[HN Gopher] NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashin...
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NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Success
Author : DocFeind
Score : 135 points
Date : 2023-01-14 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (eos.org)
| originalvichy wrote:
| Glad to hear. As crazy as it sounds, I believe that the biggest
| apology we can give to the planet's inhabitants is using our
| creations to shield Earth from a potentially catastrophic
| asteroid that could wipe out vast amounts of life.
|
| Yes, this "repayment" to Earth's biosphere is dulled by the fact
| that we created weapons decades ago that could wipe out more life
| than a relatively small asteroid could, but developing and fine
| tuning these redirection methods is the least we could do to
| protect this planet's life.
| JPKab wrote:
| Less than a year ago I made this exact statement in a thread on
| hn where a bunch of people were talking about how humans are
| like a virus on the planet.
|
| I pointed out that the only thing in the history of the earth
| that can stop the inevitable coming mass extinction from the
| occasional asteroid are the hairless fire apes that have
| learned how to harness chemicals to create rockets.
|
| The responses were essentially calling me crazy and saying it
| was fantasy.
|
| The repayment is simply not dulled at all. Virtually every
| medium sized or larger species on the planet gets wiped out on
| the occasional large asteroid hit. A percentage of them going
| extinct is a small price to pay for the majority staying alive
| when the asteroid doesn't hit because we redirected it. For the
| first time in its history the earth now has hairless fire apes
| to act as an immune system against asteroids.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Over 75% of life on earth is behind us (4.2bn years).
| Humanity's on a track to save life on earth from the complete
| extinction event coming in 400M to 800m years. Humans are the
| first (and very likely only) golden ticket our planet has
| printed to get life off of this rock. We are heading to the
| stars, and we will bring life with us.
|
| Humans are awesome.
| hammock wrote:
| > Over 75% of life on earth is behind us (4.2bn years)
|
| What do you mean by this? Are you predicting that life on
| earth can only last for another 1.4 billion years? What
| extinction event is so certain in the next 400m-800m years?
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Less than 1.4Bn. AFAIK the carbon cycle grinds to a halt in
| 400M-800M years:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The increased output of the growing sun will (ironically)
| sequester _all_ the co2 due to weathering processes of
| certain rocks. Then there will be no plants. It won 't take
| long after that.
| twoodfin wrote:
| There isn't _that_ much CO2 in the atmosphere. This is
| obviously a WAG, but I'd suppose that the planet-scale
| geoengineering required to maintain plant-friendly CO2
| levels in that changed solar environment would be at
| least as feasible as developing a sustainable, coherent
| interstellar civilization.
| Xorlev wrote:
| I love this comment. We're a walking disaster and a literally
| hot mess, but you're right that we're probably the best
| chance at preserving life overall.
|
| > We are heading to the stars, and we will bring life with
| us.
|
| Another way to think about it: we'll be Earth's best, most
| successful, furthest-flung seeds.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| We are the final stage of a Von-Neumann probe. We are
| supposed to be identifying potential habitable planets, or
| what will be by the time our launched packages of biologics
| arrives.
| jakear wrote:
| Life would continue on earth after an asteroid (see:
| history). The impact would only wipe out the most fragile
| species, such as humans.
|
| The same holds for nuclear war: life would continue as it
| always has, species with poor nuclear hardening would be
| selected against.
|
| The true extraterrestrialism absolutists ought to encourage
| nuclear winter and asteroid impacts; the life that makes it
| out the other end will be much better suited for space's low
| light low nutrient high radiation environment.
|
| (/s...?)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Nuclear disasters seem like a pretty solid way to create
| blooming nature preserves. Why don't we do more of those?
| xXTyrannosXx wrote:
| Really I think we should go a step beyond this. Being able to
| go to some new planet is not guaranteed or that planet may
| even be inhospitable to us.
|
| What I think is more feasible and more benevolent than
| preventing a mass extinction is we should slowly expand our
| orbit so we can survive the brightening sun for at least a
| while longer. Basically, all we need to do is increase our
| planets speed over hundreds of millions of years. A certain
| mass of asteroids with steerable self correcting orbits could
| push small amounts of speed into our planet that would build
| up over time.
|
| Even if we don't make it, we at least give life more time to
| do it's thing.
| hanniabu wrote:
| This has "it's our planet to ruin" vibes
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My perspective is that "protecting this planet's life" is just
| more human narcissism (this isn't a jab at you, it's a very
| common mindset).
|
| Short of total sterilization, mass extinction events seem to be
| really good at creating space for new forms of life to develop.
| In a way, preventing them in the name of the non-human life
| here is just picking the incumbent over whatever comes next.
| How would we feel if aliens stopped the mass extinction events
| that led to our existence? I'm not sure there's solid argument
| for why one is more deserving of existence than the other.
|
| I think why this slightly rubs me the wrong way is it feels
| like an excuse to make us feel good. Non-human life seems by
| and large indifferent to its long-term fate on this planet.
| Let's not pretend we do anything significant for non-human life
| that isn't to our direct benefit.
|
| Just my perspective. Not trying to say "no, you're wrong!"
| Just, "I disagree." I'm going to guess there's an entire named
| branch of philosophy that explores this.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > How would we feel if aliens stopped the mass extinction
| events that led to our existence?
|
| I would wager than as soon as a technological civilization is
| born, it's morally reprehensible to let it go extinct, since
| it no longer is at the full whims of evolution. It's complex
| issue, so many people would wage otherwise, and only a jury
| might reach a conclusion. The case is moot when said
| civilization can avert extinction by their own hand, though.
|
| I don't know about two technological civilizations in
| conflict, like sapiens and neanderthals. Would it be morally
| acceptable to let them go at each other, even if the fittest
| extinguishes the other?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > I would wager than as soon as a technological
| civilization is born, it's morally reprehensible to let it
| go extinct, since it no longer is at the full whims of
| evolution.
|
| I see the logic here. But why, though? And technology is
| everywhere in non-human nature. While I think our
| technology and civilization is unlike anything else here,
| it's still on the spectrum of nature's exercise of
| community and technology. Are we _really_ that special?
|
| I think this heads towards the whole "Prime Directive" line
| of reasoning.
|
| P.S. Eloi > Morlocks, of course. ;)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > I see the logic here.
|
| There's no logic there. Just a faith in "potential".
|
| It is arguable one way or the other whether
| civilizational humans have caused more happiness or more
| suffering for Earth (all of us lifeforms combined). So
| the only way to call such a thing "morally reprehensible"
| is if you assume that Civilization will eventually evolve
| into some awesome, fantastic, space-faring, all-needs-
| met, stewards of the near solar system fantasticness.
| TylerLives wrote:
| Given how long it takes for complex life forms to develop,
| and how other planets known to us don't seem to have any life
| at all, I think it's reasonable to prefer the existing life
| to the future potential life, even from a non-anthropocentric
| perspective.
| chki wrote:
| But why? Why are algae better than rocks and ants better
| than algae if you take humans out of the equation?
| hgsgm wrote:
| Complexity is interesting.
| chki wrote:
| Why is complexity interesting if there are no humans to
| observe it?
| PKop wrote:
| Closer to us, and we are great.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Countless species of life have come, changed, and went over
| billions of years. But we arrive in the last few hundred
| thousand years and declare, "stop the cycling!"
|
| I completely see (and share) your reasoning. But I think
| it's very anthropocentric.
| XorNot wrote:
| Well guess what when there's no humans left alive,
| whether this is anything no longer matters because the
| value system died with them.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| If life blooms on a wet rock but nobody's around to say,
| "that's pretty," did it matter?
| XorNot wrote:
| No, because your entire sense of what's "beautiful" or
| "right" has died along with you and the rest of the human
| race.
| closewith wrote:
| Total sterilisation is a guaranteed outcome on a long enough
| time line.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| >I'm not sure there's solid argument for why one is more
| deserving of existence than the other.
|
| I think an existence bias is defensible. Take it as an axiom
| that suffering is bad and flourishing is good. I think its
| clear that the suffering of something that exists is worse
| than the lack of flourishing of something that doesn't exist
| but could. Value is something that conscious creatures do,
| and so value depends on existence. The states of something
| that can prefer its own states should be valued over the
| states of something that can't. Existing fish matter more
| than rocks and potential fish. So the organisms that exist,
| at least the sentient ones, should take preference.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _I'm not sure there's solid argument for why one is more
| deserving of existence than the other._
|
| Maybe we're helping to build a universe, and we can do more
| in that regard than single-celled organisms, cockroaches,
| etc.?
|
| https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_.
| .. (self-cite)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I love this line of thinking. It gets me excited about Sci-
| fi. But I think we may already have the technology to seed
| life elsewhere.
|
| We won't do it though because it's unsatisfying to our
| narcissism. Imagine trying to sell the world on a trillion
| dollar project where we shoot loads of bio-goo out into the
| cosmos in thousands of directions, knowing it'll take eons
| to maybe have an effect that'll then take billions of years
| to produce a result we will never appreciate.
|
| I think if we do any sort of proliferation of life, it'll
| be of us, by us, for us.
| hgsgm wrote:
| > Imagine trying to sell the world on a trillion dollar
| project where we shoot loads of bio-goo out into the
| cosmos in thousands of directions,
|
| It's funny to imagine that this might be _not_ how life
| on Earth started.
| dymk wrote:
| Humans are really good at causing mass extinctions - just
| look at how we've literally decimated the planet's
| biodiversity since the dawn of man!
|
| That's a lot of new space for new lifeforms to specialize in.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| But to our narcissistic displeasure, the biosphere acts on
| a very different time scale.
|
| But points to us for a world record pace speedrun on the
| downturn side of it. It'll eventually bloom again once
| we're done here.
| rapind wrote:
| The biggest brain fart of humanity is our tendency
| towards monoculture (for scale). Nature is very obviously
| showing us how to sustain an ecosystem and yet in our
| incredible hubris we're like "nah, we got this". We just
| want to swim upstream for the hell of it.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think one of our greatest flaws (and possibly main
| reason we are here today) is that we're so self-centered.
|
| Why do we monoculture if it will kill us long-term?
| Because it benefits us short-term. (And hey, maybe that
| gives us runway to solve the long-term problem).
| XorNot wrote:
| Nature doesn't try and do anything. Nature is constantly
| trying to murder everything around it. The most lethal
| diseases to man are natural, and often common skin
| bacteria which everyone carries.
|
| There's a viral form of cancer which is wiping out the
| Tasmanian Devil right now, just because.
|
| Nature and evolution has no plan and no morality, it has
| survivors and a balanced ecosystem is a cold war
| stalemate.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| If the universe causes an asteroid to hit earth and make all
| life extinct or let's new life flourish, us saving the earth
| from said asteroid is also an outgrowth of the universe.
|
| We are not separate from nature and protecting the earth is
| only natural for a multicellular intelligent species like
| ourselves.
| the_af wrote:
| I think the argument is not that mankind preventing a mass
| extinction event is unnatural, but rather that mass
| extinction events seem both natural and necessary for the
| rise of new life forms, and as such are "neutral" rather
| than bad events (except from the perspective of mankind,
| which would be rendered extinct). So it can be argued that
| you are not necessarily making a "favor" to Earth's
| ecosystem.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| For sure! And if a meteor is heading our way, I'll be on
| the top of that hill with my Louisville Slugger.
|
| I just think we shouldn't pretend that we're being
| altruistic.
| hparadiz wrote:
| > mass extinction events seem to be really good at creating
| space for new forms of life to develop
|
| To what end? Life on this planet has about a 1 billion year
| run way left since the sun will start to expand and
| eventually strip away Earth's atmosphere and finally swallow
| the planet whole. It's taken 3.7 billion years to get to this
| point and most of the "interesting" evolution has occurred in
| only the last 500 million years. So it is true that the next
| 500 million should be even more diverse.
|
| However unless another intelligent life form develops the
| point is moot. No matter how smart a dolphin, or raven, or
| chimp, or octopus is... if it can't escape this rock then
| it's not much different from a bacteria colony that dies out
| when it's food source is exhausted.
|
| Evolution is random. For all we know an even more intelligent
| form of life will develop than us humans but on the other
| hand it's possible that for the next billion years we are the
| only fluke in the evolutionary timeline and nothing else will
| develop.
|
| Finally there's a third option that is within the grasp of
| humanity which is to say we can branch off Earth's tree of
| life and take it into space while leaving Earth to develop as
| it will.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| A billion years seems to be a LOT of time for many mass
| extinction events. I think your argument leans on
| "interesting" a lot, which has its basis in our narcissism.
| Again, it only feels important that the life be
| "interesting" if we're here to care.
|
| Just to restate: I'm not saying we don't act selfishly. I
| sure would. Let's just not pretend we're being altruistic.
| hparadiz wrote:
| The vast majority of evolutionary complexity has evolved
| in the past 500 million years. That's what I meant by
| "interesting". Things like flowering plants. It has
| absolutely nothing to do with our branch of the tree of
| life. So I'm not sure where your accusation of narcissism
| is coming from.
|
| For all I know a flowering plant will develop a brain and
| become sentient in the next 200 million years.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Stab in the dark, but can't this be used as a weapon? Covertly
| redirect an adequately small asteroid near to the capital city of
| your enemy, act horrified at the unlucky "natural disaster" that
| happened, maybe even send help in a gesture of distension...
| sbaiddn wrote:
| In highschool we used an air hockey table to come to the same
| conclusion: the laws of Newton are valid.
| cj wrote:
| I would wager that Isaac Newton would have been hesitant to
| claim that an asteroid's trajectory could be modified by
| humans.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Probably not if he knew humans could launch rockets into
| space.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Mmmh, differential equations for N-bodies system have notorious
| tendencies towards chaos and/or easily getting out of chaotic
| attraction basins.
|
| For that reason, I'm not entirely sure that playing cosmic
| bowling with stuff floating around in the solar system is such a
| good idea ...
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| I suppose the calculus might change when it's between the earth
| getting smashed and the potential unintended consequences of
| cosmic bowling.
| baq wrote:
| 'bowling' is hardly a good analogy here, though. it's more like
| pea shooting at huge rocks, though in this case it turned out
| that the rock in question isn't held together particularly
| well.
| xvedejas wrote:
| When the relevant timescales are short, and most of the bodies
| are small (so, weakly interacting), this is not so big an issue
| mathematically.
| ghaff wrote:
| That probably assumes that cosmic bowling doesn't happen all
| the time and that we're disrupting some finely-tuned system
| that has kept earth (mostly) safe for billions of years.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Goin on the hn-gell-man chart
| ealexhudson wrote:
| More like cosmic pool, and we have Dave Cinzano Bianco Lister.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| _Lie Mode_ Who?
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Hi, I work on N-body orbit determination software for asteroid
| detection and planetary defense (for example,
| https://github.com/moeyensj/thor). Ask me anything.
|
| You're right that orbit determination is unstable over long
| runs, and very sensitive to initial conditions. But the good
| news is that the solar system is big. Most trajectories do not
| intersect with the earth's location. So perturbing an orbit
| that we think has a small chance of hitting us tends to be
| safe.
|
| Also, of course, after deflection, any object is going to be
| monitored really closely for a long time.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Maybe a bit off topic, but:
|
| * What language is that software written in?
|
| * What was the hardest problem you had to solve, while
| working on it?
| pageandrew wrote:
| Since DART crashed into Dimorphos, changing its orbit around
| Didymos rather than its orbit around the sun, isn't there
| almost no cause for concern because Didymos is still on the
| same non-intersecting orbit around the sun? Is the concern
| that Dimorphos's slightly different orbit could pull Didymos
| slightly off course in its orbit around the sun, thereby
| causing it to _potentially_ intersect with Earth at some
| point in the future, where it wouldn't have prior to DART.
|
| Can we quantify how much Dimorphos's new orbit has affected
| Didymos's orbit? Is that calculable?
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Hey, this is a bit tangential, but is Barnes-Hut still used
| in modern n-body simulations? Some of the math has huge
| crossover with machine learning and dimension reduction, but
| it's rarely traced back to the source in literature. Thanks!
|
| (I'll also check out the GitHub repo you linked but I haven't
| read it fully yet)
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