
Ask HN: Can we stop an extinction-level Asteroid? - artur_makly
Ok so i just had the pleasure watching the sci-fi movie Deep Impact (&#x27;98). Besides Morgan Freeman&#x27;s award winning acting and 80&#x27;s style computer graphics - I could not help but wonder ..<p>a)What is the probability?<p>b)Are we seriously prepared? How? Are there backup plans?<p>c)If so, will it be a multi-national effort or is it every nation for themselves?<p>I welcome all answers but will only count those scientifically familiar with the matter ;-)
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ArtWomb
Yes! Space-based laser ablation looks very promising to me. Though few are
actively developing such capability. Basic idea is to direct a laser to the
asteroid surface. That would hopefully create a jet plume from vaporizing
matter that will act as a propulsion system to steer its course a few degrees
away from earths orbit.

DE-STARLIE: Effective Planetary Defense Using Directed Energy

Because our planet is itself a relatively hard target to hit, we could be
talking about an event that only occurs once every billion years ;)

8 Billion Asteroids In The Oort Cloud

[https://watermark.silverchair.com/stu2267.pdf](https://watermark.silverchair.com/stu2267.pdf)

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grizzles

      a) 0% of stopping it. 100% of it occurring again at some point.
      b) No
      c) Irrelevant
    

Nope we couldn't save ourselves. That's why it's called an extinction level
event. If you have say a 50 km^3 asteroid on a course to earth (about 1/10th
the size of Vesta) there is little we could do on short notice. It might be
another story if we had a long time to prepare. For example if the asteroid
had a favorable composition, we could try drilling into it for a decade or
two, in the hope that we could explode a nuke in a carefully engineered hole
to try to alter it's course without breaking it.

