What if... YASHTFT

[HannibalX]

Suppose NASA comes on television tomorrow and says that an object the size of our moon is on a collision course with Earth and will impact in approximately 5 years. An object of this size traveling at 1/2 the speed of light impacting the Earth would most certainly obliterate it.

So, we have 5 years to get off this rock.

What's the first step?

How many people would realistically make it off?

Where would they go? Mars has water, Titan has water and atmosphere.

Would average people be building spacecraft in their garages?

 

[guyver01]

wtf? another ELE post?
geeze people.. commit suicide already if thinking about the end of the world is the best you can do lately.

 

[mafia]

Hookers and blow is my first step.

 

[gorcorps]

*checks cable guide*

Yup, Armageddon's on.

 

[Jeff7]

A rock the size of the Moon moving at half light speed? I think there'd be a streak of plasma on a very rapid escape velocity from the solar system, following a damn powerful blast of light.

 

[Rubycon]

Suppose NASA comes on television tomorrow and says that an object the size of our moon is on a collision course with Earth and will impact in approximately 5 years. An object of this size traveling at 1/2 the speed of light impacting the Earth would most certainly obliterate it.

So, we have 5 years to get off this rock.

What's the first step?

How many people would realistically make it off?

Where would they go? Mars has water, Titan has water and atmosphere.

Would average people be building spacecraft in their garages?

Do you really think the United States Government would allow such information to be disclosed to the public that far out?

The probability of gross miscalculation is very real since objects encounter other objects or forces from them changing the trajectory - constantly. It would be put on PHA watch and that's about it.

 

[disappoint]

You can't be serious. You cannot currently survive outside of earth for any extended period of time. 8 years aftter 9/11/2001 we have just started to rebuild at ground zero. You will not colonize the moon or Mars in 5 years. Though you SHOULD be able to. But progress of humanity has been slow because humans are greedy, selfish, sick, twisted, uncaring bastards.

That answer your question?

 

[Jeff7]

Do you really think the United States Government would allow such information to be disclosed to the public that far out?

The probability of gross miscalculation is very real since objects encounter other objects or forces from them changing the trajectory - constantly. It would be put on PHA watch and that's about it.

And another study would be in progress to figure out how someone was able to see something the size of the Moon when it's 2.5 light years away.

 

[Newbian]

*checks cable guide*

Yup, Armageddon's on.

I think deep impact to...and not the porn version.

 

[Rubycon]

And another study would be in progress to figure out how someone was able to see something the size of the Moon when it's 2.5 light years away.

That's easy. Darth Vader left the Dark Star's SSID broadcast on and some nerd on Earth decided it would be funny to make a pringles can wifi antenna the size of a silo.

 

[fallout man]

I'll quit my job and become a ninja.

 

[HannibalX]

Do you really think the United States Government would allow such information to be disclosed to the public that far out?

Not really the point. Assume that the information becomes widely known to the government and the public.

And another study would be in progress to figure out how someone was able to see something the size of the Moon when it's 2.5 light years away.

The details of the object are mostly irrelevant, as it's the end result which is important. In 5 years the Earth won't be here anymore. How do we get off, where do we go and can we survive?

 

[CKent]

We'd be toast. Would make for great entertainment on the way out though.

 

[darkxshade]

Easy, we send our moon to intercept and destroy it.

 

[Freejack2]

Odds are the world governments would keep it quiet and make plans to evacuate who they can (if they can) off the planet should it turn out the object will after all hit the earth. They may even make an attempt to do something to divert or destroy the object but there's no guarantee they would succeed.

As for warning, I doubt they'd give much warning other than maybe an hour or so. Once it's realized we're doomed, law and order goes into the crapper.

 

[Jeff7]

The details of the object are mostly irrelevant, as it's the end result which is important. In 5 years the Earth won't be here anymore. How do we get off, where do we go and can we survive?

In short, no, we'd be thoroughly screwed, unless someone's been secretly terraforming Mars for the past few thousand years.

Fine, we get to Mars. Great. Food, anyone? The freeze-dried stuff won't hold out forever, and cannibalism has limits as well.

And Mars is pretty much the only place where we'd have a chance at all, and it's not a very good one.
Mercury - too close to the Sun
Venus - hot, high pressure and it rains sulfuric acid
Mars - cold, thin atmosphere
Jupiter - maybe some kind of aquatic colony on Europa? Of course, we'd first have to drill through many miles of extremely cold ice.
Saturn - Titan is exceedingly cold. We don't have equipment that could survive there for long. Anything would require heaters for the full life of the device.
Uranus - not really anything here of use.
Neptune - same as Uranus
Pluto, and the other Kuiper Belt Objects - they're big rocky iceballs. Nothing useful here.


So yeah, in short, we'd be able to put on a nice light show for anyone in nearby star systems. The only evidence of our existence would be our EM transmissions, and various spacecraft we'd launched.
That, and maybe we could launch a probe, Inner Light style. :awe:

 

[DrPizza]

5 year's warning? That's the end of humanity. lmao at the belief that we could "colonize" another place in the solar system within 50 years, let alone even get a half dozen humans someplace where they could survive more than a couple months in just 5 years.

Oh, and forget about the moon. An impact of the size you stated would wipe out any human life on the moon as well.

 

[Rubycon]

Oh, and forget about the moon. An impact of the size you stated would wipe out any human life on the moon as well.

The lunar tick is eating your grass!

 

[Matthiasa]

Something about a grain of sand and the speed of light would take care of it.
Really though we would be screwed.

 

[Jeff7]

5 year's warning? That's the end of humanity. lmao at the belief that we could "colonize" another place in the solar system within 50 years, let alone even get a half dozen humans someplace where they could survive more than a couple months in just 5 years.

Oh, and forget about the moon. An impact of the size you stated would wipe out any human life on the moon as well.

That just gave me a fun idea for a good game of Solar System Pool - put gravity tractors by the Moon to position it so that we can deflect some of the debris to wipe out Venus and Mars, and then angle it so that they in turn get knocked out of orbit and impact....oh, let's say Mercury, and go for a longshot, Triton, out at Neptune. It was captured anyway, and shouldn't be there in the first place.

 

[darkxshade]

I'm quite disappointed at the pessimism in this thread. I have absolute faith that either Roland Emerich or Michael Bay will devise of an out of the box solution that will either stop any ELEs dead in its track at the very last minute or at the least allow for a worthy few plus a loving father and son to survive post apocalypse. Anything less is just unthinkable.

 

[Rubycon]

That just gave me a fun idea for a good game of Solar System Pool - put gravity tractors by the Moon to position it so that we can deflect some of the debris to wipe out Venus and Mars, and then angle it so that they in turn get knocked out of orbit and impact....oh, let's say Mercury, and go for a longshot, Triton, out at Neptune. It was captured anyway, and shouldn't be there in the first place.

How much laser power do you think would be required to modify a planet's orbit? It takes about 1/10 watt (100mW) to manipulate particles with perhaps 100 ng mass.

Try this simulation once.

http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/sims.php?sim=Optical_Tweezers_and_Applications

 

[kindest]

some people might get off but they wont live very long.

 

[dighn]

5 year's warning? That's the end of humanity. lmao at the belief that we could "colonize" another place in the solar system within 50 years, let alone even get a half dozen humans someplace where they could survive more than a couple months in just 5 years.

Oh, and forget about the moon. An impact of the size you stated would wipe out any human life on the moon as well.

haha yeah we don't have the technology to colonize something outside of earth, especially without support from it. just for argument's sake, even if we could set up some kind of base say on mars, it'd be nowhere near large enough to support enough humans to continue the race, and it'd lack the *vast* infrastructure needed for sustained operation. the best we'd probably be able to do within that kind of time frame is to send some kind of time casuple with the record of our civilization and genetic make up and hope some aliens will resurrect us as an archeology project.

 

[arrfep]

5 year's warning? That's the end of humanity. lmao at the belief that we could "colonize" another place in the solar system within 50 years, let alone even get a half dozen humans someplace where they could survive more than a couple months in just 5 years.

Oh, and forget about the moon. An impact of the size you stated would wipe out any human life on the moon as well.

Eh. I more or less agree that humanity would effectively end. But I think we'd be able to get a select amount of people to Mars and build a small Biodome community.

Imagine if we pulled out of the Middle East, an focused all of that energy and money on R&D for five straight years. I have no doubt we'd come up with something.

The problem would be prolonging life. Once we get to Mars, what then? Can't live in bubbles forever, and a 5 year head start wouldn't be enough to get any kind of Martian infrastructure developed to continue any kind of technological advancements.