High-speed asteroid pile-up prompts X-File The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the aftermath of just what happens when two asteroids collide at 11,000 mph (17,702 km/h), prompting an explosion "as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb". The result is a "peculiar" object - dubbed P/2010 A2 - which boasts a comet-like debris trail behind a mysterious X- …
David Jewitt, of the University of California in Los Angeles, said: "We expected the debris field to expand dramatically, like shrapnel flying from a hand grenade. But what happened was quite the opposite. We found that the object is expanding very, very slowly."
Er... Wouldn't 'quite the opposite' involve the object rapidly collapsing in on it's self, possibly resulting in a micro singularity?
TSK!
You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. /me:salutes Douglas Adams.
So the odds of a 122M object being hit by a 3-4M object is as close to zero as, well zero itself.
Now what are the chances of life developing without the intervention of a god? About the same?
Ergo, if this can happen we don't NEED a god to justify our existence.
Therefore... Eat that pork, eat that ham, laugh till you choke on Billy Graham. (cheers Frank)
...to multiply that "almost zero" probability by the "almost infinite" number of pebbles in said vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big Space. Surely, this has to affect the odds.
On the other hand, life-supporting planets are quite a few orders of magnitude rarer than pebbles. Are they too rare for spontaneous emergence of life? G-d knows...
"On the other hand, life-supporting planets are quite a few orders of magnitude rarer than pebbles."
No they're not. They are _probably_ rarer than pebbles. Bearded pork dodgers call that probably "God". Im happy to wait for science to refute it. Which it is doing a remarkably good job of. There are "probably" as many "potential" life supporting planets in the universe as there are grains of sand on earth.
"...to multiply that "almost zero" probability by the "almost infinite" number of pebbles in said vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big Space. Surely, this has to affect the odds"
Sorry, but the "probability" of the initial collision would have to have been calculated using the number of "pebbles" vs the volume of the "hugely, mind-bogglingly big Space." Therefore, would not need to factor in an "almost infinite" number of pebbles a second time.
"Now what are the chances of life developing without the intervention of a god? About the same?"
It doesn't work that way. A smart and powerful enough God can formulate the laws of physics in such a manner as to make the spontaneous occurrence of life inevitable or probable. Which is more logical: a to conceive of laws of nature without a legislator or b. to conceive of laws of nature with a legislator ?
I reject your puny and stupid straw god as much as you do. This particular theological rot (god of the gaps) started with William Paley. The God of the Bible is responsible for what we do understand as much as what we don't.
To me, this looks very similar to the effect you would get by placing lead pencil shavings on to a piece of paper with a magnet underneath. Perhaps the debris from the collision is caught in an electric field of some sort and it has nothing to do with gravity, the "solar wind", or the shapes of the colliding asteroids.
This might also explain why the particles are not moving apart as fast as would be expected.
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