How much warning, realistically, would we be likely to get from an extinction-level meteor strike?

[EdwardLost]

Suppose an all-life-destroying asteroid were spotted and it could be diverted - but only with an enormous, economy-busting effort. Imagine the political wrangling that would go on with every country needing the divertor to succeed but none wanting to pay for it. Has that movie been made? My scenario: a small group of nationals finally agree to build the divertor. They launch the divertor at the asteroid, and then launch nukes at the rest of the world.

[jharvey963]

Actually, I recently saw a different explanation for the extinction event (on some science TV show?).

Anyway, the idea is this: In a glass of water, drop a marble or pebble or something. The initial impact will push the liquid away from the impact point, followed by a rising column of liquid from the center of the impact. This column can climb to an inch or two (or more) in height.

The idea is that this is that is what happened at impact with the earth. The initial strike pushed material out of the way, followed by a large expulsion from the center of the impact. The material that rose (?) would be very hot. Much of it would stay around the earth, but some of it would hit the moon (and he even said a small amount would hit mars).

Much of the material would fall back to earth. Being so hot, it would raise the temperature of the air - he calculated to about 1200 degrees – within just a few hours. This is the event that killed off 90% (give or take) of the species on earth, and it happened on the same day as the impact.

This was a very interesting new take on the extinction event. I don’t know how likely this is to be true, but it’s intriguing.

J.

[AaronX]

@EdwardLost

They launch the divertor at the asteroid, and then launch nukes at the rest of the world.

They launch the missile. At first, there is much fanfare and rejoicing, then doubt and horror as the missile veers off-course and avoids the asteroid. In examining their plans to see how they could make such a simple mistake, the rest of the world discovers it wasn’t a missile, but a space ship…

[BlinkingDuck]

@Chronos

Not quite dino-killer-sized, but there has been at least one asteroid big enough to really ruin our day that passed closer than the Moon, and wasn’t even discovered until after closest approach. So no warning at all is perfectly plausible.

And it would probably take a decade of advance warning to divert an object, but there are a lot of other preparations we could make. It’d take at most one year to stockpile food (and seeds and breeding stock), and that by itself would be enough to save us even from another dino-killer.

The women in this bunker should be heavily weighted for attractiveness so as to provide desire amongst the males to repopulate the Earth. Let’s make sure we don’t have a mineshaft gap though.