Spin doctors crack 'impossible' asteroid hurtling towards Earth Scientists studying a mysterious asteroid that could hit Earth in the 29th century think they've found the reason why the fast-spinning object hasn't blown itself apart. The asteroid, 1950 DA, is over a kilometer (0.62 miles) across and rotates completely every 2.1 hours, a speed once thought impossible since the forces …
Trying to blow it up is of course silly, but some a-bombs nearby could be used to deflect it without breaking. The idea would be to use the blast of heat to ablate material from the rubble pile so that the reaction nudges it from an Earth-hitting orbit to a missing one. Probably better use several smaller bombs to make the operation "gentle".
You're probably right about that working. However, given the political climate, nothing will be done until 6 months before it hits. And since it's so far out in time, the current crowd will say "Let's not worry about it." So our great-great-great grandchildren (I may need to add more "great"s to that) will have to figure something out.
For all we know, there may not be any Earthlings left. We could have destroyed ourselves by then, or figured out a way to move to another planet in a different sun system or maybe have an asteroid deflector in place and working.
I would hate to think that nukes will be the only option by then.
Far enough out and we can get the year to be 420 days long; then we'd no longer have leap years, each day would fall on the same day of the week every year and all 12 months would be exactly 35 days.
The only problem is all the immature idiots that would laugh at the number...
If they hit it fairly soon and break it up, the pieces will have a long time to spread out - all that will hit the Earth are one or two ordinary meteors.
What puzzles me is how it got created in the first place. If it was already spinning rapidly, any impacting material would have bounced off. Probably knocking other bits free at the same time. So how did the various bits of rubble assemble into the asteroid? Unless it assembled first and then got spun up later (there's some odd effects that can do this)?
(there's some odd effects that can do this)?
Yes, actually. Uneven pressure from sunlight. This was mentioned some time ago when an asteroid was observed to break apart because it started spinning too fast. There was an ElReg article about it which I'm too lazy to dig up now. Hopefully the same thing will happen to this one, before we need to bomb it.
How is it worse to break up a weakly-cohesive assembly of material rather than a solid chunk of rock ? In either case, you get pieces - not only when the material sticks together because of gecko feet.
I've never heard that NASA favoured exploding asteroids. What NASA has always favoured has been pushing the threat to another orbit that does not risk impacting us.
As I gather from the article, they favour pushing it away by some means, but worry that that might break it up. Pushing a solid piece of rock is predictable, pushing a spinning pile of rubble close to breaking point is not.
Piles of rubble are notoriously unstable, as I notice whenever I tidy my office
"These forces, named after the Dutch physicist who noticed them, involve all attractive and repulsive forces between molecules or parts of them that cannot be chalked up to covalent bonds or electrostatics. These include close-range quantum effects and dipole-dipole interaction, and are used by gecko lizards to climb sheer surfaces, and also draw small aircraft, piloted by playmonauts, toward trees."
FTFY!
@James Pickett
It is almost certainly not the only asteroid headed our way but detecting asteroids coming near Earth is a notoriously tricky prospect and, even when we do identify one, it's not always with enough time to spare that we could do much, if anything, about it.
Of course, humanity has been lucky to this point but if we do find an asteroid sufficient to do serious damage far enough out to actually do something about it then we should at least use it as a good theoretical test case.
I vote we nuke the thing when its outbound or well away from us, the bits that make it up would spread out and could only be almost as bad if they are big enough - turning it into a loose collection of gravel may be bad for satellites bu tnot us
or get it to follow a man with a red flag
The problem with most asteroid defense schemes is that the person in control could turn around and threaten the earth with the system that they're supposed to use on the asteroid.
My proposition is to use a beam of anti-particles - because that would be cool, but also because an antiparticle would never be able to penetrate the atmosphere.
Apparently there are pockets of antiparticles generated by the sun and captured by the earths magnetic field... just saying !
Straightforward solution.
Get a whole load of geckos. Train them to wear little gecko spacesuits. Put them in a ship and send it off to the asteroid. Once there they all attach a line to the spaceship and float over to the asteroid. They stick themselves dipole-dipole fashion to the surface and begin squirting cyanoacrylate adhesive over the asteroid to bind it together. The lines are all wound into a single strong cable by the spin of the asteroid. The spaceship then begins a very gentle burn until the asteroid is no longer on collision course. The geckos then detach from the surface and their lines, and float back to the spaceship. They return to Earth to a hero's welcome and all the insects they can eat.
From: https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2014/06/27/dynamic-asteroids/
Most asteroids are presumed to be loosely compacted “rubble piles”. The idea came about in order to help explain various mass anomalies that have been seen in asteroid crater studies, along with experiments like Deep Impact, and observations of what appears to be “regolith migration” on asteroids Itokawa and Eros. Since gravitational acceleration on asteroids is minute, banding, landslides, and layering is thought to be due to micro-meteor impacts shaking the asteroids. Over long periods of time, the shaking sorts the materials by size and density in the same way that a jar of sand and pebbles will sort itself when it is shaken.
Some asteroids, such as Vesta, have craters that should have shattered them into fragments when they were hit. Vesta is only 520 kilometers wide, but possesses a crater 460 kilometers in diameter The only suitable explanation, according to gravity-based models of asteroid behavior, is that they are like big sand piles, absorbing impacts without shattering.
The electric model of asteroid formation does not require that one body crash into another one for there to be craters. Electric arcs have the ability to cut surfaces, scoop out material and then accelerate it into space, leaving clean cuts, deep pits and chaotic topography. The effect is commonly called electric discharge machining (EDM). Comets also exhibit surface features that are the same as what has been seen on asteroids, leading Electric Universe theorists to speculate that the two are really one thing and not “dirty snowballs” vs. rocky bodies.
(more at link)
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2014/06/27/dynamic-asteroids/
Electric Universe? Wow, I remember those posts from Usenet! Is it still David Talbott behind it? Is it still based on Velikovskyism, where most human catastrophes are caused by close passes of other planets by Earth? Have they come up with a plausible theory of how where the energy comes from for the dV to change a planet's course yet?
"Some asteroids, such as Vesta, have craters that should have shattered them into fragments when they were hit. Vesta is only 520 kilometers wide, but possesses a crater 460 kilometers in diameter The only suitable explanation, according to gravity-based models of asteroid behavior, is that they are like big sand piles, absorbing impacts without shattering."
It may be only 520 kilometers wide now, but who's to say it wasn't many times that before the 460 km crater was formed, and the 520 km version is just what's left after the impact?
If it was solid, we'd try doing something to push it out of the way (landing on it and thrusting, painting one side white, exploding a nuke to one side of it) You can still do any of those things (maybe landing might be difficult) and if it stays together, you still push it out of the way. If it falls apart because the van der Waals force fails, it will spin itself to a widely distributed state.
So long as we take care of it in less than 900 years, that should give it plenty of time to disperse to the point where all that happens is we have a nice meteor shower to watch from the comfort of our flying car. Well, assuming flying cars aren't still 30 years away in 2950.
The problem in space, is Mass.
Launch enough mass towards it to rip away some mass, and definitely not join AD 1950's.
"Widdle" it down with a few passes. No nukes or unknown trajectories (debris) to speak of.
The problem on earth is moving Mass.
I'm sure someone will start a Kick Starter for it before 2879.
No Worries.
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