Dave, your starting to sound like Chicken Little! :D

I actually did a study into this. My thoughts are there is no way to mobilize an effort with that little time.

http://campus.houghton.edu/webs/employees/myuly/Courses/phys251/Projects/2004-2005/Student%20Presentations/Destroying%20Asteroid%20Orpheus%20via%20Bombs_file s/frame.htm#slide0001.htm

Other teams tried different methods such as diverting the orbit of the asteroid. The problem is that it takes a lot of time to get to the asteroid with enough time to do anything. And to travel far away from earth takes a huge amount of fuel which means that you need a lot of shuttle launches to get it into LEO.

Not to be arrogant but I think that my method would be the best way to deal with something like this-swoop in last minute and blow it up. Any remainder of the asteroid would burn up in the atmosphere. Probably would mess our satellites up pretty bad.

Would be wise to perhaps get better sensors detecting possible collisions though. There are thousands of asteroids that could hit us.

A decent sized asteroid or comet hitting the ocean would do far more than just cause tsunamis of unimagineable proportions. Ocean hits can stir up plenty of debris to send the Earth into a nuclear winter situation. It might take a few months for most species to die, but it could easily happen. All crops destroyed and the few humans that made it that long would either die fighting each other for food or of mass starvation. People think the movie Deep Impact was science fiction. It was pretty non-fiction. Such things have happened plenty of times before and will happen again. We tend to think all of geological history happened so long ago and was meant to set the Earth up for how we now live. Now is just a blink of an eye between ice ages.

Solution found!

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KT

nearly pissed myself laughing on that one

Perhaps we will get lucky and its big brother will hit us. Can't happen too soon to suit me.

Hang in there Bob...I sometimes feel the same way about this tired old planet. I often wonder if, after man is extinct, the next species to run things here will do a better job.

Still, I pull on my tennis shoes every morn. Just to see what the hell is going to happen next. :rolleyes:

Today's the day...


KT

Yawn.

Whoa! That was weird...

I'd be more impressed if the pirate population dramatically increased.

Maybe we'd better wait & see if we can post tomorrow...

Global warming be killing the pirates!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201639283.jpg

Yes, but the number of pirates is increasing.

Put down the grog and look at the chart with your good eye!

har har har

The Wiki page has a link to info about Apophis, an asteroid expected to pass within the radius of our geosyncrous satellites in 2029. It reports that IF it were to impact Earth, it would have an impact on a large regional scale, but would not have any long-term worldwide effects.

I flashed my lights as it went by, and they just gave me the finger :(