Comments by "Lawrence D’Oliveiro" (@lawrencedoliveiro9104) on "'A brilliant feat': Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how capsule grabbed asteroid sample" video.

  1. The Japanese were certainly the first to successfully complete a sample-return mission from an asteroid. That was a remarkable story, where just about everything that could go wrong did so, and yet they still managed to get useful science out of it. I think they’ve sent out a second one, haven’t they? Think also of the complicated game of celestial billiards it takes to rendezvous with an asteroid: no mission to date can afford a big enough rocket with enough fuel to go straight to the destination, so they have to slingshot off the gravitational fields of different planets multiple times over many years to get to the right place, and with the right velocity vector, to meet their target.
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  2. Worth comparing this interview to his one with Erin Burnett. Erin at least seemed to have understood more of the basic facts about the asteroid. Maybe she did some science in school?
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  3.  @larrybarela8676  Which “God”, though? Each religion says their god is the only true god, all the other gods are false. They can’t all be right on the first point, they can all be right on the second.
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  4.  @larrybarela8676  Not only can we prove them, you yourself betray by your actions that you believe them, too. When you put your finger on an electrical switch, you literally trust your life to Science, that the electricity will behave according to known scientific laws, and will not suddenly leap out of the circuit and kill you. Even your faith in your god is not that strong.
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  5.  @negrildoc  The US didn’t have the technology. That’s why the Japanese were able to do it first.
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  6. Every major religion says their god is the only true god, all the other gods are false. They can’t all be right on the first point, they can all be right on the second point.
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  7. The Noah flood never happened. Those who made up the Bible story forgot to include land plants that would have drowned, as well as the impact on the fish in the sea. Was the flood water supposed to be salty or fresh? Either way, some fish would have been driven to extinction.
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  8.  @larrybarela8676  Says the one who hasn’t a clue. Start by trying to answer the question: was the flood made of salty water or fresh?
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  9.  @larrybarela8676  Friendly tip: if you have to resort to making things personal, that’s a sign you’ve already lost the argument. This is a clip about science. That tends to be a magnet for the religious propagandists. But in science, we don’t say “you’re not welcome here”, instead we rebut their fantasies with facts.
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  10.  @larrybarela8676  In science, you can start with whatever assumptions you like, but you then have to follow the consequences of those assumptions, wherever they may lead. You don’t get to pick and choose and say you will accept these consequences and not those. I asked a question: start by trying to answer that.
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  11.  @chaseyourtale9647  No offence either. Just watch the response.
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  12. “Often, religious apologists claim that critics of religion are ignorant of the finer points of theology and doctrine, accusing them of failing to read theology in formulating objections; but they thereby entirely miss the point that when one rejects the premises of a set of views, it is a waste of one’s time to address what is built on those premises.” -- A. C. Grayling
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  13. There are different kinds of asteroids out there. They aren’t all made out of the same kind of rock.
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  14. Did the people who named it the “Salt Sea” also say it was full of “Wet Water”?
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  15.  @sclogse1  Who is “we”?
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  16.  @papaqwesi9263  First results were reported over a decade ago. See the 26 Aug 2011 issue of “Science” magazine.
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  17. The story of science is one of great many twists and turns and surprises along the way. The important point is, in case of doubt, we don’t refer to any holy book, we refer to reality itself. That’s why science is a self-correcting process. The age of the Earth is one very good example of this. The nascent science of geology started with the assumption that the landscape around us is basically the debris from the world-wide Noachian flood, which supposedly occurred just a few thousand years ago. But gradually and inexorably, evidence accumulated that became harder and harder to reconcile with this assumption, until it finally had to be abandoned altogether.
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