81.1M views · Nov 30, 2020 · 20:06 · 1 HN recommender · 7 mentions · discussed 2021–2023
A Veritasium video on the asteroid threat, with UCLA's Dave Jewitt explaining detection efforts and how different asteroid sizes compare in damage.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN cites it in asteroid threads for how well-tracked large asteroids are and how hard deflection is.
“Veritasium video with Dave Jewitt of UCLA explains a lot about what were doing about asteroids.”HN comment, 2022
“Veritasium video with Dave Jewitt of UCLA explains a lot about what were doing about asteroids.”
Explains a lot about what's being done about asteroids
How old is the data? You can only forecast an asteroid's future path so far, given the snapshot of data you have. Veritasium video with Dave Jewitt of UCLA explains a lot about what were doing about asteroids. this video
“Asteroids large enough to be considered planet-killers are the easiest ones to spot.”
Shows planet-killer asteroids are easiest to spot
Actually, we do. Asteroids large enough to be considered planet-killers are the easiest ones to spot. this video
Cited for inability to divert asteroids
> But I think the point I was making stands. There are certainly innovations that sounds illogical but turn out to be very successful. Just because something sounds like a bad idea doesn't mean it is, it just means it hasn't worked yet. No because your point was about horses being replaced by cars, which is what people (and probably horses) were skeptical about at that time. In the same way IBM was saying that computers will never appear in homes, etc. But these devices were already there. The misconceptions were about predicting demand and miniaturization. This is completely different from terraforming. You are comparing "oh these devices sure never will be popular enough to make this other thing obsolete" with "lets nuke the Mars to create an atmosphere so we can live on it" (always winter, yeay).[0] Your argument is bad because by saying "technologies were laughed at in the past" every technology that sounds laughable should be taken seriously? No. This is the same trap that Theranos investors had fallen in. It is all a fantasy. We humans are very bad at estimating what is possible and what not. E.g. our inability to divert asteroids [1]. That is already a hard problem and currently not possible to do. I am not against crazy technological ideas, for example the space elevator had a surprisingly good feasibility to being realized before we polluted our planet's atmosphere with junk. Terraforming Mars is in the Theranos land of crazy ideas though. > Just like I also didn't t
“It's unbelievably hard even detecting an incoming asteroid let alone prevent it.”
Cited for how hard detecting and preventing impacts is
Yeah because it's pretty much impossible. It's unbelievably hard even detecting an incoming asteroid let alone prevent it. See: this video
“We've already detected all asteroids with that mass in our solar system”
Source for all large asteroids being detected
We've already detected all asteroids with that mass in our solar system [1]. There are smaller ones that won't end life on Earth that are still concerning, but the quandary is we have almost nothing to do even if we detected a threat from an asteroid. [1] this video
“This video has comparisons of devastation that would be caused by different sizes (around 7:50 mark) of asteroids”
Compares devastation from different asteroid sizes
This video has comparisons of devastation that would be caused by different sizes (around 7:50 mark) of asteroids: this video
Passive-consumption summary video
VSauce with packages summary for passive consumption. this video And jacquesm's replies to my other comments, link
