soviets go away, Russia becomes a shell of its previous self and China is left as a rising power with a fledgling nuclear weapon program. The US resume BMD, and now we have several successful tests of it.......our system shooting down decaying orbit satellites and test ballistic devices launched from Vandenberg successfully.

In a sense, the Chinese arsenal is useless.....obsolete before its even made. Keeping in mind they aren't signatories to any of these nuke treaties, they went back to something that could get through the defences being put up to the US.

Hypersonic missiles.

It remains to be seen if the US BMD would be able to deal with a hypersonic threat that potentially doesn't have much warning, but i think a lot of this is media doing its best to make money. With the way the Chinese is modernizing their Air Force and Navy, i don't see why they wouldn't be making the same strides in nuclear weapon delivery technologies.

But the TL;DR version is

Media sensation......remains to be seen the effectiveness of this new weapon system.

So a few questions:

1. I thought BMD didn't work, or is that just the line given to the media?
2. How can we be sure the crazies will respect MAD? I've seen Dr Strangelove more than once and you'd really have to twist my arm to convince me that 45 doesn't own a few mineshaft himself.
3. Can such a missile (hypersonic/orbital) select a target after launch or does that not even matter (is that a dumb question)? I guess if you can get into orbit or low space and get out of the BMD range, you can't be taken out? Also, one test is impressive but it's just one test--how reliable is trajectory like this?

Or, as you suggest, is this all elementary thinking? (and I probably agree, but maybe for the opposite reason--if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.)

 

[Dylan]

So a few questions:

1. I thought BMD didn't work, or is that just the line given to the media?
2. How can we be sure the crazies will respect MAD? I've seen Dr Strangelove more than once and you'd really have to twist my arm to convince me that 45 doesn't own a few mineshaft himself.
3. Can such a missile (hypersonic/orbital) select a target after launch or does that not even matter (is that a dumb question)? I guess if you can get into orbit or low space and get out of the BMD range, you can't be taken out? Also, one test is impressive but it's just one test--how reliable is trajectory like this?

Or, as you suggest, is this all elementary thinking? (and I probably agree, but maybe for the opposite reason--if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.)

BMD does work. Though we haven't used it in anger. Things have to be pretty darn bad for that.......

But so far of the 49 tests, 40 have been successful. Its not a be all end all at this point, but its getting there - for better or for worse (look up AEGIS BMD using the SM-2ER, SM-3 and SM-6 missiles) I was stationed in Hawaii when the X-Band BMD radar was there undergoing maintenance. Crazy bit of kit that!

Supposedly the threat of MAD deters the crazies.

Traditional ballistic missiles never achieve orbit and generally have pre-planned multiple targets for the MIRVs. A missile in LEO has much more freedom, as it isn't on a ballistic arc, but will still be constrained to targets along its orbital path, as the energy required to make even significant changes to the orbit is very high, and as we haven't figured out a way to significantly change orbit paths (not altitudes) we have to assume the Chinese haven't either, based on their current inventory of rockets and orbital vehicles

 

[Sassy Colombian]

I

How big would an asteroid or comet have to be to end life on Earth?

Answer (1 of 84): The last suspected asteroid inducing extinction event took place 65–66 mya and closed out the Mesozoic. The object held responsible for this dino-disaster, was a 9.7 km rock traveling at an estimated 20 km/sec, which created the 177 km wide Chicxulub crater. Researchers Kaiho a...

www.quora.com

It’s not looking good for humanity if that asteroid gets too close to the earth.