[HN Gopher] Space Mission Options for Reconnaissance and Mitigat...
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Space Mission Options for Reconnaissance and Mitigation of Asteroid
2024 YR4
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 73 points
Date : 2025-10-04 23:42 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I guess the probability of something hitting us is intuitively
| pretty low. Consider that in all of human history nothing
| significant has hit us, and now only in the last 20 years maybe
| we have the tech to see it and maybe launch a mission to mitigate
| it, what are the chances something would suddenly hit us now, at
| this very time?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| We also now have the ability to know which lottery numbers have
| not come up in a long time but that doesn't change the odds
| that we can pick a winning number.
| timschmidt wrote:
| > Consider that in all of human history nothing significant has
| hit us
|
| This is incorrect. The
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor was very
| recent and caught on video by many people. It injured nearly
| 1500 people and damaged 7,200 buildings in six cities.
|
| The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event in 1908 was
| several times larger than the Chelyabinsk meteor and leveled
| 830 square miles of forest. It is fortunate that it detonated
| over an unpopulated area. It could have completely destroyed
| any major metropolitan city.
|
| A little further back there's the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi...
| which is controversial but very possibly caused planet wide
| climate change visible in the geologic record ~12,900 years
| ago.
|
| Smaller meteors fall into our gravity well regularly, and
| usually detonate over or impact the ocean, as it covers most of
| the Earth's surface.
| remarkEon wrote:
| That wikipedia article has got to be up there with one of the
| worst I've read. I get it that most people think this
| hypothesis is bogus (I do too, for the most part), but the
| article is needlessly inflammatory and as a result it's hard
| to understand what the hypothesis even is other than "it's a
| dumb as cold fusion".
| timschmidt wrote:
| I agree that the article starts out needlessly
| inflammatory. There are big egos in Science, as in all
| other endeavors, and folks can get reactionary and
| arguments heated. "Science advances one death at a time"
| after all.
|
| That said, further down the article, there is some
| legitimate discussion about alternatives and even mention
| that "Wallace Broecker--the scientist who proposed the
| conveyor shutdown hypothesis--eventually agreed with the
| idea of an extraterrestrial impact at the Younger Dryas
| boundary, and thought that it had acted as a trigger on top
| of a system that was already approaching instability."
|
| I can't say whether an impact happened for certain or not.
| I await further evidence. But I do think that the
| hypothesis is plausible and it's clear from the Chicxulub
| impact that meteors can have disastrous impact on global
| ecology.
| gs17 wrote:
| The best part is one of the cited articles: "Rebuttal of
| Sweatman, Powell, and West's "Rejection of Holliday et
| al.'s alleged refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact
| Hypothesis"
|
| A rebuttal of a rejection of an "alleged refutation". You
| can tell there's a lot of academic egos involved here.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I don't see where the Creationism comes in?
| gs17 wrote:
| The article Wikipedia cites for that says the group
| publishing the hypothesis cited a PhD thesis that
| "pioneered the idea of using the Old Testament as a guide
| to our understanding of cosmic airburst phenomena", and
| that they cited a young Earth creationist journal for
| their information on the Tunguska airburst event. It's a
| weak connection IMO.
|
| I thought I had heard it used as flood explanation, but
| it seems young Earth creationists know the timeline
| doesn't fit.
| timschmidt wrote:
| We're getting into the weeds here, but once I learned of
| the 400ft sealevel rise at the younger dryas, it seemed
| immediately clear to me that this could be the great
| flood immortalized in so much myth and legend around the
| world.
|
| Researchers have verified oral histories of at least
| 10,000 years age among Aboriginal Australians against
| date-able geologic events. Consequently, it is now clear
| that we can maintain such socially important information
| across such time.
|
| It seems to me that we most likely fudged the exact date
| somewhere along the way.
|
| Ancient peoples are often underestimated. But they were
| as smart and capable as ourselves, and possessed of a
| great deal more contemplative time and opportunity to
| observe the natural world around them.
|
| Scientists are trained to look for faults and reasons to
| invalidate. It's the fundamental skill for eliminating
| hypotheses. And that is OK. But I believe there is useful
| information to be found in ancient culture if one is
| willing to consider it in good faith from the perspective
| of someone living through it.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Also the Kaali crater. The impact happened ~3500 years ago
| and was roughly equivalent to a small nuke.
| roenxi wrote:
| I think it is worth saying that those two impacts were
| smaller and the same size as 2024 YR4 (which is ~60m
| diameter) respectively.
|
| It is interesting to look at impact structures [0]. Note the
| highly suspicious correlation of impacts and places where
| well paid geologists like to live; there are probably a _lot_
| of impacts in the last few millennia elsewhere in the world
| where people just discarded the cultural memory because the
| stories were too fantastic, or nobody noticed the very large
| splash in the pacific. A lot as in I don 't think we know
| about the majority of the impacts in any time frame.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_E
| art...
| pagekicker wrote:
| "Well paid geologists"
| Qem wrote:
| Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930_Curu%C3%A7%C3%A1_Rive
| r_ev...
| teraflop wrote:
| This paper isn't talking about a risk of an _Earth_ impact, it
| 's talking about a potential _lunar_ impact:
|
| > Studies of 2024 YR4's potential lunar impact effects suggest
| lunar ejecta could increase micrometeoroid debris flux in low
| Earth orbit up to 1000 times above background levels over just
| a few days, possibly threatening astronauts and spacecraft.
|
| Throughout most of human history, an impact event like this
| could probably have gone completely unnoticed, because we
| didn't yet have satellites that were vulnerable to
| micrometeoroid damage. So you can't use the fact that no such
| event was observed as evidence that it didn't happen.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Other replies have already pointed to significant events, but
| the most important and recent event was one century ago, in
| 1908, "the Tunguska event", which may have been a small comet
| hitting the Earth, but it was still big enough to match a big
| thermonuclear bomb.
|
| If that celestial body would have hit a big city instead of
| hitting unpopulated Siberia, it would have destroyed it
| completely and it would have been one of the greatest, if not
| the greatest, catastrophes in human history. Today, with less
| and less areas that have remained unpopulated, such an event
| would be more likely to happen in a place where it would cause
| victims.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
| _joel wrote:
| We're finding evidence all the time of new impacts. The Earth,
| geologically and meterologically hides the evidence from us.
| Ironically it's the new technology that's allowed us to see how
| many more impactors there have been. Especially on the sea bed.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Consider that in all of human history nothing significant has
| hit us
|
| While that's true for human history, some of the previous
| err... "rules of the earth" (specifically ~65 million years
| ago) might have opinions about whether they should have
| attempted stopping that big rock from hitting them. ;)
|
| Of course, that's leaving aside that they didn't appear to have
| a civilisation, nor be aware of the big rock approaching before
| it happened, etc.
| kajkojednojajko wrote:
| kurzgesagt has an awesome video on this topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKm7T13X7n4
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(page generated 2025-10-05 23:01 UTC)