
Scientists to nudge asteroid off course as practice for protecting Earth - hliyan
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/end-of-the-world-plan-scientists-to-nudge-asteroid-off-course-as-practice-for-protecting-the-earth-a6675041.html
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orphic
But wait. What if it's not just an asteroid...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dig)

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gansai
Understood that scientists would be able to break asteroid into pieces using
many ways. I guess what they could take advantage of this asteroid is to put a
drone or some sensor material on asteroid so that it would help space
scientists for space research. Its almost like unmanned space mission, just
put a drone-sensor on asteroid. It goes with the asteroid and sends down
information which might be helpful. Any space scientists here in hackernews?
What do you say? Would it be possible and beneficial?

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Caprinicus
I'm not sure there is a huge amount to be learned from asteroids unless we
plan on bringing stuff back with us. We are certainly going to try to do that,
and we have also landed a thing on a comet obviously which will teach us much
more.

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zkhalique
What's the whole thing about drilling a hole and dropping a nuke to split the
asteroid up? I mean, I liked the Aerosmith song from that movie (Armageddon)
but doesn't that actually seem like a sensible idea for a bigger rock?

Looks like some experts agree w me: [http://www.space.com/21333-asteroid-nuke-
spacecraft-mission....](http://www.space.com/21333-asteroid-nuke-spacecraft-
mission.html)

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vortico
It works for small <10m astroids, but for anything bigger than that, its own
gravity will pull the segments back together after the explosion since they do
not reach escape velocity, and nothing will have changed due to conservation
of momentum. A better method is to detonate an astroid up to 100m away so it
heats up the surface. The heat will blow off small particles at more than
escape velocity, so by conservation of momentum the astroid will be pushed in
the opposite direction.

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siberianbear
Can you explain why the nuke option wouldn't work? It seems to me that most of
Earth's protection against asteroids is them burning up in the Earth's
atmosphere.

Let's assume that you did blow up an asteroid, and the constituent parts
loosely reassembled. Wouldn't they they break apart again as soon as they
started to experience the turbulent effects of the Earth's atmosphere? And
once they did, the surface area to mass ratio of the asteroid matter would be
an order of magnitude or higher, pretty much guaranteeing all of the mini-
asteroid parts would burn up.

No doubt I'm wrong. I'm a programmer, not a physicist or an astronomer. So I'm
seeking to get 'educated' more than I am to argue with you.

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espadrine
Another issue that is usually the first objection is that receiving a thousand
_highly radioactive_ rocks at very high velocity is a very efficient way for
us humans to die in large numbers. Just one radioactive meteor would cause a
lot of damage and be very difficult to seal off, but a thousand?

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gd1
I think you're a bit confused by nuclear scare-mongering. Large fusion H-bombs
put out stuff all radiation. And radiation isn't very deadly anyway.

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puppetmaster3
I'm sure this will not affect gravity paths somewhat as a butterfly effect.

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Sanddancer
Nope. Everything involved is way too small to do something like that. Worst
case scenario is we get a shooting star.

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Houshalter
Not true. Due to the butterfly effect, even tiny changes to a system will
totally change the output given enough time. Simulations of the orbits of the
planets turn out totally different after billions of years if the measurements
of planets are changed by even an inch.

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monochromatic
I get your point, but this thing is many, many orders of magnitude smaller
than a planet.

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GeorgeOrr
Wouldn't it be funny if they nudge it off its current course, onto a collision
course with us?

No, actually not that funny.

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notatoad
Or onto a collision course with a different inhabited planet. Who interprets
it as an act of war.

This whole comments section is making me want to read some scifi about this.
Anybody have any recommendations?

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beilabs
Starship Troopers covered it pretty well

"Thirty years before the First Interstellar War, a meteorite from Klendathu
System was deviated from its star during the Operation Fedmil, the first
contact in Klendathu. Thirty years later, the meteorite reached and hit Earth,
destroying Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, killing over 8.7 Million, and
wounding a further 12.5 million."

"However, the United Citizen Federation claimed that the Arachnid launching a
"Bug Meteor" by Bug Plasma from the Klendathu system towards Earth and
destroyed the city of Buenos Aires."

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kr4
Well NASA recently made a statement that there's no significant asteroid going
to hit Earth for centuries to come thus shunning growing rumours by conspiracy
theorist about Planet X. SO why are they spending dollars on such a scenario
(specially when NASA's budget has been reduced recently)? It could rather be
spent on say human mission to Mars ETC which are near term possibilities.

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Asbostos
Let's say a mass-extinction causing space object hits Earth every 100 million
years
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event))
. That gives us a 1e-8 chance of all 7e9 people being wiped out in one year.
That's an average of 700 people killed every year if it were spread out in
time.

Definitely a serious risk even if not the most pressing right now. It is
however more dangerous than terrorism in America, and plenty of money is being
spent on that!

