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Re: Cometary Shower NOW?

Hello Victor, and everyone

Thanks for the explanation on the method used for determining cometary flux
over the past 70 million years. It seems that it would have to contain many
assumptions concerning continuity of the influx of dust, i.e., does it really
track with cometary activity or does it also a reflection of Earth's orbit
relative to comet orbits, but it seems to be a good place to start. I'll have
to dig a little into the research. Makes you wonder if we are making things
more difficult for future archeologists by dusting the furniture all the
time.  :-)

Victor D. Noto wrote:
> 

> Let's not get too optimistic that we can stop a comet because I think you
> will find that the difficulty in deverting a comet is a few magnitudes
> higher than an asteroid given the same amount of lead time.
> 
No, I have no false hope of being able to deflect a potential impactor. Not
for quite some time at any rate. And on second thought, it probably would not
be a good idea to have advanced warning unless it would only be a localized
event and we could track the object with enough accuracy to determine the
impact point and results in sufficient time to make preparations. It seems,
however, that the smaller the object and more localized its affect, the less
likely we are to detect it. Has anyone ever calculated the best scenario times
for earliest detection of say, Tunguska or Barringer Crater size objects?

> Maybe in 50 million years some other form of intelligent life will be
> escavating mankinds  bones calling them "long pigs which walk on two legs".
> These intelligent creatures would say "Oh they all died in the eocene
> period of gelogical time and I wonder what caused these pigs demise perhaps
> desease, famine, flood, or climate change (EL NINO) etc etc....
> 
> We will know the truth was that mankind would have survived had mankind
> had it's priorities right.
> On our tombstone "Mankind died of stupid"
> 
I would agree with you if it happens before we are able to detect and deflect
incoming objects, or we continue as a species to ignore the problem, but for
now, I think they would write it off to bad timing... good for them, though.
"If they had had another 50 years, they could have avoided extinction and we
would not be here now. Aren't we lucky!" 

Gene

P.S. Don't forget our second option: get all the eggs out of one basket.
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