Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Asteroids, the end of the world and my vacation
I got round to listening to the lecture by Rusty Schweikart last night. It was a pretty interesting experience on several levels.
First of all, "The asteroid threat for the next 100,000 years" is an interesting subject. If you're not at least a little interested, then you haven't seen any disaster movies. Rusty is a good speaker. Listening to an audio recording of a pretty visual lecture is strange. From time to time Rusty referred to simulations of asteroid orbits and it was clear that he was pointing at something on a screen (which I couldn't see). Sometimes it reminded me of listening to radio coverage of a football match! "this asteroid makes a break on the wing and we can predict that it will score/collide with the earth here. But if we accelerate it, just a little, here, then it will miss. (Not a) GOAAALLLL!!!" (commentator pauses for breath). The predictions are less dramatic than I expected and Rusty's proposed solution sounds like it might be achievable. Certainly a gambling man (who was going to live long enough) would bet on it!
On a different tack, my vacation plans are turning into "planes and boats and trains", but we are going to get the relevant family members into the right place at the right time (unlike the asteroids).
First of all, "The asteroid threat for the next 100,000 years" is an interesting subject. If you're not at least a little interested, then you haven't seen any disaster movies. Rusty is a good speaker. Listening to an audio recording of a pretty visual lecture is strange. From time to time Rusty referred to simulations of asteroid orbits and it was clear that he was pointing at something on a screen (which I couldn't see). Sometimes it reminded me of listening to radio coverage of a football match! "this asteroid makes a break on the wing and we can predict that it will score/collide with the earth here. But if we accelerate it, just a little, here, then it will miss. (Not a) GOAAALLLL!!!" (commentator pauses for breath). The predictions are less dramatic than I expected and Rusty's proposed solution sounds like it might be achievable. Certainly a gambling man (who was going to live long enough) would bet on it!
On a different tack, my vacation plans are turning into "planes and boats and trains", but we are going to get the relevant family members into the right place at the right time (unlike the asteroids).
# posted by tom_gillies @ 3:24 PM 
