Thousands and millions of potential threats! Plus to them, asteroids - outside Solar system.
Only - early detection systems and precautions on the Earth ... - is our salvation !

Bah! That costs far too much money and takes a long time. Does anybody know how they detect them? It ain't pretty.

I think the Incas (or was it the Aztecs?) had it right... sacrifice a virgin once a week. They never got hit by a rock so it must work.

Hmmm, so we've arrived to the sacrifice point? that's pretty much scientific, isn't it?

Well if so, I volunteer to stay with the virgins the night before the sacrifice... just to confort them in their last moments...

Actually we took a vote and we were kind of thinking you would be the first virgin to be sacrificed, Enric. As for being comforted the night before I am afraid there is no better way to make the gods angry than to insult them with a sacrifice who was comforted a little too much so I am afraid there will be no comforting for you. Perhaps a good movie and some popcorn?

Finding the rocks is not an easy process if what I have heard is true. It begins, of course, with observations of the night sky wherein they take photographs. The stars in the background are at such great distance that their movement will not show in the photo so they appear as relatively sharp, round dots. Close, fast moving objects such as comets and NEOs appear as slightly "smudged", elongated dots. The way I understand it they do not have software that can look at the photos and spot smudged dots reliably so the photos must be examined by human eyes. Now realize that if the object is moving almost directly at Earth with very little lateral motion then the smudge will be almost undetectable. It's a slow process and I've heard they rely on volunteer manpower to do the photo analysis due to budget constraints. That's what I was told by a fellow who is one of the volunteers who analyse the photos. I haven't confirmed that with info from an independent source but if it's true then IMHO it doesn't make sense to build a lot of telescopes for finding rocks because we seem to be limited by the number of people available to examine the photos.

What to do? Hmmm? Hire more photo analysts? Where will the money come from. We haven't had a good invasion since Iraq. Once again people are bored with sitting at home shooting targets in video games and going to the shooting range to fire at paper targets. Those targets don't bleed and they just don't run and jump like a real human does. People need to go out and kill some real flesh, preferably innocent flesh it seems, so when you have a monkey-brain who has been a complete failure at anything and everything he ever tried in life, a total loser who went AWOL rather than grow a pair and serve in Viet Nam and was protected by his daddy's money who realizes he can use his power as Supreme Commander to make it appear that he is a tough guy instead of a yellow bellied, worthless piece of crap, a naturally bloodthirsty population deprived of killing real flesh for more than 5 years and a cretin like Tony Blair feeding the flames with blatant lies the murderers want to hear... well... the telescopes and paid photo analysts will wait.

Indeed Bush is gone but he's still free instead of being in jail for war crimes as he should be so we have to wonder... have times really changed? Not a bit. The next victim will be Iran and I do mean victim in every sense of the word. The lies are in place, the sabres are rattling, it's just a matter of time. Obama will get the economy half straightened out by the end of his term then the wackos will vote in another war mongering, braindead repuglican (like the twit in Alabama who recently claimed a fetus is an organ in a woman's body and therefore cannot be aborted in a clinic because it's not safe) and he'll invade Iran with money he doesn't have. The politicians should care but when they look around them and see that people are stupid enough to spend their resources on crap like SETI, well, then they know anything is permissible.

This forum is supposed to be about science but when science is funded by public money rather than the patronage of dukes and princes as it once was then it becomes political.

You are right about searching the asteroids. Everyone who knows how big only our solar system is must understand that searching new small objects in such huge area is very difficult. That's why it is important to have information from as many astronomers as possible.

Longueuil, Quebec, February 21, 2013 – On February 25, Canadian satellite NEOSSat (Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite) will be launched aboard India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from Satish Dhawan Space Center, in Sriharikota (India).
NEOSSat http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/neossat/ builds upon our country's cutting edge expertise in compact, microsatellite design and will be the world's first space telescope entirely dedicated to detecting and tracking not only asteroids, but also satellites and space debris.
This ground-breaking mission was developed in Canada as a result of a close collaboration between several key partners including the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), the University of Calgary and Microsat Systems Canada Inc., amongst others.
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/media/advisories/2013/0221.asp

Good work, Canada! Respect!

Alex

Makes me proud to be Canadian. Just to put NEOSSat in perspective with respect to cost/expenditure/brains.... Canada's population is about 10% of the population of the USA. More people live in the state of California, USA, than live in Canada. Our tax base is thus that much smaller relative to the USA and NEOSSat is a big expenditure for us. How do we afford it? Well, back when the Bush dolt was drumming up support for invading Iraq, Canada announced it would not be joining the invasion. Because we knew it was based on a pack of lies. Instead we put the money into things like NEOSSat.

(BTW, minutes after our former Prime Minister John Chretien announced that we would not be joining the invasion, the US ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, announced in a news conference in reference to our refusal, that "there is a price to pay for defying American will". We refused to buy the lies and follow the Bush monkey and in return we received a direct threat. As if we have to do what they say. The next day the Americans broke off negotiations aimed at getting them to remove their illegal embargo on Canadian softwood lumber, an embargo the World Trade Commission declared illegal under the terms of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in 3 separate hearings. Just so you know what you're dealing with when you deal with USA.)

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/26/17107085-comet-just-might-hit-mars-in-2014?lite

"This video shows for the first time some companion bodies with the KBO, some of the video was shared from our sister team in South America. The ecliptic line shown in the footage is not to scale and does not depict the objects current orientation to the Ecliptic plane, it's intended to show you why this object is hard for many to locate, most celestial objects below this line are out of view, but some wobbling of the earth has reviled this object at times. We believe this object is disrupting the Asteroid belt and will result in more asteroid strikes. This is a problem since these asteroids are recently being disrupted in their orbits with short notice, this may be one reason why NASA is missing them. We have seen the many claims of other objects scattered in you tube videos of object in other constellations, but when this begins to unfold that attention will be directed toward the constellation of Aquarius. In closing we are now confident this object has been here before..." --> :))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kGvqRhugHrE#at=261