OT End of the world is nigh!

[harryagain]

Well almost.

Keeps the proles amused.

If it was gonna hit us, I feel sure it would be kept secret so the politicians could retire to their nuclear bunkers.

[Brian-Gaff]

There are enough freelance watchers around to make keeping it secret a bit hard. however, we do have some mitigation ideas if it is actually coming here. If its found more than a couple of months away, then it could be done with nukes, but any closer and the debris, now radioactive might be a big problem. You could as a person wrote recently, pant one side black and the other white, and over about three years it would move due to the suns light re radiating. Not sure I'd trust that one myself, what if its spinning?

One of the stated aims of sending men to a captured asteroid is to try various methods of defendinthe earth against space rocks, but sods law might dictate that we get hit before they start playing with a rock.

Myself, I'd trust the nukes, after all, better to have a load of small radioactive rocks than one bloody great one that could destroy everything. brian

[dennis]

The radiation wouldn't be a problem anyway, just how many people have suffered following the tests that weren't directly exposed?

You wouldn't explode a nuke to shatter it anyway, you want to explode near it so the heat vaporises some of it and pushes it onto a different trajectory. If that's done a few weeks/months out you need less energy and the high level waste will have decayed. You have to remember this would be the real world and not harry world.

[Nightjar]

Nuclear bunkers wouldn't be much protection if it did hit. However, it is expected be marginally further away than when it last passed us in

1999; 0.07au rather than 0.06au. Then it was picked up by radar telescopes almost as it was passing by, its approach having been missed.

[Nightjar]

Another option would be to coat one side with white or black dust and allow the solar wind to deflect it. We've known the trajectory of this one since 1999, when it came even closer, so it would be a good candidate for trials. However, at the moment, it is probably best left alone.

I quite like the long term solution of sending up nuclear powered robots to mine the asteroid into smaller bits.

[Dave Liquorice]

Not much difference IMHO.

Think single bullet or shotgun, both make a big hole.

[GB]

If it is blown up far enough away, with sufficient force, most of the bits might miss us. Think shotgun at half a mile range.

[Martin Brown]

Actually it isn't. One really big one will cause a lot of damage where it lands - think Tunguska but will leave everywhere else untouched (unless it is incredibly rare and in the large extinction event class).

A large number of objects which is what you end up with if you fragment a 1km object will have the same effect as cluster bombing with kT yield devices over a very wide area. Most meteors are little more than a grain of sand. A few kg on entry will be a ground impactor.

Much better to deflect its path slightly so it skims off the upper atmosphere like a pebble off the surface of a pond.

[The Natural Philosopher]

well it all depends whether all of the fragments hit or not, if you blow it up

[Nightjar]

This particular one is probably just large enough to cause global effects, if it did hit.

Even better to get it to miss entirely, although that would depend upon how early it was detected.