this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
1709 points (95.7% liked)
Memes
45550 readers
889 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes and no. Yes by the time it would likely be detected on a collision course with Earth, at present, even the greatest minds can't theorize a method to neutralize an asteroid => 5km in diameter that doesn't cause an extinction event with the technology available to us right now.
However, if it were detected soon enough there may be more tenable options for preventing an impact event that are not futile. The problem is we don't have nearly enough resources monitoring deep space for our inevitable destruction and with a lot of our space tech now being privatized in the US it will be more difficult because there's no profit incentive to being prepared for our doom. At least now that NASA is active again there will be an obvious taxpayer incentive to literally preventing our own annihilation...lol
Edit to add article about early detection: https://www.planetary.org/defending-the-earth-from-impacts#:~:text=We%20can%20stop%20asteroids%20from,tends%20to%20focus%20on%20asteroids.
The point is you aren't going to stop an asteroid if you're living in a tribe in the jungle.
That's a dumb point. Might as well do nothing and continue to ravage the planet because there will be a meteorite somewhere in the next millions year.
That doesn't follow. If you care about whether or not humanity survives, those are not equivalent at all.
Sure, but my point is that capitalism may as well be George of the jungle with everything it does to trade our future for revenue growth.