Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Smarter than Dinosaurs?

I found a nice article that dealt with the possibility of an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping out human life similar to what happened to the dinosaurs many years ago.  In this article, Andrew C. Revkin asks Apollo 9 astronaut Russell L. Schweickart about human survival in the case of an asteroid approaching the planet since we just had a small one dissipate over Siberia.  They discuss that we have the means to detect when something is about to collide with the earth and have the technology to take care of the threat but they brought up one major problem.  We humans are scattered across the globe and belong to different tribes that do not get along and decide on issues mutually.  They discussed that we would have to give up all differences to take on the threat and also pull resources together before such a disaster to be able to effectively detect these potential collisions in the future.
I was greatly intrigued by this article because I understand that there would have to be a world threatening disaster to make the human race work together because normally we are to self-centered to care about anyone but ourselves.  I would suggest reading the whole article because they brought up some good points.

Link to article: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/can-humans-do-better-than-dinosaurs-when-it-comes-to-incoming-space-objects/

4 comments:

  1. This is very true about people. We are usually social creatures but it only seems to be that way if the other person can somehow benefit us, at least for certain relationships that we develop. The threat of an asteroid hitting the planet would hopefully be cause for everyone to work together though.

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  2. This is a very good point. Humankind has never faced any major outside threat and so has never had to band together. It would be interesting to see if people could put aside their differences and stand together.

    This also makes me think of the cliche alien invasion scenario. If we came into contact with a hostile alien race and had to build an "Earth amry", would all our races and nations be willing to fight together?
    Interesting.

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  3. I want to read this article in full. I agree with the fact that we would have to pull together as a "world" instead of separate countries in order to survive something as devastating as an asteroid hitting the Earth.

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  4. Maybe it would take something like this to bring every country to a realization that it would be much better to just get along and not fight each other.

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