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Re:Pentagon study declares American Empire is 'collapsing' by castis on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @01:35PM (#14806131)
From what we can tell, they've caused mass extinctions before, no reason to believe they won't again.
Re:Pentagon study declares American Empire is 'collapsing' by djohnston on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @01:47PM (#14806264)
i believe that i just don't think the timeline is short enough for it to matter. afaik there is no impending asteroid disaster within the next 1000 years, although there could be hundreds of factors in my ignorance on this matter.
Re:Pentagon study declares American Empire is 'collapsing' by gremlinsinc on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @01:57PM (#14806374)
There's not enough data to support this claim. At present the budgets spent on policing space for foreign objects is puny, and currently less than 5% of the night sky is being policed or analyzed. Asteroids can come from a bazillion different trajectories up down left right.. all in 3d space... it's not like looking left/right and left again crossing the street.

It's very possibly an asteroid could strike us and we wouldn't even be aware of it till after the fact, or at the very least till a week or two before it strikes... if it's in one of our blind spots (i.e. the other 95% of the sky)

Re:Pentagon study declares American Empire is 'collapsing' by castis on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @01:56PM (#14806357)
It is not yet possible to know when the next one is going to show up. We are only currently aware of a bunch of rocks that most likely wont hit us.
Re:Pentagon study declares American Empire is 'collapsing' by majkinetor on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @01:44PM (#14806230)
Mass extinction due to meteor strike is just one hypothesis.
Re:Pentagon study declares American Empire is 'collapsing' by castis on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @01:55PM (#14806351)
That's 100% of the point.

If other planets/moons/whatever haven't been colonized by the time humanity gets empirical data for that hypothesis, a lot of people are going to wish they'd put that a little higher on the list.