New evidence of meteor extinctions

[Tovarish 0]

A meteor is easy to divert, if it doesn't fall into Jupiter or the Sun, we can just fire a big rocket at it to push it out of a collision course with us

Depends on the size. And the velocity. Most meteor's and asteroids travel at high rates of speed. Couple that with their generally large mass, and all a rocket will do is make it madder.

I've heard that the

Energia rocket Loaded with some nukes would probably do the job against a "doomsday sized" meteor....but even if that works...then we'll have all that fallout floating out there.

*edit* that pic was actually a tad too big

[ran 0]

A meteor is easy to divert, if it doesn't fall into Jupiter or the Sun, we can just fire a big rocket at it to push it out of a collision course with us

Depends on the size. And the velocity. Most meteor's and asteroids travel at high rates of speed. Couple that with their generally large mass, and all a rocket will do is make it madder.

I've heard that the Energia rocket:

Loaded with some nukes would probably do the job against a "doomsday sized" meteor....but even if that works...then we'll have all that fallout floating out there.

and we shouldn't neglect that the bombs could just break the asteroid into a bunch of smaller ones (that's just my opinion after seeing some movies )

[Akira 0]

I've heard something about just changing the color of part of a meteor/asteroid's surface, could change it's heating from the sun, and because of that, change it's path, or something like that.  As long, as we knew about it atleast maybe 10 yrs in advance, I really think we could stop one.

Well as the meteor/asteriod gets closer to the sun it naturally get hotter. Generally speaking there is a lot of ice and trapped gasses in meteors and asteroids. As the ice is heated up, it melts, releasing the gas in a jet stream. Some of these streams are powerful enough to act as jets and to alter course, yaw, and pitch.

[Akira 0]

People forget, that unless the asteroid/meteor is destroyed with sufficient force, all we are doing is making a lot of little pieces hit us instead of one big one. The energy released from multiple earth wide strikes could be greater than that of one single large hit.

Either way really we are utterly screwed.

[drewb99 0]

A bunch of little bits is better than 1 massive meteor, mostly because the smaller bits just burn up in the atmosphere and the larger ones at least don't do as much damage, if there are any large enough bits at all. The biggest meteor in the Asteroid Belt is the size of Texas, but it's a LOT larger then most of the rocks it shares its orbit with. So long as we see it coming, we're pretty much safe against a meteor hit.

[FSPilot 0]

Haven't you all seen deep impact? Or it's horrible knock off "armageddon"?

We'll be fine. We just need to design a incredibly expensive and unrealistic spacecraft to carry nuclear warheads to the asteroid to destroy it. Piece of cake.

[ralphwiggum 6]

just send Ben Affleck upthere, and make sure Bruce Willis do not change the place.

on serious note, there were several words about this kind of scenario a few years ago, and if this happens, the best way is to nudge the incoming rock.

[blackdog~ 0]

Haven't you all seen deep impact?  Or it's horrible knock off "armageddon"?

We'll be fine.  We just need to design a incredibly expensive and unrealistic spacecraft to carry nuclear warheads to the asteroid to destroy it.  Piece of cake.

Actually, I think I have... that might have been the movie I saw. It's whatever one that has been on ABC's sunday night movies twice

[FSPilot 0]

I bet there'd be a sudden interest in commercial space vehicles too.

I just saw that "deep impact" movie a few weeks ago, beats armageddon if you ask me. but anyway, i dont understand why we dont just attach some kind of rocket to it, or any other means of propulsion to slow it down or maybe even stop it. We'd have to deal with all those giant chunks of ice and rock in it's tail but it's better than nothing.

Or we could send Ben Affleck, either way.

[VXR 9]

if it strikes in 5 year we can only store grain and pray, if its in 20 year we can made a defence, if its in 100 year we dont have anything to worry about at this moment

[blackdog~ 0]

Hmmm. NASA is doing Deep Impact

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

[SpecOp9 1]

Quote[/b] ]I heard a lot of stories of planets or meteors that are to hit the earth at one point but I doubt any of that will ever happen, and even if it did, I bet we would have the technology and brains to deal with it.

Agreed.

God will save us right?