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Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage
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Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage[____] [____] An asteroid did not cause the dinosaurs to become extinct. Large volcanic eruptions fit the evidence better. Michael Oard, former Meteorologist for the National Weather Service with multiple degrees in Atmospheric Science, August, 1997, “The Extinction of the Dinosaurs,” http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v11/i2/dinosaur.asp The triumph of the meteorite theory has come with much dissent, especially from palaeontologists who opted for a volcanic mechanism, often combined with marine regression, to explain the data.72–75 Even in spite of what seems like impressive confirmation of the meteorite theory and reinforced by the scientific press and news media, the dispute continues.76 If you read only the evidence for the impact theory, you would be impressed. However, if you read further the evidence for the volcanic theory, you would discover that the meteorite theory is not as well supported as it may seem. Volcanic adherents point to the evidence of massive volcanism around the K/T boundary, for instance, the 1 million km3 of Deccan basalts in India and the extensive volcanism in western North America related to the Laramide Orogeny. To them, it is more logical that the dinosaurs died out gradually from all this volcanic activity. As it turns out, iridium is also associated with volcanism, especially with dust injected into the atmosphere from basaltic extrusions.77 For instance, the fine airborne particles above an Hawaiian basaltic eruption were found to be highly enriched in iridium, much higher than in the K/T boundary clays at Gubbio and Stevns Klint.78,79 High iridium has also been associated with other volcanic eruptions and found within volcanic dust bands in the Antarctic ice cores. This fine material is of similar particle size as the K/T boundary clay. Even shocked quartz has been associated with volcanism.80–82 Impact supporters counter that this shocked quartz is only weakly deformed compared with the K/T boundary shocked quartz, and that shocked quartz is associated with known impact craters as well as nuclear bomb test sites.83,84 However, Officer and Page argue that shocked grains are not found at some K/T boundary clays, and some shocked quartz grains are too large to have been transported far by the atmospheric winds.85 Officer adds that evidence of high-pressure shock is now found within rocks formed by explosions within volcanoes.86 [____] Jupiter’s gravitational pull checks any major asteroid collisions with earth. Michael Muracco founder of Mount Washington Valley Astronomy, 6/3/2009, “Asteroid 2009 DD45 Barely Misses Earth June 1, 2011,” http://mwvastronomy.net/2011/06/asteroid-2009-dd45-barely-misses-earth-june-1-2011/ What has kept the Earth “safe” at least the past 65 million years, other than blind luck is the massive gravitational field of Jupiter, our cosmic guardian, with its stable circular orbit far from the sun, which assures a low number of impacts resulting in mass extinctions by sweeping up and scatters away most of the dangerous Earth-orbit-crossing comets and asteroids. Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage[____] [____] Large asteroids with the potential to cause real harm are easy to find, no risk of them. Thomas Graham & Russell Schweickart, former astronaut and Co-Chair of the NASA Advisory Council Ad-Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense and former astronaut who flew on Apollo 9, 2/18/2008 NASA's Flimsy Argument for Nuclear Weapons, Scientific American Magazine, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasas-flimsy-argument-for-nuclear-weapons Nuclear explosives would be needed only for deflecting the largest NEOs, which are the least common and most easily detectable objects. Scientists are not concerned about a collision with an extremely large NEO—say, 10 kilometers in diameter—because all these objects have been discovered and none currently threatens Earth. Big things are easy for astronomers to find; the smaller objects are what we have to worry about./Of the estimated 4,000 NEOs with diameters of 400 meters or more—which includes all objects that might conceivably require nuclear explosives to divert them—researchers have so far identified about 1,500. And if NASA meets the search goals mandated by Congress, it will locate 98 percent of these objects and calculate 100-year projections of their orbits by 2020. As NASA continues to find big NEOs, the calculations of risk change accordingly. A decade ago, before astronomers began to systematically locate NEOs larger than 400 meters in diameter, they estimated that we faced a statistical risk of being struck by such an object once every 100,000 years. But now that researchers have identified and are tracking about 37 percent of these NEOs, the frequency of being hit by one of the remaining large objects has dropped to once in 160,000 years. Unless NASA finds a large NEO on an immediate collision course by 2020 (a very unlikely event), the frequency of a collision with one of the 80 still undiscovered objects (2 percent of 4,000) will drop to once every five million years. Thus, the probability that nuclear explosives might be needed to deflect an NEO is extremely small. And even this minuscule probability will diminish to the vanishing point as researchers improve nonnuclear interception technologies. After 2020 the need to keep nuclear devices on standby to defend against an NEO virtually disappears. As a result, the decision to move toward the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons can be made strictly on the basis of human threats to global security. Extraterrestrial dangers need not be considered. Extension: Prefer High Probability Impacts[____] [____] War and disease should be evaluated over an asteroid impact. Money would be better spent preventing probable disasters. James Bennett, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, 2010, “The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and Panic from Sputniks, Martians, and Marauding Meteors,” p. 155 Given that there “is no known incident of a major crater-forming impact in recorded human history,” argues P.R. Weissman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and since “the credibility of the impact hazard” is justifiably low with the public and governmental decision-makers, we ought to defer the development of a defensive system until such time as technological advances permit us to do so at a reasonable cost.55 There is also, he points out — at the risk of being called chauvinist, no doubt, by the more feverish Earth-savers — the “pragmatic and/or parochial” fact that the United States accounts for 6.4 percent of the total land mass of the Earth, and only 1.9 percent of the total area, including water.56 Thus anything short of a civilization-ending asteroid would be exceedingly unlikely to hit the U.S. By contrast, such threats as infectious diseases and nuclear war present a more real and immediate danger to Americans, and to earthlings in general. Perhaps money would be better spent addressing those matters? [____] No human has ever died from an asteroid strike. Their impact is so improbable that small miscalculations lead to wildly incorrect probabilities. James Bennett, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, 2010, “The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and Panic from Sputniks, Martians, and Marauding Meteors,” p. 157-8 The matter, or manipulation, of odds in regards to a collision between a space rock and Earth would do Jimmy the Greek proud. As Michael B. Gerrard writes in Risk Analysis in an article assessing the relative allocation of public funds to hazardous waste site cleanup and protection against killer comets and asteroids, “Asteroids and comets are… the ultimate example of a low-probability/high-consequence event: no one in recorded human history is confirmed to have ever died from one.” Gerrard writes that “several billion people” will die as the result of an impact “at some time in the coming half million years,” although that half-million year time-frame is considerably shorter than the generally accepted extinction-event period.66 The expected deaths from a collision with an asteroid of, say, one kilometer or more in diameter are so huge that by jacking up the tiny possibility of such an event even a little bit the annual death rate of this never-before experienced disaster exceeds deaths in plane crashes, earthquakes, and other actual real live dangers. Death rates from outlandish or unusual causes are fairly steady across the years. About 120 Americans die in airplane crashes annually, and about 90 more die of lightning strikes. Perhaps five might die in garage-door opener accidents. The total number of deaths in any given year by asteroid or meteor impact is zero — holding constant since the dawn of recorded time. 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