How Best To Avoid Asteroid Apocalypse

Here is an novel approach to avoiding Earth getting spanked by a dino killer. This clever solution came to my attention in an article on the IO9 blog. It comes from David Dearborn, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Dearborn's proposal has all the making of a really good Willis movie. You know....multi-megaton bombs.... but with a teny tiny difference you see. The first is that David's plan takes place 30 years before impact. In astrological distances it's right freakin on top of us, but for the movies, 30 years....well that's like another century right?!

Anyway, here is how it works, and its brilliant in its simplicity! Instead of blowin it up, or throwin things at it, or putting rocket engines on it, or tractors....we speed it up! Oh I hear the howls "what you want it to get here quicker!!!!??" But that is exactly what Dearborn wants. If it gets here sooner, we won't be here yet! You take a 100 kiloton bomb and explode it about 3 or 4 football fields behind the impactor. This isn't enough to blow it up, matter of fact - simulations have only 1% of the asteroid dislodged. But it is enough to speed the asteroid up. How much? About 6.3mm/s or about 1.25 feet per minute. Not much huh? But over a 30 year period the Earth won't even be close!

But it's an honest and workable idea. Read the IO9 article