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Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 55

Dec 5, 2021

Helen Caldicott — “Th” Thorium Documentary

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, existential risks, media & arts, military, nuclear energy

This is the same type of double double DOUBLE down on hyperbolic and aggressive anti expert BS that has pushed a not insignificant portion of the population of the US to throw a violent tantrum against covid19 vaccines and wearing a piece of cloth on their face to keep from DYING. Similarly, ultra environmentalists on the far left have ceased to try to protect the environment FOR future generations. Now they want to protect the environment FROM future generations. They’ve become ANTIHUMAN, often to a disturbingly horrific — if hilariously stupid — extent. LITERALLY. Unless you think we shouldn’t build anything on the sterile, irradiated and dead surface of the moon by polluting it — or any other moon, asteroid, or planet by stepping on it’s surface with our filthy monkey feet. Or throwing trash into the SUN because we’d be…

👉😏🙄POLLUTING IT!🙄🤪👈

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Dec 4, 2021

Ask Ethan: Would a false vacuum state of the Universe lead to our destruction?

Posted by in category: existential risks

There’s a big difference between the notions of ‘false vacuum’ and ‘true vacuum’ states. Here’s why we don’t want to live in the former.

Dec 1, 2021

Laser system could vaporize dangerous asteroids

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks, habitats, robotics/AI

Circa 2013 o.o


Earth dodged a gigantic space bullet Friday when the 143,000-ton asteroid known as 2012 DA14 came within 17,200 miles of the Indian Ocean. Scientists and engineers are looking for ways to head off such close calls by targeting potentially dangerous asteroids well before they’re in a position to do us any harm.

A group called the B612 Foundation (a reference to the home asteroid of the Little Prince in the classic French novella) recently announced a mission to build a spacecraft that would track dangerous midsize asteroids, and a fledgling company called Deep Space Industries has floated a plan to build swarms of robots that could mine — and even destroy — space rocks.

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Dec 1, 2021

NASA says huge, ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid will break into Earth’s orbit next week

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

An asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower is heading towards Earth this month and it’s considered an especially unique piece of rock by scientists.

The asteroid 4,660 Nereus is classified as a “potentially hazardous” piece of rock because of its proximity to Earth. On Dec. 11, NASA expects it to be at its closest point to Earth over a 20-year period. The asteroid was discovered back in 1982.

Nov 24, 2021

NASA And SpaceX Launch Experimental Spacecraft That Will Collide With An Asteroid —But It’s Not ‘Armageddon’

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks, satellites

NASA on Tuesday night successfully launched its experimental asteroid deflecting spacecraft which is set to smash into an asteroid at 15,000 miles per hour and serve as a test run for countering any future doomsday scenario where a large space rock could end up on a collision course with the Earth.

KEY FACTS The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), developed by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at around 10.20 a.m. local time Tuesday, aboard SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket.

Sometime in 2022, the DART spacecraft is expected to smash into the asteroid Dimorphos which orbits a larger satellite called Didymos—neither of which pose a threat to Earth at the moment—with the hope of deflecting its course.

Nov 23, 2021

Supercomputers Flex Their AI Muscles

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, climatology, cosmology, existential risks, robotics/AI, supercomputing

New ways to measure the top supercomputers’ smarts in the AI field include searching for dark energy, predicting hurricanes, and finding new materials for energy storage.


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[img src=/media/img/missing-image.svg alt= Tune in to hear how NASA has engineered and asteroid impact with the DART spacecraft. class= popular-box__article-list__image lazy-image-van-mos optional-image sizes=99vw data-normal=/media/img/missing-image.svg data-original-mos= https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/i7efrzkNj5VvD87EDy3yne.jpg data-pin-media= https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/i7efrzkNj5VvD87EDy3yne.jpg data-pin-nopin= true].

Nov 20, 2021

Calls grow for US to bolster defense against asteroid threat

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks, government, law

Experts are sounding the alarm about the threat of asteroids to life on Earth — and warning that the United States does not have a clear plan to prevent catastrophe.

Though NASA says the odds are literally one in a millennium, no US agency is explicitly responsible if space rocks are headed our way.

“No one is tasked with mitigation,” former Air Force space strategist Peter Garretson, an expert in planetary defense told Politico. “Congress did put in law that the White House identify who should be responsible, but fully four subsequent administrations so far have blown off their request.”

Nov 20, 2021

NASA is tracking a 1,000-foot-tall asteroid that’s headed towards Earth

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

NASA scientists have issued a warning about a “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid” (PHA) that will fly close to earth in mid-December. The asteroid is larger than 90 percent of asteroids, according to Daily Record, but still smaller than some of the larger reported asteroids. Thankfully, the asteroid won’t come close enough to our planet to do any damage. Near passes like these happen somewhat frequently. But the term “near” is relative when you’re talking about the infinite vastness of outer space.

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NASA predicts that the massive asteroid will pass by Earth on December 11, just a month and a few days from now. The asteroid has been classified as 4,660 Nereus, and NASA does consider it very hazardous. The organization says that the asteroid is almost three times the size of a football pitch — roughly the size of the Eiffel tower.

Nov 17, 2021

To Save Earth, NASA Is Testing Hitting An Asteroid With A Spacecraft

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks, satellites

“We know of no asteroids that are coming in to hit the Earth,” Rivkin emphasizes. DART, he says, is part of a multi-pronged effort to examine the asteroid collision problem. “Asteroid impacts are really the only natural disaster that humanity can see coming years or decades in advance and do anything about.”

NASA calls DART its “First Planetary Defense Test Mission.” Rivkin is the DART investigation team lead at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, which is running the experiment for NASA.

Full Story:

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Nov 11, 2021

Researchers recreate deep-Earth conditions to see how iron copes with extreme stress

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Far below you lies a sphere of solid iron and nickel about as wide as the broadest part of Texas: the Earth’s inner core. The metal at the inner core is under pressure about 360 million times higher than we experience in our everyday lives and temperatures approximately as hot as the Sun’s surface.

Earth’s planetary core is thankfully intact. But in space, similar cores can collide with other objects, causing the crystalline materials of the core to deform rapidly. Some asteroids in our solar system are massive iron objects that scientists suspect are the remnants of planetary cores after catastrophic impacts.

Measuring what happens during the collision of celestial bodies or at the Earth’s core is obviously not very practical. As such, much of our understanding of planetary cores is based on experimental studies of metals at less and pressures. But researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have now observed for the first time how iron’s atomic structure deforms to accommodate the stress from the pressures and temperatures that occur just outside of the inner core.

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