| Subject: Cut and Paste as you choose to make a moot point. |
Author:
avalanche
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Date Posted: 02:36:53 09/03/00 Sun
In reply to:
Terry
's message, "Cut and Paste as you choose to make a moot point." on 21:34:40 09/02/00 Sat
> It is awesome how you cut the line "At least most of
> it is a waste" out just to attack my words. Certain
> things such as research on certain sicknesses and such
> are not a waste. Right now a missle defense system
> needs to be rased because a missle from china is ALOT
> more likly that a rock from space.
actually no it isn't. chinese wouldn't dare fire a missile at anyone out of fear for UN reprisals. an asteroid has no such concerns. chinese missiles are kept in check by politics and common sense. but there are tens, hundreds of earth-orbit crossing asteroids out there, and we've only mapped a small percentage of that, in actual truth, if an asteroid would impact earth, we might not know about it until an hour before impact. and when a sufficiently sized asteroid would impact earth, that would be it. the end of all advanced life. it would create a shockwave that would trigger the biggests floods, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes this planet has ever seen, it would destroy a huge land area, even if it impacted in the ocean, it's shockwave would travel around the globe, and it would throw up so much dust and debris up into the atmosphere that the sun would be completely blocked out for centuries, destroying fotosynthesis, and quickly killing all lifeforms except maybe bacteria. whilst a missile from china might do quite a bit of damage and cause many lives to be lost, a "rock from space" would destroy all life as we know it.
and right now, it's far more likely that that rock from space would impact than that missile from china. in the 20th century alone there were 2 relatively large asteroid impacts, in the amazon and in tunguska, the tunguska one was estimated to be only 10 metres in diametre, yet it completely destroyed an area of over 100 kilometres in diametre, and there is a huge amount of earth-crossing asteroids that are 5KM+ in diametre. Very recently, we discovered an asteroid of a few KM's in diametre that missed earth by 0.13 AU (astronomical unit), that is about the thickness of a hair in astronomical terms.
we as a planet must first and foremost defend ourselves from the asteroid threath, it is the biggest threath to humanity.
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