Originally posted by Acidman
I'm not really afraid of any comet or aything hitting the earth, becasue we would definatley have the technology to either destroy or alter the course of the comet.
Well, this whole comet/asteroid business could be one whole hell of a stickier pot of hot water than most people believe.
First off, we simply do not have the appropriate technology to accurately or safely deviate a large enough asteroid or comet. For anyone interested, large enough in this case also means large enough to do real damage if it hits. For that matter, we don't currently have SUFFICIENT technological capability to accurately catalog or even spot all near-earth or potentially near-earth celestial bodies, which only means one could be creeping up on us as we speak, and we wouldn't notice it until it was merely a matter of days away.
While this has been a premise of B-Movie stature, it is nonetheless starting to garner some real attention from the scientific community, and with good reason. With this particular comet (mentioned here) being relatively far away as of current observation, there would seem to be about a one-in-a-million chance of it hitting us, which is already far greater than your chances of getting struck by lightning, winning the lottery, or having a piranha jump out of your New Jersey toilet and bite you on the arse... Unfortunately, however, this current estimate is almost meaningless, as all that can be said with any degree of certainty right now is that it will come close. As it approaches - and then again only when it's very close - estimates will begin to get much more accurate, and probability caculations might grow or shrink quite a bit accordingly. In fact, it's precisely the possibility of it intersecting with any of the other planets in our solar system, or even the asteroid belt, that is cause for concern, as that could deviate it's course, increase it's momentum, disrupt alignment of planets or moons, or kick around any number of other asteroids for us to play billiards with. I believe - in this particular case - the current estimate is that it will pass somewhere in the vicinity of Saturn, which is nice if Saturn catches it, but bad if it just gets a nice slingshot effect from Saturn's massive girth and then rockets out our way. Keep in mind that even a near-miss can disrupt the delicate balance of everything we know, and that if we did SUCCESSFULLY destroy it with nukes or whatnot, it would first have to be close enough to hit, which also means close enough that we'd still get thousands of smaller but no less serious impacts as opposed to one big one. Have a nice day.
An interesting note, on the more esoteric side of things, is that the unerringly and improbably accurate Aztec calendar simply ENDS in 2012. Don't take it seriously.
-Atomic Chicken Little-
