Neil deGrasse Tyson Outlines a Plan For Saving Earth From Asteroids

dsinc contributes a link to Neil deGrasse Tyson's short piece in Wired on how we could deal with the very real threat of killer asteroids, writing "In 2029 we'll be able to know whether, seven years later, Apophis will miss Earth or slam into the Pacific and create a tsunami that will devastate all the coastlines of the Pacific Rim." From the article: "Saving the planet requires commitment. First we have to catalogue every object whose orbit intersects Earth’s, then task our computers with carrying out the calculations necessary to predict a catastrophic collision hundreds or thousands of orbits into the future. Meanwhile, space missions would have to determine in great detail the structure and chemical composition of killer comets and asteroids."

Comments

When exactly

[i kan reed]

When exactly did Neil deGrasse Tyson become the world's official representative on all things astronomical? Was it the the pluto thing? It's just really weird that every media outlet seems to go to him for everything these days. He's really articulate and informed, but so are a lot of people. I don't get it.

Re:When exactly

[geekoid]

" He's really articulate and informed, but so are a lot of people."

Not scientists.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is articulate, charismatic, reasonably good looking, and interviews very well. He is relatable. Anyone who can talk about accurately talk about science and still seem relatable to the average person is perfect to interview.

For example: He was asked why he was able to get is point across so clearly on the colbart report. He said he timed the jokes from previous epsode and ew a bout how much time he had before the next joke. Then boiled his points down to fit into the times between the jokes.

Not a lot of people think about interviews that way, and certainly not scientists.

Now he has the rep to be the guy to go to, the media goes to him.

Why not monetize it?

[WillAdams]

1 - catalogue all the asteroids likely to pass by earth
2 - analyse their composition
3 - determine which can have their orbit modified so as to be placed in orbit around earth for an energy effort low enough that one will come out ahead either using the asteroid for material in orbit (to construct space stations / satellites, the probe to explore the next asteroid &c.) or have ore valuable enough to be worth returning to earth
4 - profit!

Re:Ridiculous paranoia!

[MozeeToby]

You realize of course that big rocks really do hit the earth from time to time. I'm not just talking about dinosaur killers and cataclismic events, but 'smaller' impacts too. In fact, there's a rather famous one that happened barely a hundred years ago. There aren't many places on left on dry land that an impact like that can occur without it causing massive devastation. And that's even ignoring the damage that could be done if an impact occurred in a large body of water; cartoonishly large tsunami's are a real, actual possibility.

But hey, keep worrying about the latest doom and gloom predictions. Not that there isn't anything to them, but people have been making them for hundreds of years and human civilization keeps ticking over somehow. I'm not even sure what you mean by "matters closer to home", the only thing I can think of is the kind of catastrophic climate change that no one really takes seriously anymore (and I don't mean a 2 meter rise in sea level, yes that would be devastating but not cataclysmic.)