Word: asteroids
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What if one or more of these asteroids are found to be a serious threat? Scientists generally agree on the best strategy for avoiding disaster: launch a rocket to intercept the intruder and, at the very least, change its orbit. If the asteroid is small and detected many years and orbits before its predicted impact, the solution would be straightforward. "You apply some modest impulse to the asteroid at its closest approach to the sun," says Los Alamos' Canavan. "The slight deflection that results will amplify during each orbit, ensuring that the asteroid misses Earth by a wide margin." That...
...incoming asteroid is composed largely of iron, a nearby or even a surface explosion would present no problem. But if the asteroid is rocky, a blast, particularly an ill-planned one, might well shatter it into chunks, each a potential danger to a terrestrial region or metropolitan area...
...that reason, Earth's defenders, if they have the luxury of time, would prefer to send a robot craft to rendezvous with a threatening asteroid and determine its composition and mechanical strength before dispatching a nuke to the scene. Physicist Edward Teller suggests that this is what we should do, just for practice, when XF11 passes far from Earth two years from now. Other defensive plans being bandied about at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs involve more exotic devices, such as neutron bombs or netlike arrays of interconnected tungsten balls...
...none of these defensive measures can be effective without adequate warning. And given the large numbers of undiscovered NEOs still out there, says David Morrison at NASA's Ames Research Center, an asteroid strike could take place with far less than a 30-year warning. Indeed, says Morrison ominously, "the most likely warning time would be zero...
...nukes to knock incoming rocks off their fatal trajectories. Armageddon is about tough guys doing a tough job in space, while Deep Impact (inspired by the '50s films When Worlds Collide and On the Beach) emphasizes the human drama on Earth. This is Hollywood, remember: the real-life asteroid is a mile wide; in Armageddon it's the size of Texas. Says producer Jerry Bruckheimer: "We always do things bigger." And faster; you needn't wait till 2028 for these big bangs...