Hermes Found 66 Years Later - Long-Lost Object Is A Bright Binary

algomeysa2 wrote:

...... there's not one instance in recorded history of anyone dying
in an asteroid impact.


Tunguska.

There've been numerous accounts of people killed by stones falling from
the sky. For most of recorded history these accounts were dismissed.
Educated folks knew they were the fantasies. Only ignorant peasants
would believe stones fall from the sky!



--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

In article ,
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
In message ,
writes
algomeysa2 writes:

Interesting page, but, you know, when I go to a webpage and the first thing
I see is this:

"The risk you face of dying as a result of an asteroid impact is about 1 in
20,000, the same risk you face of dying in a plane crash. - Source:
Spaceguard Survey"

The fact that that's obviously a completely bogus statistic.....considering,
oh...... I can search the web and find many people who have died in plane
crashes, but, there's not one instance in recorded history of anyone dying
in an asteroid impact...... makes that rather suspect....

On what basis do you call it a fact that it is "a completely bogus
statistic"? In reality, the statistic is not at all bogus. It's
your reasoning that's bogus. You're trying to compare a relatively
high frequency, low fatality event (plane crashes) with a relatively
low frequency, high fatality event (asteroid impacts).

Suppose an asteroid impact that causes a mass extinction (let's say
50 percent of the human population eventually dies as a result)
happens once every 10 million years. Well, the current global
population is about 6 billion. That makes for an average death
rate of 600 people per year. How many people die in plane crashes
each year? The number is comparable to within the limits of this
execise.

I would say that shows how completely bogus the statistic is. The actual
number of people exposed to the danger of dying in a plane crash is a
tiny fraction of the number now living in various degrees of poverty on
Earth.

Not true! People risking to die in an airplane crash aren't merely
those who ride the airplane -- people on the ground may be hit by
the falling airplane as well. Thus, everyone living where airplanes
pass overhead run a small risk to die in an airplane crash, including
those who never ride an airplane. To completely avoid that risk
you'd have to always remain underground, or in some bunker.

But it is an absolute certainty that some of them will die in a
plane crash.

Not true either! It's merely extremely probable that some will die
in future plane crashes, but it is *NOT* absolutely certain!

And the number of people who have lived in the past ten million
years is vastly more than the current population - Clarke's "behind
every man now alive stand thirty ghosts" comes to mind.

Not true either! Remember that for quite some time, the Earth's
population has doubled every generation or so. Therefore the number
of people who've ever have lived on Earth are only perhaps four to
six times the number of people living today. Thus there aren't as
many as "30 ghosts" behind every man now alive -- there are only some
"4-6 ghosts".....

In fact 10 million years ago man didn't exist.

This seems to be your first, and only, true statement of this post.. :-)

But then no-one's interested in spending money on solving problems
that actually kill people.

If so, why do we have hospitals, physicians, ambulances, etc?

After all, we've spent trillions to ensure the destruction of all
life on Earth.

:-) ...no we haven't. I suppose you're referring to all the nuclear
weapons on Earth. First, it is NOT, repeat, NOT absolutely certain
that they will be detonated, as you imply here. And second, even if
we detonated them all, we would NOT destroy all life on Earth! Sure,
human civilization would probably be destroyed, and perhaps all
humans and a large number of mammal species as well. But some life
would survive. In particular the insects, who are able to tolerate
much higher doses of radioactivity than humans and mammals, would
definitely survive: they'd just hibernate through the "nuclear
winter" which would follow.

That big asteroid which we believe hit the Earth at the end of
the Createcous period, killing off the dinosaurs, was probably
a larger catastrophy to the biosphere than anything we humans are
able to produce -- including detonating all our nuclear weapons.
And life didn't end on Earth then.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/
http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/

Jonathan Silverlight wrote:


I would say that shows how completely bogus the statistic is. The
actual number of people exposed to the danger of dying in a plane
crash is a tiny fraction of the number now living in various degrees
of poverty on Earth. But it is an absolute certainty that some of them
will die in a plane crash.

Far more will die of old age while waiting for the security check to
board the aircraft.

Pat

In article , Hop David wrote:

algomeysa2 wrote:

...... there's not one instance in recorded history of anyone dying
in an asteroid impact.

Tunguska.

There are no recorded fatalities; it was noted by some Siberian herders,
IIRC, but they were sufficiently far from it to survive. Indeed, some
reports give it as being observed in a town 70km away... Some reindeer
were probably killed, but there's no evidence anyone was in the
immediate vicinity; personally, I consider it unlikely that it killed
anyone off.

There've been numerous accounts of people killed by stones falling from
the sky. For most of recorded history these accounts were dismissed.
Educated folks knew they were the fantasies. Only ignorant peasants
would believe stones fall from the sky!

Um. There have been numerous accounts of stones falling from the sky,
and these accounts were generally dismissed; what was Jefferson alleged
to have said, again? "It is easier to believe that two Yankee professors
would lie than that stones would fall from heaven" or similar, IIRC...

I've not encountered references to any records of people killed by
meteorites in my readings on the subject; do you have anything? There
are various semi-mythic interesting deaths that might, I suppose, be
linkable - "and then the hand of God reached out from the sky and struck
him dead" or the like - but nothing quite like the meteorite records
that crop up intermittently.

There are, currently, no human beings known with any confidence to have
been killed by a meteorite strike. There are, almost certainly, human
beings who have been killed by meteorites (or orbital debris) strikes, I
feel, but we don't know about them.

--
-Andrew Gray

In other words...."Figures don't lie -- but liars will figure."

-- Stinger

"John Oliver" wrote in message
newsKslb.96975$AH4.44361@lakeread06...
algomeysa2 wrote:

"Ron Baalke" wrote in message
...


http://www.lowell.edu/press_room/rel...ermes_rls.html


For more information on the discovery and images of Hermes, visit the

LONEOS

website at http://asteroid.lowell.edu/asteroid/loneos/loneos.html.


Interesting page, but, you know, when I go to a webpage and the first
thing
I see is this:

"The risk you face of dying as a result of an asteroid impact is about 1
in
20,000, the same risk you face of dying in a plane crash. - Source:
Spaceguard Survey"

The fact that that's obviously a completely bogus
statistic.....considering,
oh...... I can search the web and find many people who have died in
plane
crashes, but, there's not one instance in recorded history of anyone
dying
in an asteroid impact...... makes that rather suspect....

Its "a priori" vs. "a postiori" statistics ... all statistics are
"bogus" if you do not understand the basis.

I can search the web and find many people who have
died in plane crashes, but, there's not one instance
in recorded history of anyone dying in an asteroid
impact...... makes that rather suspect....

This point can be exceedingly difficult to get across.
Our instincts tell us that there cannot be big danger
if there is no small danger. But in this case our
instincts are WRONG.

The earth's atmosphere shields us from all the little
stuff. There are even cases on record of people
being hit by a fist-sized meteorite, and surviving -
because it was very much slowed down by the
atmosphere.

But the big danger is from the very rare, very large
objects - say 100 meters or more - which punch
through the atmosphere without being slowed down.
They could kill millions of people.

Multiply the probability of such an event (a very
small number) by the number killed (a very large
number.) You get a probablity of an *individual*
being killed by meteor strike something on the
or order of one in ten thousand.

But there is another difference: If you die, your
genes live on in your children and collateral relatives,
and your culture lives on. But if you lose the whole
ball of wax ....

Ben