by Ann » Thu Mar 09, 2023 6:49 am
First of all, I want to extend my congratulations, once again, to NASA, on your highly successful DART mission.
Second, I hope someone will answer alter-ego's important question:
So the question I have is given this test and assuming the same impact conditions, how, far away or months of lead time, would be required for Dimorphos to miss Earth if it were on a direct collision course with us? This is a very specific case but one that this question should be answerable.
That's an extremely interesting question, but the person answering it is not going to be me.
Instead, I'm going to teach you some Swedish poetry by a man named Gustaf Fröding (1860-1911). The poem, written near the end of his life, is called
Gråbergssång (Gray Mountain Song). I'm going to translate the Swedish word "stå" (= stand) as "stay", to make the poem rhyme.
Stå
grå,
stå
grå,
stå
grå,
stå
grå,
stå
grå-å-å-å.
Så är gråbergs gråa sång
lå-å-å-å-å-å-å-å-å-ng.
Stay
gray,
stay
gray,
stay
gray,
stay
gray,
stay
gra-a-a-y.
So is gray mountain's gray song
lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng.
The Swedish group Mando Diao have set Fröding's poem to music.They have made a video of the song, too, where, fascinatingly, a huge meteorite or asteroid is seen impacting the Earth.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
It seems obvious to me that most rocky bodies in the Universe are probably more or like Dimorphos. They are gray, hard and stiff. Okay, they may be orangish like Mars, or covered in thick ice, like so many moons of the outer solar system. They may even be like Io, writhing under the tidal forces of being trapped between Jupiter and the other three Galilean moons, so that is almost turning itself inside out and spewing molten sulfur all over the place. But still.
How unbelievably lucky we are to have a green world with blue skies and seas like the Earth. (Well, we must inevitably have been just so lucky, because otherwise we would not have been here. Duh. Yes, but still.)
We are doing so many stupid things to the little cosmic jewel that is our world. Thank you, NASA, for doing your bit to help protecting Earth from one kind of danger that isn't humanity's fault.
Ann
[img3="DART vs Dimorphos
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins APL, DART"]https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2303/pressdracowithspacecraft1_1024.jpg[/img3]
First of all, I want to extend my congratulations, once again, to NASA, on your highly successful DART mission.
Second, I hope someone will answer alter-ego's important question:
[quote]So the question I have is given this test and assuming the same impact conditions, how, far away or months of lead time, would be required for Dimorphos to miss Earth if it were on a direct collision course with us? This is a very specific case but one that this question should be answerable.[/quote]
That's an extremely interesting question, but the person answering it is not going to be me.
Instead, I'm going to teach you some Swedish poetry by a man named Gustaf Fröding (1860-1911). The poem, written near the end of his life, is called [i]Gråbergssång[/i] (Gray Mountain Song). I'm going to translate the Swedish word "stå" (= stand) as "stay", to make the poem rhyme.
[float=left]Stå
grå,
stå
grå,
stå
grå,
stå
grå,
stå
grå-å-å-å.
Så är gråbergs gråa sång
lå-å-å-å-å-å-å-å-å-ng.[/float][float=right]Stay
gray,
stay
gray,
stay
gray,
stay
gray,
stay
gra-a-a-y.
So is gray mountain's gray song
lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng.[/float]
[clear][/clear]
The Swedish group Mando Diao have set Fröding's poem to music.They have made a video of the song, too, where, fascinatingly, a huge meteorite or asteroid is seen impacting the Earth.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06N_HE6NHs[/youtube]
It seems obvious to me that most rocky bodies in the Universe are probably more or like Dimorphos. They are gray, hard and stiff. Okay, they may be orangish like Mars, or covered in thick ice, like so many moons of the outer solar system. They may even be like Io, writhing under the tidal forces of being trapped between Jupiter and the other three Galilean moons, so that is almost turning itself inside out and spewing molten sulfur all over the place. But still.
How unbelievably lucky we are to have a green world with blue skies and seas like the Earth. (Well, we must inevitably have been just so lucky, because otherwise we would not have been here. Duh. Yes, but still.)
We are doing so many stupid things to the little cosmic jewel that is our world. Thank you, NASA, for doing your bit to help protecting Earth from one kind of danger that isn't humanity's fault.
Ann