NASA on asteroids..

[Gary70]

Not that i ponder on this subject greatly but I wonder what sort of calculation this would be?

There must be countless variables, like impacts on asteroids from asteroids that were also impacted by other displaced objects, I think you get my direction of thought.......

But it is remarkable that the human race has come so quickly to a point where it can predict the movement of objects we knew barely anything about no so long ago..

http://ca.news.yahoo...-195515033.html

[Chris]

Thats re-assuring thanks for the link:)

I like the quote at the bottom of the page "the reason the dinosaurs went extinct is because they didn't have a space program"

[spurius]

When I clicked this thread I thought it was gonna be about big muscley wrestlers who also work for NASA. The arrow pointer just happened to be covering up the "A" in asteroid.

Anyway they didnt put a prediction for when an undetected asteroid will wipe out civilisation.

[lukebl]

Interesting stuff, but I find it odd that they're so confident that there's little risk of a significant earth impact within 100 years, when new NEOs are being discovered almost every day. For instance, 2013 BE19 is estimated to be up to 740 metres across and was only discovered a week ago, and will be passing relatively close by next week! That's presumably big enough to do a fair bit of damage if it was closer. Not wishing for Armageddon myself, it's just that when things that big pass by almost unnoticed, it makes you think that there must be more out there. It's only matter of time!

[Ags]

I'm not buying it. For example we discover new comets all the time - it's unlikely, but any of these could hit us, so how can they say we have an 'all clear'?