Comments on: “Impact”: I’d better have a spare keyboard handy

By: mike burkhart

mike burkhart — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:03:32 +0000

I just got over the moon being blown out of orbit in the britsh tv show space 1999 and now this . and Phill is so concerned about education in this country it seem bad astronomy is a world wide porblem we are in trouble!!!!!

By: StevoR

StevoR — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:57:29 +0000

Asked # Oh on 23 Apr 2008 at 10:25 pm :

“Two questions.
If alien life isn’t discovered in the next 100 years, what effect will this have on society?
Who will be the first to mars, the Americans or the Chinese?”

I suspect the answer to your first qu. there is : very little.

As for the second; neither of them but the Europeans or maybe Australians or (long shot here but, hey, they’ve got the cash) the Saudi Arabians!

Or perhaps, seriously, thefirst human expedition to Mars could actually be a joint international effort as suggested in Ben Bova’s novel ‘Mars’ among others …

Also asked (& yeah its probably too late to be answering but what the heck …) was the question :

by # themadlolscientist on 24 Apr 2008 at 11:49 am :

“… And exactly how does one break a piece off a white dwarf?”

With a neutron star knife of course!

By: Buzz Parsec

Buzz Parsec — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:43:52 +0000

45 days? That makes no sense at all. Should be 7 days (orbital period of an ellipse with minimal perigee is about 1/2 the orbital period of a circle at the distance of the apogee, and it takes 1/2 an orbit to go from apogee to perigee. 1/2 of 1/2 of 28 days equals days. If the perigee was higher, the orbit would take longer, but then it would miss the earth.

What happens when it hits the Roche Limit?

Why cell phones? Why not toasters? Or police radar guns (Tim Wakefield just threw a 973mph knuckle ball?) Or it could cause all the chocolate on earth to vanish. Oh, the humanity!

By: David Johnson

David Johnson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:43:01 +0000

Well, there’s more info on this…extravaganza. Here’s the official synopsis from their website (http://tinyurl.com/5ccgnc):

“Synopsis

After a massive meteor collides with our moon, disastrous abnormalities start happening on Earth – on one side of the planet, cars begin to hover over the ground as if in outer space, while on the other side, the Earth’s gravitational pull becomes so intense that the Eiffel Tower crumbles together under its own weight.

A team of international scientists realizes the horrifying truth: the meteor has knocked the moon out of its orbit and has hurled it on a collision course with the Earth. In 45 days, the Moon will crash into our planet. As with the total extinction of the dinosaurs through a meteor shower, history is about to repeat itself, this time with mankind…

The US has a plan, but finds no international support. The Europeans have another strategy, which the Americans don’t buy into. Now it is up to a small group of scientists on both sides of the pond to get the nations of the world to cooperate and act as one, before it will be too late…

Unique visuals and powerful human drama will bring this chilling story to life.

Get ready to experience the dark side of the moon!”

I wonder what kind of “plan” they’ll have to shove an entire 2,000 mile wide body back into its orbit…

By: Petrucio

Petrucio — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:57:54 +0000

Also think it would de-compress. I don’t think there’s mojo to do that, and I don’t think I could still be called a white dwarf. It would just be a chunk of C and O. And they wouldn’t even know where it came from.

BA, you basically said the premise is a load of crap, but didn’t really explained why in tiny little details just like we like. Please, elude us.

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:14:57 +0000

Most white dwarfs would have fused their H and He into Carbon and Oxygen. And they are freaking dense (Sun mass into Earth size), so it would feel much more solid than your lousy iceberg, believe you me.

I’ve wondered about that. Certainly if you could stand on a white dwarf, I agree with what you’re saying.

But, if by some powerful mojo, you knocked a piece of a white dwarf off and took it away from the powerful gravity of the star, I would think the matter would just de-compress back to something more “normal” and float/ooze/gointostarrehab away.

Thoughts? BA?

By: Ade

Ade — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:05:35 +0000

Most film/TV SF is pretty silly from a real science perspective but, as has been pointed out, this doesn’t mean it can’t be fun to watch. I mean, I’m sure the science in ‘Iron Man’ is gonna suck, but I’m still going to see it and will probably think it’s awesome. Just as long as they tag it as Science *Fantasy*, which I think is the more accurate term for this sort of thing.