Protecting Earth from Asteroids
Scientists talk about strategies. I'd like to see people actually doing things about it.
Proposal one: Deflect the asteroid with lasers.
Deflection is by far the best option when a threat is detected far enough in advance. Because of parallax, tiny changes become big changes leading to a wide miss. It's not hard to nudge things and you don't need a lot of energy. The drawbacks are detecting the thing in time and reaching it at a distance.
Proposal two: Pulverize the asteroid.
While this can work, it is very difficult to achieve a sufficiently uniform destruction such that all pieces will harmlessly dissipate in the atmosphere. Really hard. Harder than rocket science. Look at all the failures in rocket science. There's a serious risk that you will simply turn a cannonball into grapeshot, which is just as deadly. The one real advantage is it could probably reduce a mass-exinction-sized rock into something small enough to survive better.
Of course, the first step is to map all near-Earth-orbit objects so we can spot threats before they flatten us. Our record at this is not particularly good. We need to invest more in detection, or else other solutions will do fuckall good.
Proposal one: Deflect the asteroid with lasers.
Deflection is by far the best option when a threat is detected far enough in advance. Because of parallax, tiny changes become big changes leading to a wide miss. It's not hard to nudge things and you don't need a lot of energy. The drawbacks are detecting the thing in time and reaching it at a distance.
Proposal two: Pulverize the asteroid.
While this can work, it is very difficult to achieve a sufficiently uniform destruction such that all pieces will harmlessly dissipate in the atmosphere. Really hard. Harder than rocket science. Look at all the failures in rocket science. There's a serious risk that you will simply turn a cannonball into grapeshot, which is just as deadly. The one real advantage is it could probably reduce a mass-exinction-sized rock into something small enough to survive better.
Of course, the first step is to map all near-Earth-orbit objects so we can spot threats before they flatten us. Our record at this is not particularly good. We need to invest more in detection, or else other solutions will do fuckall good.