Gravity Tugboats

The WorldChanging blog has an entry on an interesting new idea: using gravitational attraction to deflect asteroids. The Hollywood scenario of blowing up an asteroid that is on course to hit earth is not a good idea. Somewhat better might be to use rockets to nudge the asteroid out of the way. But now, a new idea has been proposed: simply park a large mass (say 20 tons or so) next to the asteroid for a year or two. The slight gravitational attraction between the asteroid and the large mass would be sufficient to alter the asteroid’s orbit. The catch is that to get a big enough change in orbit, you would have to do it 20 years ahead of when the asteroid would otherwise hit the earth. Still, NASA does have the NEO programme, which tracks asteroids that have a chance of hitting earth.

 

And if you want to find out for yourself what the effect would be of an asteroid hitting your neighbourhood, then the University of Arizona has a handy-dandy computer program for you. Simply feed in your chosen parameters and find out whether you would be vaporised or merely treated to an impressive fireworks display.