Comet

Disaster, gloom and doom. I have talked about this before. It's all over the television, the magazines and on the radio. They just keep it up. I am talking about the Earth being subject to some kind of catastrophe that could end all life on the planet. I for one am really tired of them dwelling on this subject, but I never really thought that anyone really believed that we were in imminent danger of disappearing. I keep reading about huge asteroids that might hit us, underwater volcanoes that might erupt under the ocean causing waves that would be hundreds of feet high and sweep over the entire planet, earth quakes that would cause parts of islands to slide into the ocean, again causing these huge waves, comets hitting the earth and wiping out all life and now the latest thing is. exploding stars sending out gamma rays that will incinerate us. Don't these people have anything better to do. Yes we should be ready for any contingency, but we shouldn't keep thinking that we are dead ducks. I like what they said about the exploding star theory. Apparently they found a star that is 6,000 light years away and they feel that it is in the last stages before exploding and that there could be an explosion at anytime, between now and 100,000 years in the future, so we should all start to worry apparently. Yes I did say 6,000 light years away, but the scientists say that is close enough to destroy us.

Do you think that the scientists are right? Do you believe that we are going to be destroyed? Well let me give you a tip, we made it for millions of years without that happening and there is no reason to think that it will happen now.The problem is that we have too much information. The chances of destruction over the last several million years were probably the same as they are now, but we are still here aren't we? The difference is that we can now calculate different trajectories for some of the stuff out there and once we were able to do this, we began to assign odds to these things, that is the odds of being hit. We now say things like, " there is one chance in 200,000 that this object could hit us". None of the ancient Greeks ever said that., nor did the Chinese, Romans, Europeans in the middle ages, or people during the industrial revolution. They just didn't have access to the data that we have. Why can't they just say that there is not very much of a chance of being hit by a certain object? It may be less sensational, but it is entirely the truth. No it is just not in the nature of some of these guys. It is almost like they are working for the tabloids, who love to write these stories. Now a new dimension has been added to the mix, the Lunar Ark.

Scientists now want to develop the moon as a sort of lifeboat for human life. NASA, while not saying they agree with this or not, has plans for a Lunar outpost that they think will be available by the mid 2020s. They, the scientists, not only want to preserve some human life, but also all of our learning, culture and technology. The moon is full of craters. Most of them are from impacts of objects from space. Could a colony on the moon, which has no atmosphere according to NASA, be even more in jeopardy of being hit by space objects than people on earth? Earth's atmosphere is thick enough to force most objects to burn up before they hit the ground, the moon doesn't have this luxury. Supposedly this plan of a Lunar Ark will be put into effect so that if Earth is hit by a comet or some other huge disaster wipes us out, our heritage still exists. I have to wonder about this, if we are almost completely wiped out, why would we worry about such things? If all life is gone, then who cares what we leave behind? Why do we feel that it is important to leave our mark, when there may not even be any beings around to notice it and even if they do, who cares? They would be so far ahead of us in technology, if they came to the moon from somewhere else. that this stuff would only land up in a museum on some distant planet, if that. It could also be that so many other civilizations have been wiped out, that they wouldn't even care about it. Just because we have archeological interests doesn't mean that other beings would.

I can't help but think that the time and money that would be used to make a Lunar Ark would serve us better it it were used for trying to find ways to protect this planet. We know that we can probably deflect small asteroids if we get enough warning. The problem is that we are only monitoring about 10% of the sky for near earth objects. The first thing that we need to do is get enough instrumentation to cover the entire sky, both in the northern and southern hemisphere. That would prevent some of these objects from sneaking up on us, as has happened in the past. The next step would be trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from all the different contingencies. If we look at space we can see several different kinds of potential disasters. There are potential large meteor hits, comet hits, gamma and cosmic ray bursts, to name a few. Then there are the indirect hits, like something large hitting the moon and knocking it out of its orbit toward the earth. This could also happen with the planets. The sun could also explode. So it looks like we would need some way to change the course of large objects, or a weapon powerful enough to vaporize them. We also need some sort of shielding that can repel rays, but the problem with this is that it would have to encompass the entire planet, because you never know what direction these rays might come from. You have to remember that they are traveling at the speed of light and are upon you without any notice.

The way I see it, there is only one way to try and accomplish these things. You start with asteroids, because they present the most immediate threat, and try and develop ways to move them off their path. If you have enough warning, you only have to change their trajectory a little, before they miss the earth completely. When we finally accomplish this, we can move on to comets. The cores of some of these things can be at least 10 miles in diameter and they drag a lot of rubble with them. Changing their course may not be possible, so this would require a weapon so powerful that it could completely destroy the object. Remember we don't want the pieces hitting the earth either. Here is the problem. We are humans and as humans we have a tendency to use powerful weapons on each other. Can you imagine a weapon powerful enough to destroy a comet completely? If anyone had that, they could rule the world. Let's just say for argument's sake that we make one and it is only used to destroy comets, it could then be used on asteroids too, creating a sort of umbrella for the earth and maybe the moon. If a planet or moon ever got knocked out of orbit and headed our way, I doubt that we would ever be able to do anything to avoid that collision.

Shields for gamma rays and cosmic rays might just be possible in the future. We have made tremendous advances in electrical shielding. This is also known as a force field. Plasma shields are being developed. They use cold plasmas of the type found as ionized gases related to those found within the sun's core. Everyone is trying to get into the cold plasma act. It is being worked on at places like Stanford, Ohio State, Princeton, New York Polytechnic and other universities. I don't know if we could ever make one strong enough to protect us from nearby gamma ray blasts, but who knows what we might find out from this research? One scientist showed how easily plasma can be created by putting helium gas in a test tube and running a current through it using a special electrode. Depending on how dense the plasma is and what frequency it is tuned to is, it is believed that it will have the capacity to ward off energy weapons. The question is, can it be tuned to ward off intense gamma rays. That is an entirely different ball game.

As far as all those pieces of land that are just waiting to fall into the ocean and cause those giant waves, you would think that we could do something about that now. Why not just either dig them up and move the dirt or try and vaporize the dirt in some way. Maybe it could be coated with something that would keep it static, such as cement or such? We can't do much about undersea volcanoes, at least it looks that way, but maybe people thinking out side of the box might come up with a solution here. Maybe there is some way that we could relieve some of the built up pressure down there?

I think that it is about time that we stop thinking that we are going to be wiped out and time for us to try and defend against this. If the nations of the earth were not constantly spending much of their funds on the military, we would have oodles of money available for these projects. Never mind all that gloom and doom, leave it for the worriers, I refuse to waste my time worrying about it, if someone else wants to, I have no control over that.