The Social Difficulty of Saving Earth From an Asteroid

mantis2009 writes "When it comes to stopping a cataclysmic Earth vs. asteroid event, social science and international political leaders have more difficult questions yet unanswered than physicists do, according to report delivered at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting. Wired has a discussion of an analysis authored by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who worries that the international community is nowhere near ready to begin the complex and inevitably controversial task of deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Among the questions to be answered is whether to modify the Partial Test Ban Treaty to allow nuclear weapons in outer space. Another possibility to avoid the destruction of civilization would require the international community to choose an area on the globe where an asteroid might be 'aimed.' Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs?"

Comments

Re:Not ready? No, and never will be.

[shentino]

The problem with global warming is that everyone has something to gain by cheating on any agreement that might be made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re:A few years notice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a few seconds. The only sure-fire way to find out if an asteroid is going to hit us is to let it hit us, there's no foolproof way to predict the way orbits are going to meet.

I believe Isaac Newton worked out the laws of motion and gravity three hundred years ago, and his equations have served astronomers well enough to correctly work out the orbits of every object in space that they could observe. Celestial mechanics is a mature branch of science, and it will doubtless work for determining whether an asteroid or comet that astronomers have observed will hit the earth. It worked well enough for predicting that Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was going to hit Jupiter in 1994. The real problem here is that one has to detect the object first, of course.

Re:Simpsons did it...

[AuMatar]

Its all about timing. You aren't going to blow up an asteroid of any size worth worrying about. But due to there being no friction in space, we could adjust its trajectory by providing a force on it. Basically just build giant engines on it and burn them for long enough it would be pushed out of the way. The trick is to find the asteroid that would hit earth in time- the earlier you set this up, the longer your force has to work.

Re:An ocean? Antartica?

[hotdiggity]

Actually, Antarctica would be a pretty dangerous place to put it - particularly west Antarctica, where the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is very unstable and could collapse, causing the ocean to rise 4-20 m and flood all the coastal cities.

If you could aim it towards eastern Antarctica, that might be ok - but I'd rather you didn't, as I'm currently living there!

Re:Simpsons did it...

[Golddess]

I may be a new Pastafanarian, but I thought FSM was cool with people not believing in It? Per the first of the Eight I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts:

I'd Really Rather You Didn't Act Like a Sanctimonious Holier-Than-Thou Ass When Describing My Noodly Goodness. If Some People Don't Believe In Me, That's Okay. Really, I'm Not That Vain. Besides, This Isn't About Them So Don't Change The Subject.

Re:An ocean? Antartica?

[R2.0]

You are aware that local space IS pretty two dimensional, at least where it counts? Nearly all of the objects in the near solar system are on the ecliptic, so they generally WOULD come "straight in".

That being said, the earth IS tilted, and for about half the year the Antarctic is pointing "out".

Besides which, those penguin movies were starting to get pretty damned irritating.