Umm...wut?

[kajivar]

Okay, so, next Sunday (with part two on the following Sunday): Impact! Disasterporn! "The most spectacular meteor shower in 10,000 years results in a direct hit to the moon, leaving it on a collision course with the Earth

Comments

[christinenj]

The pillows on the chat couch are fluffed.

I've got booze and the popcorn's ready to be popped.

This is going to be epic.

[kajivar]

Make sure I'm drinking, or I will be twitching like I have epilepsy.

[vastin]

Huh. The premise of a mega-impact disaster isn't impossible. I'm pretty sure a sufficiently large fragment of degenerate matter would probably end up passing THROUGH the Moon, taking a decent chunk of it with it and leaving the rest as a molten mess. I suppose a fair amount of it would then proceed to pound the surface of our planet lifeless.

What a small group of scientists are supposed to do about THAT is somewhat beyond me. Space 1999 aside, our entire civilization doesn't generate enough energy to so much as nudge something the mass of the moon should it be pushed out of a stable orbit by something.

I'd take a hint from Cowboy Beebop and move to Mars at that point. Call the planet a loss for the next couple hundred years until the rocks stop falling. :)

[vastin]

Oooh. Next time I'll watch the trailer first.

Who the $%#^ writes this crap? What would have been wrong with just a good old fashioned mega-impact? Explosions sell! Why include all this bizarre fantastic pseudo-science crap?

My head hurts...

[kajivar]

I think because they want to scare people into thinking it could happen? Or the writers are stupid.

[vastin]

One other thing. At what point are fiction writers going to figure out that throwing nukes at every celestial threat we encounter is going to do exactly squat? You might be able to divert a small rock with one - a very small rock. That's about it.

You're not going to vaporize a giant asteroid, you're not going to split the moon in half, and you could multiply our entire arsenal a thousand-fold and you're still not going to have any effect whatsoever on anything as massive and dense as a chunk of degenerate matter that weighs more than our planet. :P

At least Deep Impact did the whole asteroid disaster thing with a modest nod to reality.

[_jealousy_]

OMG, I can't wait! The mocking potential has never been so great! :D

Let's be fair

[mkanoap]

Hey, the trailer doesn't say that the impact knocks the moon out of it's orbit, just that after the moon gets knocked up with some degenerate passer by, it's orbit decays due to being so much heavier than before. Something I can sympathize with. :)

Which, ummm... Makes baseball fields get all lightningy and trains fly for some reason.

What I really want to know is, "sentient earthquakes"? Tell me more!

Re: Let's be fair

[kajivar]

Hee! In 10.5, the second big earthquake follows exactly along a train track, chasing down a train. When it finally swallows the train, the earthquake stops. Due to the deliberate chase down the tracks and the quake stopping when it reached its goal, I can only conclude it was sentient!

Re: Let's be fair

[mkanoap]

That make perfect sense!

Sentient, and hungry for train.

[reverendj]

Phil Plait is all over that like Palin on Failin'