A 15 kilometer wide asteroid is headed toward the Earth , but NASA scientist distinguish it three years before impact . Movie lore not withstanding , what the nether region are we supposed to do ? Could we even organize the global community enough to stop this flaming ballock that astronomers call a near - land target ( NEO ) ? Let ’s witness out .
Top image : A interpretation of the MADMEN labor .
How would we spot an incoming asteroid in the first position ?
NASA has survey 90 % of Near - Earth Objects ( NEOs ) greater than1 klick in diam . A1 kilometre diam asteroid is likely the lower limit for high destructive probability , with some theoreticians suggesting that an asteroid 10 kilometers in diameter could end all lifetime on dry land .
What will we do to finish the impact ?
Stopping an asteroid head toward Earth has been the public lecture of donnish circles for tenner . The possibleness was mentioned in the 1964 book , Islands in Spaceand a 1967 MIT graduate student experiment , Project Icarus , wherein students were challenge to build an asteroid deflexion system using an assortment of atomic number 1 bombs keep on understudy at Cape Canaveral .
By 2028 , NASA hopes to catalog all aim greater than140 meters in diameter , essentially cover any aim amaze a threat ( however minor ) to life on earth .
Shoot something at it
A atomic rap is the most obvious and quickest selection . Send up anuclear lading , ala Armageddon , and spoil up the asteroid . This plan could take place on the short timetable , however , we would n’t really know if we broke the asteroid into little enough pieces to forestall injury .
Fracturing a 10 kilometre asteroid into a six kilometre and four kilometer asteroid is with child , but they might still be on target area for our lovely little planet and carry worldwide devastation in towage . Nuclear defence mechanism , however , are likely the first option for destroying an quenching level asteroid or knocking it off course .
While we are concerning ourselves with remove a 10 klick target , we could also shoot a “ non - volatile ” object at the NEO . A really big , thick Nerf football for example – something with enough energizing energy to neuter the NEO ’s own kinetic energy and nudge it out of the solid ground ’s path . TheEuropean Space Agency is pioneering this alternative , using a carrier slyness and an impactor that could be released on command .
crowd the rock out of the way
Using agravitational tractoris a nice direction to slowly annoy an asteroid to decease over the trend of several years . With this method , we place an unmanned spacecraft in proximity to the NEO , and over time ( we are speak twelvemonth here ) , gravitative attraction moves the two objects together , altering course of the asteroid . A spacecraft is used as itsthrust could be change as neededto change the direction and further impact the asteroid ’s grade .
Strap a rocket onto the asteroid
A quite traditional method by which a rocket salad would be confiscate to the asteroid has been declare oneself bytheoreticians at Johns Hopkins University , allowing the propulsion of an attached rocket rocket to move the asteroid off of its course just enough to evade dry land .
One other method involving non - destructive middleman with the asteroid would be theMADMEN concept . In the MADMEN coming , a series of disassembles are docked on the NEO . The disassemblers would utilize the asteroid itself to make small pebbles and eject them forth from the asteroid . Designers of the MADMEN theory believe it would only take weeks or months to significantly fall both the mass of the NEO and the heliocentric velocity , making it a sane alternative to using nuclear or chemical explosive .
Let several countries take a shot
Money would not be an physical object in the face of an extinction level event . Such an event could propel manhood to look at itself as a connected planet , and not as a group of nation states . As millennia pass , another extermination level even will hap . It might not be all bad ; humanity would hopefully spread to several planets by then , leaving our first place as astarting stage for another organism . In the meantime , we might as well have a duet of plan .
https://gizmodo.com/giant-asteroids-might-have-began-the-age-of-dinosaurs-a-5860192
Russia has thebeginnings of a planand the European Space Agency is seem for method to utilise energizing vitality to avert an asteroid via theDon Quixoteproject . The ESA will attempt a tribulation run on a benign asteroid in 2015 .
The development of alternate engineering by large countries , the viability of using nuclear weapon to change an asteroid quickly , along with NASA ’s continued feat to catalog NEOs shows that there is some likeness of a plan of action in place . Planet Earth wo n’t go down to an asteroid strike without a fight . But if you are the distressful eccentric , you’re able to keep tabs on NASA ’s catalog ofNEO skinny approachesand view this awesome CGI telecasting of an asteroid impact complimented by a Scorpions song .
Images courtesy of Spaceworks Engineering , the MADMEN labor , and CC sources . Sources linked within the article .
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