jupiter also has a significantly larger gravity well that pulls in asteroids far past its actual diameter. its also closer to the asteroid belt, i believe.
On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote: > What is the biggest threat facing America in 2010 (or really, in any given > year) ? > > Is it the “liberals” who come out on May 1 to celebrate the downtrodden > worker (or Hispanic immigrant)? > > No, and it’s not a nuclear confrontation with Korea or Iran, nor is it Al > Qaeda or Islamic (or Christian militia) extremism… nor even the tea-baggers > or a resurgent Dick Cheney. > > However - it is a decidedly “alien” threat, but not of the UFO-ilk. > > In Police jargon: > > "There’s a little black spot on the Sun (make that Jupiter) today. . ." And > it is a regular occurrence, apparently. > > Less than a year ago an amateur astronomer picked up images of an massive > Asteroid impact on Jupiter. It was reminiscent of the more famous Shoemaker > Levy impact 15 years earlier. > > http://media.photobucket.com/image/wesley%20jupiter%20asteroid/3488/Jupiter23rdJuly2009withfourdayol-1.jpg > > Either impact – if it had happened on earth instead of our neighbor - would > have wiped out most advanced life and set “progress” (towards what?) back a > few million years, even if a few human holdouts managed to survive in caves > somewhere. > > http://news.discovery.com/space/new-and-old-observations-bolster-asteroid-worries.html > > Given the number of previous candidate “black spots” on Jupiter, as hinted > in the article above - this kind of thing could be happening as often as > yearly (earth-year) on that planet. How does that relate to the probability > here? Forget your 65 million year scenario. We have probably been rather > lucky since that one. > > In terms of comparative mass, Jupiter is ~318 time more massive. If there > was relative proportionality, which there isn’t due to our Sun shielding out > most of the debris, then we would be in deep trouble. Tunguska could be more > indicative of a time frame for a smaller impact, and it is pretty clear that > there was a very large event about 12,000 years ago over North America. > > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=did-a-comet-hit-earth-12900-years-ago > > … which, BTW, could have triggered a number of events still retained in > human memes, such as the Noah’s Ark meme, mentioned recently here. > > It would probably be a wise thing, to everyone but the tea-baggers, to put a > few of those “stimulus dollars” into further research on this particular > alien problem, given the downside risk and the real possibility of being > able to do something about it – like steer these thing away from us, using > our nuclear arsenal … don’t you think? > > SIDE NOTE: the irony of the “cave survivors” of a large asteroid impact, > should it occur soon - is that these few inheritors of human continuity > might well be the group of extremists which is hiding Osama Bin Laden … > > Irony of ironies. Or, in the spirit of Ark-mythology, who would there be to > contradict the new-dogma of 2121 - that this particular Survivor! scenario > always the plan of Allah? > > Something to think about, post-May-day … > > …mayday, mayday, mayday! > > Jones
