Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

Re:Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred ... by AlexMennen on Thursday November 22, 2012 @11:53PM (#4821015)

If there is a significant chance that a comet will hit and destroy us, it makes sense to do everything we can to prevent it from doing so. Given the stakes, .1% chance should be more than enough for us to take it seriously. It does not seem plausible that we could harm ourselves much by nuking a comet that wasn't going to hit us anyway.

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Re:Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred ... by rizzom5000 on Friday November 23, 2012 @12:15AM (#4821055)

It does seem plausible that we could in fact harm ourselves by attempting to launch a nuclear device out of Earth's orbit. We do have a record of failed launches, several of them recent. Once the nuclear device is out of orbit however, I agree that the harm it can do to us is negligible.

Edit: Also, it just occurred to me the possibility of deflecting a comet (which was never in our path) into our path, instead of away from it, which is really great material for a Hollywood comedy.

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Re:Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred ... by AlexMennen on Friday November 23, 2012 @12:39AM (#4821096)

Good point, but the chances of a failed launch are fairly small, and the damage from accidentally detonating a large nuke on the Earth's surface, while bad, would be small compared to human extinction.

If we are sufficiently uncertain about the comet's path, we might accidentally deflect it towards us. Obviously, if this is just as likely as deflecting it away from us, it would not be worthwhile to try. But most likely we would be able to reduce the probability of a catastrophic impact even after taking into account the possibility of such an error.

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Re:Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred ... by grecy on Friday November 23, 2012 @11:43AM (#4822763)

We've intentionally detonated hundreds of nukes in the atmosphere.. Even over heavily populated cities. Sure, it was bad, but not earth-ending bad.

If a lunch failed and "nuked" the launch pad, I hope we'd just move on to another continent and try again (and again)

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Re:Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred ... by berntb on Friday November 23, 2012 @04:04AM (#4821466)

Nuclear weapons have fallen out of the sky before. No, they won't explode -- it isn't easy to make one go boom.

But I would not be surprised if Green political parties argue that risking a few km^2 contamination is worse than a certain dinosaur killer... :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash

"The non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of a 2-square-kilometer (490-acre) (0.78 square mile) area by plutonium. [... another which fell] into the Mediterranean Sea, was recovered intact"

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Re:Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred ... by rorrr on Friday November 23, 2012 @01:28AM (#4821155)

If a billion-ton comet is about to hit our planet, a failed attempt to launch a nuke doesn't matter in the slightest.

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