Are we almost there, daddy?

Where am I going with all this?  It occurred to me that some may be asking that very question, and with justification.  Is this Generalissimo jerk just going to spew doom and gloom at us in a steady stream?

I should have made a post earlier setting forth, in general terms, where this journey is headed, and what rest stops will be taken along the way.  It just wouldn't be right to herd you all onto the bus, set off down the road; and deprive you of any toilet stops or opportunities to grab something to eat.  (I can hear it now, "Who does the Generalissimo think he is, my father?  We aren't on a family road trip.  Hungry?  Have a peanut butter sandwich.  Gotta pee?  Use this soda bottle."  Well, I am a dad, but I don't play that way.)

Where the hell is this bus headed?

The early stops on our trip will be doom and gloom.  I intend to explore various threats to humans and their home planet.  Those threats will include unsavory guests with origins both on and off planet.  Some of those threatening agents include those that could sterilize this lovely blue marble we call Mother Earth.  Others might wipe out all the higher life forms, including human beans.  While still others could pound us back to the Stone Age.  I do not want any of those fates to be visited on my children, or grandchildren.  I know, it sounds like a familiar tune: death, destruction, doom, and gloom.  Yeah, well hold on.  Those are just the early stops on this road trip.

The second phase of our journey is certain to bring out the worst in the neo-Luddites.  I am sure you have encountered some of those people; they are the ones that have some cockeyed reason why we should turn back the clock and abandon the technological advances achieved by modern humans.  (“If god had wanted us to go into space, he would have given us rocket motors up our kazoos.”  Or how about: “We have no business colonizing the moon until we take care of our problem here on Earth.”  I could go on, but I lack the stamina and the bandwidth.)  I will present possible solutions, or remedies, or work-arounds to these catastrophic events.  For many of these problems, there is no remedy, as such.  We can only take steps to limit the damage, but that is far better than doing nothing.  To badly misquote Elon Musk, “We backup data, shouldn’t we backup the biosphere?”  We must have that offsite backup, but that is just a start.

So, while there will be elements of calamitous death and destruction, this will not be a 

This Is a Doom and Gloom Prediction of the End of the World. 

 It will be more of a 

This Is the Front Desk Calling With Your Wakeup Call.  

Next time: Let’s look for some of the big holes.

That will leave a mark

From Siberia let's take a little trip.  It is not a short distance, so I suggest we go real fast; I don't have a lot of time to waste, and I am sure you are in a hurry also.  We are going to the desert southwest of the United States, in the state of Arizona, to a fairly substantial hole in the ground named Barringer Crater, also known as Meteor Crater.

 

About 50,000 years ago, an object penetrated the atmosphere over the Colorado Plateau.  This asteroid had an estimated diameter of about 50 meters, about the same size as the Tunguska object.  However, whereas the Tunguska asteroid was made of rock and exploded several miles above the surface, the Barringer asteroid was composed of nickel-iron and therefore could handle much more atmospheric stress.  The Barringer object survived to impact the surface.  Early research indicated an impact speed of over 72,000 kilometers per hour, but later models suggest a speed a little more than half that.  To put that speed in perspective, the SR-71 had a top speed of about 3,600 kilometers per hour.  When the Barringer object impacted, its mass of perhaps 150,000 metric tons of nickel iron vaporized.  That explosion tore open a wound in the earth more than a kilometer in diameter, and well over 150 meters deep. The rim of the crater is almost 50 meters above plateau around it.  All life was extinguished from the impact site to beyond three kilometers, and everything combustible within nearly ten kilometers was incinerated.  The shock wave that traveled through the air from ground-zero flattened everything for more than 130 square kilometers.

 

Neither the Tunguska explosion nor the Barringer impact was sufficient to cause any global damage.  Neither was big enough to cause any real problems outside their own region.  However, put either event into a modern population center and see how many people are obliterated.  A rock from space landing on your head could ruin your whole day.

 

Neither event is by any means a worst case scenario; things could be much worse, because both these rocks were small.

 

Next time let’s look for the big boys.

Things that go boom.

All right kiddies, gather ‘round for a bedtime story.  However, you might not want to go to bed right after this bedtime story; you might have bad dreams.

Once upon a time, in east central Asia, our story begins.  It is early on a fine June morning in 1908.  No one in this sparsely populated area knows they have an appointment.  They are going about their daily business as people in the area have done for centuries, taking care of the business of living.  A little after seven o’clock their visitor arrives from space.  It slams into the atmosphere at such a high velocity its structure cannot handle the stresses and it explodes several miles above the surface of the Tunguska region.  The explosive yield of this impactor boggles the mind, with estimates ranging from 10 to 30 megatons.  The Richter scale has not been developed at this time, but the seismic shock is equivalent to a 5.0 quake.  Trees are flattened in an area of over 2000 square kilometers.  It is a fairly big boom.

What was this visitor?  It most likely was a stony asteroid about 50 meters in diameter.

Why should we give a crap about it?  That is an excellent question; I am glad I asked it.  After all, it happened in the middle of no where, and nobody was hurt, and it was a century ago.  Those objections are all true.  However, these impactors are not running on a schedule like the local bus line; they are completely at random.  We are as likely to have an unruly visitor tomorrow as a century from now.  There is no telling where the next Tunguska-like event will happen.  It might not be in a swampy wasteland.  It might not be in an unpopulated area.  What would be the bottom line of a 10 megaton asteroidal detonation over New York City, or Sacramento, or Copenhagen, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, or Sydney?  The likelihood of an impactor hitting any population center (or any individual, for that matter) is vanishingly small, but the consequences would be horrendous.

The end?  Not hardly.

Next time I want to talk to you about a hole in the ground named Barringer.

Introducing The Experiment

Welcome to Doug’s Experiment; it is, you know, very experimental (for me, at least).  I am your host, the Generalissimo.  Welcome to the open house celebration.  Help yourself to some cheese and bread.  I have some wine and soft drinks on ice.  Oh, and I will be baking a couple of pizzas a little later, so don’t go away; my kids tell me my pizza is really great.  

Oops, I got off track.  You will find I do that from time to time.  Just throw something at me to get my attention.  There is no telling what (precisely) will go into this experiment, just as there is no way to predict what will come out of it.  However, I can make some general predictions about what you will find here.  (Pardon me a moment while I boot up my crystal ball.  Since it uses Internet Exploder, you know it is slow and prone to failure in various spectacular fashions.)

• There may be some humor.  Yes, I do have a sense of humor...or something I use in place of a sense of humor.  Hopefully you will be amused now and then.

• There will certainly be some foolishness.  Even those that strive to avoid looking like fools can not avoid it.  I, on the other hand, actively seek to look like a fool. (Like I have a choice.)

• I hope to occasionally strain your brain.  Maybe I can get your train of thought switched to a different track; if I succeed, I will be ecstatic.

• I will assuredly try to broach topics that will make you uncomfortable.  There are things that go bump in the night (and the day) that are much scarier than anything that we might imagine.

• ?

Well, my crystal ball appears to have crashed.  I will definitely have to see if I can put a Linux OS on it instead of the M$ OS that came with it.  We will just have to wait and see as this blog develops.

If you like what you see, tell me and tell others.  If you do not like what you see, tell me and tell others.