If an asteroid is on collision course with the earth.

[joe-90]

Can we do anything about it?

We often hear this sort of thing:

"A hundred million years sounds like a safe buffer, but the next one could happen at any time. But you can take it off your worry list – astronomers have it covered. A network of ground-based telescopes scans the skies for bits of rogue rubble larger than a few hundred meters. That's ample time to dust off the nuclear arsenals for an interception mission if we had to. Unfortunately, the Dr Strangelove approach creates lethal shrapnel travelling in the same direction as the original object; a smarter strategy is to send a spacecraft alongside it and gently "tug" it with gravity onto a slightly different trajectory."



But is that feasible? Sounds pretty doubtful to me.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-1999537.html

 

[herebriefly]

Why bother posting something so useless and boring?

 

[joe-90]

Why bother replying to something so useless and boring?

 

[tapir]

Hopefully any large asteroid chunks that do hit earth and cause damage, will take out the keyboard heroes who feel the need to respond to a thread that doesn't interest them specifically on a general discussion board.

 

[joinerjohn]

Why bother posting something so useless and boring?

If there just happened to be a very large asteroid on a collision course with our planet, How many of us would find news about it " Useless and boring?"

Personally, I find the World Cup, Wimbledon etc "Useless and very Boring"
I bet there will be loads of posts on here in the next few weeks concerning these.

 

[empip]

Depends what the thing is made of... Not all lumps of Iron or rock.
If it/they is/are spotted in time (90% of Near Earth Objects larger than 1000m diam??? (Potentially planet wide threat to life) is the mandate for tracking IIR), then dispersment by fragmentation may be the only viable option, I guess Earth is relatively quite small and moving at a fair old lick through space so any deviation in the path of an incomer, far enough away, could well cause it to miss us totally.

A 4 metre diam' NEO entered above the Sudan back in late 2008, it was spotted 19 hrs before entry, apparently it's impact area was accurately computed with enough time to have evacuated a threatened population centre - so they say!!
Apparently the very few Kg recovered was carbon rich and unlike most expected incomers !

A useful PDF for the collection :- http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/downloads/spacesurvey.pdf

-0-

 

[PrenticeBoyofDerry]

Can anyone deflect the astroid in direction of Robert Green, i'm sure he can deal with it

 

[Richardp]

If there was one coming close, then you can bet that the experts would say it was going to hit earth, then send something out to blow it up, only to cause it to split up and destroy the planet when in fact it would have missed us in the first place! Doh!

 

[holmslaw]

Don't worry, Bruce Willis will sort it out.

 

[PrenticeBoyofDerry]

Don't worry, Bruce Willis will sort it out.

or The Doctor

 

[holmslaw]

Who?

 

[PrenticeBoyofDerry]

that's the guy

 

[ColJack]

we're due a close call in 2012 from what i read last..

any nuke strike on an asteroid that fractures it will cause at least some of the fragments to alter trajectory, the bits that didn't have their trajectory altered would at least be slowed down a little which might give the earth time to get out of the way..

a second nuke detonated off to the side of those might deflect them ( if the various sci-fi shows and movies are correct in that an explosion in space would create an energy wave capable of affecting a solid object.. )

 

[Space cat]

And if all our best efforts fail, there's always the REM solution:

It's the end of the world as we know it - and I feel fine.

 

[JohnD]

I sense the spirit of Bob Dole