Tango01  | 01 Jul 2025 10:07 p.m. PST |
"The dinosaurs saw a grisly death at the hands of an asteroid, but who's to say that Earth's modern-day inhabitants won't meet the same fate? Fortunately, scientists are already hard at work to prevent that future. How to Kill an Asteroid by science journalist Robin George Andrews is a deep dive into the extremely badass business of thwarting a destructive asteroid. The book's title is a slight misnomer. As Andrews explains, the best strategy to save the planet from an impending asteroid is not to blow it up in space — though that's a reasonable last-ditch option — but instead to deflect it while it's still far beyond Earth's neighborhood. The physics of diversion is tricky: Which spacefaring rocks are harmless and which ones are a real threat? Will scientists be able to detect and intercept one in time? And if we manage to deflect it, will the rock fragment into a gazillion deadly bullets bound for Earth?…"
link
Armand
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 John the OFM | 01 Jul 2025 10:16 p.m. PST |
Well, you don't waste to blow it up Real Goid. Jerry Bruckheimer movies to the contrary. 🤷 |
 piper909 | 01 Jul 2025 11:21 p.m. PST |
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| Wackmole9 | 02 Jul 2025 6:13 a.m. PST |
The Moon does a great job covering this for us already. |
 Sgt Slag | 02 Jul 2025 7:35 a.m. PST |
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory was built for this very purpose: to identify and track asteroids, comets, etc., that could pose a threat to Earth. In short, it takes images of the night sky, every night, comparing previous images, to locate moving objects (comets, asteroids, etc.); it sends out e-mail alerts for every object detected so that Astronomers can look into them. It is supposed to generate 100's of e-mail alerts every night -- YIKES!!! Check it out on YouTube. It is impressive in what it shows, what it captures, and what it does. It is also ground based, unlike the James Webb Space Telescope that killed the Big Bang Theory (a time machine that looks back to the first 100 million years after the alleged Bing Bang explosion that didn't happen as they thought it had). We live in astounding times for science. Cheers! |
| Perris0707 | 02 Jul 2025 7:59 a.m. PST |
Well Bruce Willis is getting a little old for the mission. |
| Tgerritsen | 02 Jul 2025 8:40 a.m. PST |
A strongly worded letter filed by the proper authorities is the most likely outcome. |
| Andrew Walters | 02 Jul 2025 9:29 a.m. PST |
Could make an interesting game. Diverting an asteroid is very doable if it's discovered in time Vera Rubin should take care of that. If VCR doesn't see it coming then the question is moot. VCR is going to tell us a *lot* about the solar system in the next ten years. The data will be public, we have AI to search data, we're going to find a lot of stuff. |
| John the OFM | 02 Jul 2025 9:45 a.m. PST |
When I was a wee lad, one of my Christmas presents was a collection of stories from the old Walt Disney show on tv.
The one about Dave's Crockett had to do with a comet about to hit the Earth.
Congress passed a law against it, but it still kept on coming!
So, that avenue is out… |
| piper909 | 02 Jul 2025 11:09 a.m. PST |
Davy Crockett famously wrung the tail off Haley's comet, or so they say. |
| John the OFM | 02 Jul 2025 3:42 p.m. PST |
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| Tango01 | 02 Jul 2025 4:25 p.m. PST |
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| Tango01 | 02 Jul 2025 4:40 p.m. PST |
Earth's weather satellites just spent 10 years watching Venus — here's what they found link Armand |
| Tango01 | 02 Jul 2025 10:48 p.m. PST |
Sonic Booms in the Sky: How Scientists Use "Bolides" To Improve Planetary Defense link
Armand
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| Captain Sensible | 03 Jul 2025 10:52 a.m. PST |
I know this one. You send up a probe that comes close to, but doesn't touch the asteroid. Instead it generates enough of its own gravity to change the asteroid's path. A nice little nudge. The idea has been around for a long time, but has no funding. As a back up, you need Bruce Willis and a small nuke with a manual trigger on it. |
