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Stopping Killer Asteroids
Drog writes "Earth has had a few near misses with asteroids recently (although "near hits" would be more accurate). It's just a matter of time, though, before we detect one with our name on it. In this New York Times article, experts discuss the various ways that we might go about saving our planet. Remarkably, nuclear detonations are not a good option, as they would break the asteroid into many pieces and merely increase our odds of being hit. And a detonation some distance away may simply be absorbed by the asteroid with virtually no effect. Instead, say scientists who study asteroid hazards, a gentle sustained push is what's needed (slow and steady wins the race). Some of the approaches have been discussed in science fiction for years--a mass driver, an electromagnetic machine which hurls dirt from the surface, an orbiting parabolic mirror to heat up the surface and create a plume of vaporized material. All of these methods require one thing, however. Time. At least several decades warning."
we're never going to have to worry about a metoerite .
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
Nature's "reset" switch for Earth. Sometimes you just need to stop what yer doin' and reboot. 'At's what I say.
(although "near hits" would be more accurate)
Gotta love George Carlin:
Speaking of potential mishaps, here's a phrase that apparently the airlines simply made up: near miss. They say that if two planes almost collide it's a near miss. Bullshit, my friend. It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss.
[WHAM! CRUNCH!]
"Look, they nearly missed!"
"Yes, but not quite."
-- Dr. Eldarion --
As long as you can guarantee Tea Leoni is underneath it, I say leave it alone.
I thought Voltron was responsible for threats of that nature.
As for pushing them aside, there are several options. You can deflect an asteroid. You can perturb the orbit. You can also lateralize the velocity vector. One approach that I haven't seen talked about much is bending the worldline of the asteroid such that it no longer intersects Earth's worldline, but that method may require some scientific advances beyond our current technology.
Just my $.02.
I'm reminded of an episode of Stargate SG1 (Failsafe) when Anubis sent an asteroid towards Earth.
"O'Neill: I've seen this movie, it hits Paris."
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Send one of those Hollywood heroes who has saved the planet a million times from asteroids, volcanoes, typhoons, bad people, communists etc.
You can tie couple of them to a powerful rocket, point the rocket to the asteroid and press the button.
Tat Tvam Asi
Associated Press: Paris, France - It has just been announced today in the capital of France: Upon learning that if any asteroids are on their way to collide with the earth in under ten years, it would cause complete genocide without the ability to do anything about it, France has unconditionally surrendered to all extraterrestrial foreign bodies. The French, so proud of their culture that they will surrender to maintain it, regardless of rule, support the decision of their government.
Frenchman Jaques Fernoi states, "As long as I can make my cheese and drink wine freely, I welcome our new leaders in this asteroid."
More updates as they present.
Yeah, I'm a Republican AND a geek. It is possible.
By the title, I thought this was an "Ask Slashdot" post...
Remarkably, nuclear detonations are not a good option, as they would break the asteroid into many pieces and merely increase our odds of being hit.
Clearly, the pointdexter astrophysicists who offered this opinion have never seen Armageddon.
Just cover the asteroid with the same material as they use to make Super Bouncy Balls..
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
And please forward this to 20 of your closest friends.
Good thing too. Nuclear weapons in space might someday be used to turn it into a sterile environment filled with deadly radiation which would be unsurvivable to anyone not wearing a special protective suit.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
... so this will never happen again ;)
We had a guy at a place I worked at that was really worried about an asteroid hit. I got some of the people there to knock up a spoof BBC News home page, with a really big story that the end of the world was only about 36 hours away, and added a little tiny weeny DNS entry pointing at the box that was hosting the "site", and waited.
;)
Oh the laughter from the IT dept...
Get your own free personal location tracker
I don't think an asteroid the size of Bruce Willis would do much damage at all.
I've recently applied for patents on various technologies to eliminate or deviate asteroids on an intercept course with Earth.
If anyone should attempt to use those devices to save the Earth, I will promptly send a horde of evil barbarian lawyers with a cease and desist order.
You can't save your punny planet now... I've used your own vices against you!
My minions at the patent office have served me well on this day.
cylix,
The Lord of Evil and Terror
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
As if New Jersey doesn't have a bad enough rap already, you have to go comparing it to planet killing asteroids.
Let's test it on the moon! Wicked cool!
Announce that the asteroid has decided to pursue an Open Source solution to its software needs. The mass migration of Linux Hippies to said asteroid should be enough to alter its trajectory.
If an additional course corrections are required, announce one of the following:
1) A security hole has been found in IE
2) Ellen Fiess will make another Apple commercial
3) Microsoft buys the rights to Ogg Forbis
The resulting explusion of hot air should be sufficent.
The author conveniently omitted this
1979 technology that has been safely used to defend against both asteroids and alien vessels for 23 years.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I first read the headline as Stop Killing Asteroids
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Forget Bruce Willis. I don't know why everyone is panicking. By the time the asteroid gets through the Earth's atmosphere, it won't be any bigger than a chihuahua's head!
Purists will howl, but, very generally: A Near miss is anything within 640K, a Far miss is between 640K and 1024K, and a Huge miss is anything beyond 1024K.
...you need engineers, factory workers, politicians, even telemarketers...
Don't forget the telephone sanitisers, hairdressers and management consultants - in fact lets put them in the same ark as the politicians and telemarketers...
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
It's very simple. We need a ship. A ship the shape of a triangle. This ship should be of simple control. Forward movement and rotation only! A single gun capable of halving (on occasion trifurcating) any size asteroid will be mounted on the front. When it has halved the pieces to a significantly small size, they will disappear upon further assault. This ship will also be fitted with a shielding system. Pulling down on the joystick or using a separate button system should activate a circular shield capable of withstanding a certain period of collision with objects, regardless of frequency. In future revisions of this vehicle, we will include a hyperwarp feature to jump out of harms way (unfortunately, technology will not allow us to determine the point of reentry, making this a daunting choice for the pilot).
Finally, be sure to look out for ellusive UFOs with hostile aliens ready to destroy our ship (regardless of its peaceful intentions of saving our planet).
I distinctly remember training many hours on the simulator for this solution not twenty years ago. I don't know why we're worried about this problem seeing as we already have the solution.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
We probably couldn't do the whole thing anyway. Whoever patents "Bodies of rocky material orbiting larger bodies of rocky material in a vacuum" would demand outrageous license fees.