Asteroid Defense

It was the "defense" bit I was questionimg John (Makes astronomers sound like Chicken-Littles waiting for the skies to fall down.) but I take your point.

We mammals took the Chixulub impact on the chin(or should that be muzzle!).I doubt if even THAT impact would take out humanity today, especially if we got a few days notice to start hiding fast!!!

An interestin point of view, would we survive such an impact??
I would have thought not, but you might pmgisme :lol: (what's you name anyway?)

Peter Mark Gibbons is me. ("P-M-G is me" ).With my luck I will sleep through the warnings and be right underneath it when it cames down.

We are supposed to be a bit smarter than the rat like mammals who survived unscathed 65 million years ago.
(And indeed the dinosaurs who survived.....genetically pure dinosaurs we happen to call "birds".).

Maybe we should take lessons from the rats and the birds to survive !

I assume that the surface of the moon reflects some sort impact history which earth must share. The biosphere has had a smoothing effect on earth.

Would this be an accurate observation?

JMP

It is not the biosphere that has had the main smoothing effect.The surface of the earth is being continually turned "inside out" by tectonic forces.New land is welling up in the centre of the oceans (Iceland for instance) and is being subducted at continental edges.The continents are buffeted like jigsaw-puzzle pieces on boiling porridge.

The Alps,Andes,Rockies and Himalayas are massive "crash" sites.

They have measured the Himalayas,(complete with shellfish fossils at the top), still rising as India continues to plough northwards into it.

The moon on the other hand has almost perfect preservation for 4 billion years.One crater is wiped out by another,tiny craters by the solar wind...give or take a billion years, thats about it.
(Armstrong's and Aldrin's shoeprints will last for tens of millions of years.)
Finding a given piece of debris in THAT crater maelstrom is the problem !