A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Everyone saying "they can evacuate" clearly doesn't remember how bad the covid response was.
There will be anti-space conspiracy theorists. The ownership class would demand people continue working until the last possible minute (and beyond). It would be politicized, because some people are unbelievably stupid, cruel, and selfish, and enough people are so stupid they'll buy in.
Now, if we could make the meteor fall on a location occupied solely by the people who don't believe in science...
Look, it's really simple. Just don't look up. If we collectively ignore the problem, it won't be a problem.
They could make a movie about that!
Also the impact risk corridor passes through states that are poorly equipped for large civil defence operations: Ethiopia and the CAR are in civil wars, Yemen is in a civil war with the majority of the country under the control of an unrecognized government, and the South Sudanese government is quite week—being at peace only for the last 5 years
Everyone saying “they can evacuate” clearly doesn’t remember how bad the covid response was.
or not paying attention to political winds welcoming the evacuees.
It would make sense to have a more cooperative world, even if cooperation involves "victims" compensating those able to protect them. Hope the US can continue to contribute tracking resources, at least.
At least "crushed by asteroid" is not contagious.
… that’s exactly what would happen, it would land on all the people who don’t believe in science.
If this happens frequently enough the Republican Party will just vanish.
"I'm gonna go all in."
With more data collected over time, the chance has already been reduced to 0.28% https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/2025/02/20/additional-observations-continue-to-reduce-chance-of-asteroid-impact-in-2032/
Outside of extremely extenuating circumstances, this isn't a worry. We already have proof-of-concept tech like DART to divert asteroids, aerospace engineers can use this to get governments to fund them even better, asteroid goes behind the sun for 3 years, asteroid diverting technology advances even further, in 2028 when the path of travel becomes more precise the chance of hitting us gets revised down to zero, and we've advanced our technology should anything more serious come our way in the future
yeah, we really don't have to worry.
With the DART mission tech, we can get our hit chances into the 90 percents
Gotta pump those numbers up
Backup is that we have a team of deep sea oil drillers go up there
@OneTwoThree @fossilesque actually we want this asteroid to hit Earth. Remove one threat from the sky. Divert to hit in a safe place. This one is safe if it hit in a remote location.
Is it wrong to hope it hits us?
yeah, yeah it is
Why is that? The planet will be fine without us. It will probably be better off without us.
Its not nearly big enough to wipe out the planet. Not even close.
It would just cause suffering for thousands/hundreds of thousands of people. Are you OK with that?
Revised down to 0.27%
Just when it was getting good too! One of these days...
So what level of calamity are we talking about here? 3% doesn’t sound that low to me.
If it is on a collision course we probably have time to do something about it. If we don't do anything about it it'll probably hit the ocean and it's not big enough to cause any kind of crazy mega tsunami or anything like that. If it does hit land it'll probably hit in the middle of nowhere and kill, like, 12 people, and if it does manage to beat all the odds and hit a major city it will be a major disaster, but it's not going to be the apocalypse or anything.
Well we wouldn't have to worry about global warming anymore
This size meteor would destroy a city but not have lasting planet-scale effects. Think Tonguska event.
I’m going all in on the potential straight.
Don't give me hope
I begin to worry when I see this asteroid still in the sky and how it becomes gradually bigger
It was nice knowing yall
Well it would still have an impact energy less than that of tsar bomba, and probably just hit an ocean.
Yes, but the audience score is at 80%.