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"Armageddon" You're doing it wrong
Topic Started: Mar 13 2010, 01:54 PM (131 Views)
George K
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Finally
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527514.700-terminator-asteroids-could-reform-after-nuke.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Quote:
 
'Terminator' asteroids could re-form after nuke - space - 11 March 2010

THE regenerating liquid-metal robots in the Terminator movies have a cosmic relation: incoming asteroids that quickly reassemble if blasted by a nuclear bomb.

If a sizeable asteroid is found heading towards Earth, one option is to nuke it. But too small a bomb would cause the fragments to fly apart only slowly, allowing them to clump together under their mutual gravity. Simulations now show this can happen in an alarmingly short time.

Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Catherine Plesko of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico simulated blowing up asteroids 1 kilometre across. When the speed of dispersal was relatively low, it took only hours for the fragments to coalesce into a new rock.

"The high-speed stuff goes away but the low-speed stuff reassembles [in] 2 to 18 hours," Korycansky says. The simulations were presented (pdf) last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.

Reassuringly, a 2009 study led by David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California showed that a 900-kiloton nuclear device – which is within our capability – would permanently disperse a 1-kilometre asteroid.
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
My belief is that the world will end when one of these enormous nuclear missiles goes wrong and explodes on takeoff.

God loves a bit of irony, as even a brief perusal of any church congregation makes clear.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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Luke's Dad
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Emperor Pengin
George K
Mar 13 2010, 01:54 PM
Quote:
 
Reassuringly, a 2009 study led by David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California showed that a 900-kiloton nuclear device – which is within our capability – would permanently disperse a 1-kilometre asteroid.
Discouragingly, it was a 9-kilometre asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs.
The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Clearly, to ensure that we allocate resources probable to deal with the right threat, the probability of something like this happening has to be assessed and compared to the probability of the the zombie pandemic happening.
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Luke's Dad
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Emperor Pengin
Axtremus
Mar 13 2010, 03:33 PM
Clearly, to ensure that we allocate resources probable to deal with the right threat, the probability of something like this happening has to be assessed and compared to the probability of the the zombie pandemic happening.
That's problematic as both nightmarish scenarios are a matter of when, not if.
The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it.
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