K-T event did NOT wipe out dinos

[Digit]

If the impactor was large enough why not? Also consider this, a cometary impact would dump water and possible hydro-carbons and add a chemical explosion to the scenario with toxic after effects.
A glancing blow from a comet could spread toxicity over a much wider area than a vertical impact.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

A "big enough" impactor would merely bounce the rubble.

You and I would be beyond caring.

[E.P. Grondine]

Yes, by all means lets dial this back a bit.

I've read E.P.'s book and while I wasn't convinced it does show that he has studied the issue a great deal, far more than the rest of us I dare say, at least from the point of view of native-American sources.

Thank you. People of Native American ancestry are my biggest "fans"; and I am pleased to have recovered that history to some degree.

However, E.P. you have to accept that not everyone is going to be overly impressed by ancient folklore when there are actual, scientific methods to demonstrate that an impact happened.

It's not simply "folklore", min. You need to think of a people's oral corpus as a library: there are reference books, histories, how to books, children's books, romances, adventures, religious books, etc.

What I used were the oral histories.

As far as the actual "scientiific method", hard geological and archaeological data recovery goes, you are unaware of the fact that while NASA actually spent a whole lot of money denying the impactite layer in North America, NASA spent $0 on the Kiscoty structure, $0 on Sheriden Cave, $0 on other possible holocene start craters; $0 out of $17,000 million per year.

The USGS has cores from the Carolinas showing impact mega-tsnuami which have been sitting for over 3 years. NASA spending on them: $0.

I don't work on this alone, and I know many of these people personally. That is their NASA funding: $0.

What's wrong with this picture?

[E.P. Grondine]

[...] he has studied the issue a great deal, far more than the rest of us I dare say, at least from the point of view of native-American sources.

The 'church fathers' studied their 'issue' a great deal too, "far more than the rest of us I dare say". Nevertheless they couldn't be more wrong.

In your opinion. But this is not a matter of religion, its a matter of physical science.

The amount of time or effort spent studying a subject isn't proportional to its veracity. It simply doesn't make it one iota more, or less, true. It's got nothing to do with it.

The amount of time and effort spent studying a subject may, however, indicate an obsessive compulsion and a fundamental feeling of insecurity (as it did with the 'church fathers' and does with all of today's 'religious scholars', ministers, priests, imams, etc. etc.).
And over sensitivity for 'persecution' – a.k.a. paranoïa – doesn't make it any easier: it adversely affects personality traits and social acceptability.

Let me clear this up for you, RS. Its not insecurity. I did not plan to become a martyr, and I have absolutely no desire to become one.

It's simply that I know:
1) About one time every 1 million years for the last 6 milion years mankind has nearly been extincted by impact
2) About once per every 10,000 years impacts have caused global climate collapses, which today would mean perhaps 1,000,000,000 people starving to death
3) Abuot once every 1,000 years there have been impact mega-tsunami's, which today would kill about 60,000,000 people
4) About once every 100 years there have been Tunguska type blasts, 15 megatons, which could kill anywhere from a couple to 10,000,000 to 100,000,000 people, depending on what was hit and when
5) NASA officials have been consistently lying about this
6) I am not the only person who knows this, there are others.

I acted upon that knowledge because I had the ability to. I think that any other person who found himself in the same position would; that is, unless he harbored some Mars escapist fantasy that interfered with his perception and moral judgment.

The sooner the new NASA Administrator Bolden and Associate Administrator Garver start executing the instructions of the Congress in the George Brown Jr. amendment, the sooner I can lay this burden down and rest.

[E.P. Grondine]

Now both proponents have agree that the cost of Martian exploration would fall in the future.
Can't see that.
... I see no reason to assume that the ratio will change unless an entirely new source of fuel for the trip is developed.

Which may well happen.

So is Martian exploration worthwhile?
In monetary terms, no! But then neither was much of Earth's exploration.

Actually, most Earth exploration led to immediate economic returns. But then the Earth has what we need to survive, and the exploration costs were very low.

Terran impact. There is often a tendency amongst people to confuse risk with result.

There is an absolute tendency for NASA to lie about the risk and understate it by an order of magnitude. This is well known by those who do not depend on NASA for their salary.

Currently the world's governments are committing trillions to combat 'man made' global warming, this despite the 'science' being questionable, (more scientists signed the Manhattan Declaration denying it than signed the IPCC reports).
So here we have vast amounts being spent on something that may be beyond our control and probably far less dangerous than an impact and little being spent on that which is guaranteed to occur and that we may be able to protect against.
So! Where would you spend your tax dollars?
Roy.

My energy dollars should be spent on getting the US off oil, onto sustainable energy, and stopping using the atmosphere as a dump, while generating jobs, and reducing energy costs. But that's simply my preference.

For the record, I do not support cap and trade, and think it will be a fiasco. Trading paper will do nothing to solve our energy problems.

Now NASA gets $17,000 million per year, and spends as near $0 on the impact hazard as they can get away with. Where do you want that money spent?

[E.P. Grondine]

There was a special on last night about some guy who maintains there was a tsunami in Australia some 500 years ago caused by an impact. The science is being debated but again the folklore is on his side. Trouble is that they think it hit near New Zealand and there is no evidence of a tsunami on New Zealand at that time. Still, the point remains, it doesn't have to hit land. A strike in the north-Atlantic would do plenty of damage.

Considering some of the money pissed away on various research projects something that could enhance detection certainly seems to be a worthwhile investment. Stopping such a target seems like sci-fi at the moment but lots of things that were sci-fi in the 50's are reality now.

Hi Min -

That wave hit Ponhpei. Everyone killed.
$0 dollars for search for impact sediments - Ted Bryant works this. $0.

Remembered on Tonga. It appears China's commercial fleet was destroyed in this as well, resulting in 500 years of chaos.

Dallas Abbott works North Atlantic impact mega-tsunamis, and there were several of them that left Manhattan under water. NASA funding: $0

We now have the technology to prevent this from happening again.

I can't change this myself: write a letter to your representatives in Congress.

[E.P. Grondine]

Breaking it up just creates a lot of fragments which would still hit. I've seen concepts for deflecting the entire asteroid so that it misses.

The fundamentals, greatly simplified:
Small objects can be diverted by non-nuclear kinetic impacts IF DETECTED EARLY ENOUGH.
NASA detection money: as near $0 as they can get away with.

Larger objects can be destroyed by large nuclear charges. Its better to get hit by a spray of shotgun pellets than by an artillery shell.

The largest can be diverted by stand off nuclear charges.

The other option is CAPS: use a small nuclear reactor to power an ion drive, after rendevous use its electricity to ablate the surface of the impactor, causing diversion by a jet reaction.

If my hand still worked, I could write a lengthy note on this by asteroid type and set out some of the fundamentals of comet formation for you.

[Minimalist]

A 2003 Nat Geo article about detection of NEOs. The conclusion deals with "deflection" and, unfortunately, seems to bear out too much of what E.P. says.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... roids.html

As NEO researchers continue to search the skies for objects that pose an impact risk, they are also beginning discussions on how to deflect an object on a collision course with Earth.

One of the issues being explored is the interior structure of asteroids. If the interior is weak, for example, an attempt to deflect it with a nuclear warhead (an option under consideration) may simply breakup the asteroid into many smaller and uncontrolled pieces.

Milani writes that such investigations are a valid extension of the NASA and European Space Agency NEO programs and make logical sense: "We cannot justify the effort for discovery unless we can safeguard our planet."

Jedicke said that we are not currently prepared to deflect an incoming asteroid, but that there is no reason to be alarmed because there is little chance that an asteroid even as small as 330 feet (100 meters) will hit Earth within the next 100 years.

"They don't build tornado shelters in Germany. Cities don't buy snowplows in Florida. And there's no pressing need to worry about deflection of incoming NEOs at the moment," he said.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Dallas Abbott works North Atlantic impact mega-tsunamis, and there were several of them that left Manhattan under water. NASA funding: $0

We now have the technology to prevent this from happening again.

If the point is to prevent tsunamis, researching cosmological impacts would be a ridiculously futile m.o. because it's not just cosmological impacts that cause tsunamis. It is in fact statistically the least likely scenario. Like the Thailand 2001 tsunami demonstrated. Submarine volcanism, tectonics, and landslides cause 95% of tsunamis.
Not cosmological impact!

For instance: if the currently confirmed volatile west slope, under water, of the Canary Islands mountain range collapses, the entire US east coast, including Miami, 90% of Florida, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington DC will be destroyed by the resulting tsunami.
Without even one space pebble entering into the equation.

So if disaster preventing budgets must be spent, spend 'm on the statistically most likely scenarios. Not on the statistically least likely scenarios.

[Digit]

So if disaster preventing budgets must be spent, spend 'm on the statistically most likely scenarios. Not on the statistically least likely scenarios.

Which is exactly what I meant in concentrating on the risk rather than the out come.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

If the point is to prevent tsunamis, researching cosmological impacts would be a ridiculously futile m.o. because it's not just cosmological impacts that cause tsunamis.

A tsunami is not likely to disrupt the entire planet while a sufficiently large impact could. Without worrying about whether they hit land or sea the idea of stopping them from hitting at all does seem to have some merit. In my copy of Science Daily today they reported on a study that someone funded to consider the effects of certain brain proteins in anorexic teenagers. Now, who am I to suggest that such research is not important but a if a sufficiently large rock falls out of the sky the very least of an anorexic teens' problem will be not wanting to eat.

We live on a geologically active planet and those geological forces could sweep us aside like so many ants.

[Digit]

Exactly! We concentrate on the risk and ignore the end result of the risk zeroing out.

Roy.

[E.P. Grondine]

A 2003 Nat Geo article about detection of NEOs. The conclusion deals with "deflection" and, unfortunately, seems to bear out too much of what E.P. says.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... roids.html

Jedicke said that we are not currently prepared to deflect an incoming asteroid, but that there is no reason to be alarmed because there is little chance that an asteroid even as small as 330 feet (100 meters) will hit Earth within the next 100 years.

"They don't build tornado shelters in Germany. Cities don't buy snowplows in Florida. And there's no pressing need to worry about deflection of incoming NEOs at the moment," he said.

Jedicke is deliberately lying.

The chance of a 100 meter impact (Tunguska class) per 100 years is 1.

He is well paid to do it; in this case, Jedicke is trying to prevent money for "cosmology" astronomy being divert to impactor detection. In other words, he's lying to protect his own salary and those of his associates.

Besides him, there are many people who are so concerned about nuclear weapons that they will lie to prevent the use of nuclear explosives.

Ignore deflection with nuclear or non-nuclear means for a minute. Even a 45 minute warning would save millions of lives.

You have your "club", min. Well they're archaeologists with no money; my "club" has millions and milllions of dollars, a vast PR machinery, many clients who recieve their salaries from then, and a dedicated core of delusional fanatics (RS for example).

Your "club" simply maintains some dogma about the past; my "club" endangers millions of people's lives.

[E.P. Grondine]

If the point is to prevent tsunamis, researching cosmological impacts would be a ridiculously futile m.o. because it's not just cosmological impacts that cause tsunamis. It is in fact statistically the least likely scenario. Like the Thailand 2001 tsunami demonstrated. Submarine volcanism, tectonics, and landslides cause 95% of tsunamis. Not cosmological impact!

IGNORANT LYING B***S***, RS. YOU DON"T KNOW WTF YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

In point of fact, those who actually work with tsunami, such as Dallas Abbott and Ted Bryant, have identified the impact component, and it is large and frequent. Again, NASA funding: $0.

So if disaster preventing budgets must be spent, spend 'm on the statistically most likely scenarios. Not on the statistically least likely scenarios.

Yes, and let's actually listen to the experts who know the facts and the statistics when we decide what are the most likely scenarios, rather than listen to ignorant poseurs such as yourself.

[MichelleH]

E.P. Dial it back. A discussion can be held without name calling.