Hey everyone! Thanks for stopping by my blog. I hope you liked my last post about Mass, Space, Asteroid Attacks, Elon Nukes Mars, and the Credible Hulk. Today, I'll be discussing how to survive an asteroid attack and ways to prevent it. You might be thinking about the movie Armageddon and the idea of nuking the asteroid. However, if we were to nuke the asteroid, it wouldn't just vaporize. Instead, it would break into smaller pieces (some still miles wide) that could potentially pose an even greater threat to Earth. Additionally, British Physicians at Leicester University have confirmed that vaporizing an asteroid would require a bomb about 1 billion times more powerful than any bomb detonated by a country.
There are other ways:
Let's spray-paint it
Despite the potential for this idea to seem far-fetched, it can be effective without the need to create new asteroids. The concept involves painting half of the asteroid white to increase sunlight reflection. The resulting pressure from the increased sunlight on the white side could disrupt the momentum and alter the asteroid's course. However, a major concern is the practicality of actually getting a paintball gun to the asteroid.
Slow it down
We can position a bunch of objects in the asteroid's predicted path. Each object that the asteroid collides with will take away some kinetic energy that will slow down the asteroid and also push it off its path. But what if the objects are altered by a different asteroid that is heading away from Earth?
Thwack it with a space probe (Again)
Unlike the solutions listed above, we have actually have experience doing this. NASA's DART, (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is a spacecraft the size of a car was smashed into an oncoming asteroid that would have probably hit us before today. How could such a tiny thing have such a huge impact on something so big? It's like having a bunch of linebackers charge down the Pyramid of Giza. But, the speed at which the object would go and the speed of collision would still be decisive in the amount of damage done.
Nevertheless, in each scenario that we commit to, we would need to act quickly and be decisive. The closer the asteroid gets, the more dramatic the impact must be.
Nearly every single space movie has spent a giant amount of its budget on one massive explosion that serves as the climax.
And nearly all of them got it wrong.
Let's take Star Wars for example. The name itself refers to wars in space. The Millennium Falcon and TIE Fighters were blasting each other while simultaneously moving up and down as though they were airplanes supported by the Earth's atmosphere and the angles of the turns were not happening at thousands of miles per hour.
To turn on a dime, the spaceship would need a sophisticated set of directional nozzles that need to fire at just the right angles and with sufficient thrust. To do a perfect about-face, the fighters would need to undo their forward momentum by firing rockets in the opposite direction with enough energy to slow down and stop and then use the directional nozzles to turn.
Let's say that the pilots exploited some bleeding-edge technology that enabled them to instantaneously switch directions. When using this technology they'd better be buckled tight into heavily padded seats. Even so, their innards would be jostled around at such high speeds that it would turn them into human milk. I guess we should leave fighting to the drones and droids.
Well, that's all for this blog! I hope you enjoyed it and please leave a comment! It helps me alot!