Vapourising an asteroid?- Averting Armageddon- BBC Documentary

[geonerd]

It's probably much quicker and easier to set off a few small nukes near the asteroid. The blast of hard radiation will do the same thing - vaporize the surface and create rocket thrust.

[MichaelSLify]

That wont work for the simple reason. To get a beam of light (even from earth) to be directed at an objcets (such as a comet). The Magnifienglass would have to be moved and re;shaped continuelsy. Unless you can controll such a powerful laser from earth or a flying objects like hubble. This is useless. It's starwars for 2200.

[xinecallaw]

@MichaelSLify The idea is to have a 'solar collector' device sent out to the asteroid we want to move and have it orbit it and focus sunlight. Problems with this is first, it would take years to move it this way. The second, is if the rotational spin of the asteroid is to fast you will not be able to do any damage.

[ste1nunn]

he just invented the death ray, were so smart that were stupid

[jlebesis]

Love this, now someone is thinking... 

[doubleparadiddle]

worthless for a target with random rotations

[granddad2002]

If you can build a 'Solar collector' to do this proposed mission...you can develop a laser that can do it better? Personally...I think a nuclear warhead would be a useful 'clearing' tool? That 'Outer Space TreatyTest ban' could be humankinds suicide note when this day comes to pass. Asteroids are a liability over the next million years... but we could have one show up on the doorstep in the next 50.

[residentevil568]

@CorporalChris just make sure no one lights a match XD

[creston918]

Every dipshit can call himself a scientist nowadays, it seems. This asteroid would be traveling at several km/s. So how exactly are you going to get that giant, non-existing magnifying glass pointed AT the asteroid at all time, considering it has to be between the sun and the asteroid to begin with?

I think we need to give this guy at least 20 billion dollars in grants. This is SCIENCE!

[cerverg]

@creston918 The jet could could be pointed to any direction without even moving the "magnifying glass" it's not a big deal. The greatness of this idea is it can be used unlimited times without any recharging because it's powered by sun and it's quite a powerful supplier. A magnifying glass 60 feet in diameter could do the job (in space you get more sun light because there's no reflection by the atmosphere). The best feature: it works for comets where the nukes simply do not....

[MrTwinkiewinkie]

@CorporalChris LOL! I would rather die, smashed by a comet from outer space, than have to breathe the hot steamy air, or endure the toxic rains that would follow that infamously stinky day. lol

[akifkaya1992]

why dont they sent a huge solar powered laser so it can shoot the asteroid

and then blow it self up next to the asteroid

its the combination of two earth saving ideas but it will have to be one HECK of asteroid.

[jorgecalivalle]

We just must hold hands together and pray the Lord....that will save us from going to hell.... hahahahahah !!!! ......alea jacta est !!!!

[santhoshmurali]

where do you think you can place such a BIG lense in Space?

[adzii1]

@CorporalChris Yeah but it would cause global warming, causeing floods, etc. You don't think do you?

[tanvirul23]

the people on here saying to blow up an asteroids are idiots.... blowing up a asteroid only creates millions of smaller asteroids that will do greater damage to earth.... and secondly theres only 1 way to deter the path of a asteroid, and that is to send something with a big enough mass to create a gravitational field, such as a big spaceship, to fly by next to it where its gravity would actually pull it closer to the spaceship, causing it to go off path.

[akifkaya1992]

@tanvirul23 it would help if the ship had a powerful nuclear powered

electromagnet, if the asteroid is partially made of metal the ship can pull it more efficiently.

[cbboegh]

@akifkaya1992 If you really want to tug the asteroid, the most effective method is to attach nuclear powered mass drives to its surface.

But why tug it? Just blow it off course with nukes.

[cbboegh]

@tanvirul23 Gravity tugs are both the weakest and most expensive way to affect an asteroid's trajectory.

A big asteroid penetrates the atmosphere and goes deep into the Earth's crust, throwing up billions of tons of hot rock and dust, igniting the biosphere. The chockwaves fracture the crust, setting off vulcanic eruptions all over the globe.

Otoh,many small pieces of asteroid are slowed by the atmosphere and won't penetrate the crust significantly

Anyway, the aim is to deflect, not pulverize

[rdvd7]

What about launching a 'Rod from God' . It's a non-explosive weapon that uses Kinetic Energy to hit target. It's basically a Steel Telephone pole sized ride that is guided with rockets.

In Space it might speed up enough to hit an Asteroid to either break it into smaller pieces, or even move it.

[ghostmarine1000]

hmmmm last time i checked , ASTEROIDS ROTATE!!! they do not stay still facing one place at all times.

[TheMedic224]

I say launch multiple nukes, rocket, bigger nukes and bigger rockets.

[lordofchord]

this guy has a very limited grasp of physics....

I'm afraid NOTHING can deter a significant asteroid's orbital path....people just don't understand the energies invloved.

Any professor, at any acadamy, will tell you the same. Using any nuclear tech the modern world has to offer would have absolutely zero affect on path deflection....might as well shoot an elastic band at a bullet. The US funded early detection program only does one thing...to track and monitor the highest % of Earth hits..

[th3dig1tal0n3]

asteroids tumble and have irregular shape. it will be quite hard to keep focus on them.

[hafeez587]

wait...why not collide the acid rain bomb on asteroid as it contain iron and by u say few years, the part of asteroid wud turn into dust...

[NilNeiro]

but asteroids do spin around their axis, don't they?

[nasosiason]

@CorporalChris u forget something? Greenhouse effect :P

[TheJoe987123]

Couldnt you just fire a whole bunch of missiles at it at the same time - the energy of the missiles could slow down the asteroid and avoid a colission.

[jimbobeire]

@TheJoe987123 and then you have lots of smaller bits to worry about. Better to tow it off course, by intercepting it early and then put a decent size spacecraft close to it, to exert a gravitational 'tow -rope' on it.

[TheJoe987123]

@jimbobeire Yeah, but I meant not actually blow up the asteroid - use the energy of the missiles to deflect it. Like, detonate them before they impact the asteroid - if it was powerful enough, it would slow down the asteroid,and in that crucial time, the earth will have moved.

[chelseaforever10]

what asteroid. ahhh im scared now!!!

[maidenslayer]

in 2029 the asteroid 99942Apophis will pass a 'keyhole' in space near the earth which could altar it's course and then lead it to collide with the Earth in the year 2036. Scientists think a collision is unlikely but possible.

[TheCrakcfull]

dont be. It will take more then 20 years to hit earth. Thats a lot of time to stop something that huge. But if they destroy it its the end of the researched eris. What to do What to do.

[TheJoe987123]

chelsea, read up about the shoemaker-levy comet.

[Fleischpumpe]

Deflecting an asteroid in this way won't work because asteroids rotate while moving through space and with the sun always on the same spot it is impossible to mark one point on the object to create enough heat to vaporize the surface.

[rsteaman]

talk cock

[thewebmaster93]

Hey...If it's a Nichel-chrome asteroid why not deflect it enough for capture in earth orbit and then mine it? very expensive stuff but quite common in asteroids.

[Jdroxxxxxxx]

gravtitational force will pull it here. part of life is death right?

[creapsmantic]

its would gave to be orbit only

[jwmigm]

just land a module on the astroid with solid rocket boosters pointing upwards and fire the rockets which should slowly push it away.

[instinct8will]

you have been watching too much hollywood movies... first we dont have modules that can do that. second we dont have the time. the hobble which is our "eye" in order to detect meteors can only give us a max of 6 months for such encounter and finally... there is asteroids as large as 500 km diameter... H bombs will be just farts on the surface of such structures. so, theres practically nothing we can do about a meteor coming.

[jimbobeire]

@instinct8will Hubble is for optical viewing, and deep space radio telescopes detect much further. We've already detected an asteroid that will come by in 19 years, so we do have time to act.

[cbboegh]

@instinct8will Our asteroid detection and tracking capabilities are much better than you think - and it's getting better. At the current rate, all very dangerous asteroids will have been detected in a few years. That still leaves smaller city-destroyer size rocks plus snowballs from the Kuiper belt.

Regarding nukes - you underestimate their effectivenes.

[cbboegh]

@instinct8will Let's take that implausible example of yours - a 500km dwarf planet is heading for a collision with Earth.

Human society would go into emergency mode - like as if a world war was upon us.

All effort would go into producing 50 gigatons worth of nukes, plus the necessary delivery systems.

Detonated at the right depth, the nukes would have an efficiency above 25%, and would change the speed of the planet by >0.5m/s. Over 2 years of travel time, this amounts to a miss of >30000km.

[creapsmantic]

yes stop blowing things up its like pushing ah white woman into the bathroom XD YESS

[Sergionewyork]

we must find another type of energy.....

[lugger11]

...except that most asteroids are spinning, so the beam of light wouldn't stay on the same spot long enough to have an effect.

What about sending up a heavy object to fly along side it and gradually change its orbit due to small gravitational pull. Would need several decades to work, however.

[instinct8will]

how? hobble cant detect such things... it will give us a max of six months to prepare things up... "to prepare" means to kiss your ass goodbye!

[Schuassen]

At least were not just saying were going to get hit and there is nothing we can do about it. Good that were preparing for if it would ever happen in our life time (Highly doubtful)

[IceCreamSteve1]

Apophis my friend, is in our lifetime. it will pass through a key-hole of space near the earth in 2029 and due to the earths gravitational pull it can set up the asteroid for an impact in 2036 ( the next orbit by earth) kind of like a slingshot. get ready.

[jamevuong]

that's is a great idea but the problem is that how close do you have to stay near the sun?

second problem, what temperature it it will be, if it's too low it won't even do anything .

third problem: what if a asteroid going at the speed of light or as near as fast as the light, what will that do even though you slow it down it will still touch anything at that speed and destroy anything.

[Axemnstr]

Then I fear, even if the asteroid hit jupiter the impact would cause such an enormous damage that it would blew out Earth.

[webbj123]

This is ridiculous, the array would have to be massive and be kept in orbit where it would incur so much impact damage from micrometeoroids that it would be useless when it was needed or we would have to consecutively spend billions or trillions launching a new one every five years or so. The assembly in orbit every time we launch a new one is a whole story in itself.

[bustermk2]

If an asteroid were to hit the Earth the last thing you would need to worry about is a bit of radiation.

As for this guy ... it would have been more convincing if he could have shown how he could melt a rock with that maginifying glass.

[phct]

oh ya well, chuck norris CAN believe its not butter

[bad66boy66]

This is a very smart idea

[bedshow]

The asteroid spins... >_>

[Iainaplin]

can someone tell this guy he's holding an orange.

[gonzojon]

LOL

[naifamily]

omfg why do we want to use all this dumb scientific stuff? I gont a good way to get rid of this astroid (that is if there will ever be an astriod) FUCKIN USE NUKES!!! we aint like in the 16th century here.

[xenodude217]

the heat. from earth THROUGH the atmosphere. will. create. enough. energy. for. the. chain reaction. to start.

[MrFinkle1]

If we tried to nuke the asteroid we would be screwed. Not only would it be extremely unlikely that it would destroy the asteroid, it would continue on course and still hit us. But now it would be RADIOACTIVE. So this really isn't a bad idea.

[Lampham43]

If we nuke an astoroid, it would probably blow up into a million large radioactive piece that would bombard the earth in all directions. I rather choose the alternative.

[jasonsadventure]

1. if it blew-up into a million pieces, those pieces would vaporize in the atmosphere - the real danger is that the bomb leaves one or more large pieces that remain on a collision course

2. our atmosphere is constantly bombarded by lethal levels of radioactivity from the Sun and meteorites vastly greater than what our nukes could create. The atmosphere vaporizes, absorbs or reflects this radiation harmlessly back into space.

[THEBOB566974]

another thing is that they would probly be a significant emp wave after the nuke that would wipe out most off electricity on earth

[jasonsadventure]

ah, yo bro, to impact electrical, computer & solid-state systems, a nuclear weapon would need to be detonated, in the atmosphere, well within 50 miles of the impacted systems.

like yo, to stop an asteroid, we would have to detonated the weapon hundreds of thousands of miles away bra.

check-it, such a detonation would have zero effect on any systems on earth.

[webbj123]

If you set of a warhead only at half the altitude of our geosynchronous satellite fleet, the geometric attenuation of the photons and charged particles would be to great to significantly penetrate the magnetosphere, however it would certainly affect our satellites. However if we detonate beyond the orbit of the moon as the LANL study suggests, it has almost no effect on satellites or the surface of the earth, if the satellites are placed in a stowed configuration.

[webbj123]

Actually the only serious modeling effort ever conducted on how to mitigate comet and asteroid threats was done by the Las Alamos National Laboratory. Their analysis showed that only Nuc. weapons could deliver the required impulse over a short enough time from to divert an asteroids trajectory by enough to miss earth. IN fact fragmenting the asteroids was beneficial because the fragments have a high surface area to volume ratio to be more easily deflected by a follow on warhead.

[armiger044]

na, mate, we will only drify off into outta space, but 1 way to stop global warming is...

OPEN OUR FREEZERS ALL TOGEVA!!!

[michaelmage]

Pathetic. I think that chin strap on his hat is way too tight.

[insan0die]

hahaha

[kiwilemonandlime]

Asteroids spin. Unless this energy is like super amazing, then this isn't going to work.

Assuming the asteroid contains a charge, then a supermassive EMP would blow it back, but it'd also like just destroy all the technology on earth

[PleaseCallMeV]

Good luck finding such glass THAT BIG

[kittdaviss12321]

@PleaseCallMeV me make glass we can make it that big

[lostix]

lol i hope he took that into consideration

[ctalinked]

that asteroid spins, so you cannot focus in one place only and at the same time have the perfect sun lights ...