[Pera]

The way to use these nukes would be to detonate them nearby. The resulting shockwave would nudge the asteroid into a slightly different orbit - even if it's altered by a few degrees, given the distances involved altering the course a few years from impact would result in this big rock missing us completely [/B]

1. Space=Vacuum=No shockwaves
2. How were you planning to shoot those nukes there? We would have to develop a whole new type of missile. Though it might be possible to simply use normal rockets(the things that carry space shuttles) loaded with nukes.
3. Fact 1: the rock is 2 kilometers in diameter Fact 2: the rock travels at a speed of roughly 28 km/s. Do you have any idea what kind of movement energies we are talking here? A few nukes wouldn't do _anything_ to it.

So basically all we can do is hope that it misses, there's nothing we can do to stop it, even in 17 years.

[Blue Lion]

Actually there is, but I'm too lazy to go search for specifics, basically you veer it off course, slowly over time it would be enough to miss us.

[Pera]

Originally posted by Blue Lion
Actually there is, but I'm too lazy to go search for specifics, basically you veer it off course, slowly over time it would be enough to miss us.

No specifics needed, I'd just like to know what were you planning to use for it

Of course, we have to notice it pretty much in advance, like this one.

[Nico]

on the info here they mentionned two "probes"... don't ask

[Kazashi]

Originally posted by Pera


1. Space=Vacuum=No shockwaves
2. How were you planning to shoot those nukes there? We would have to develop a whole new type of missile. Though it might be possible to simply use normal rockets(the things that carry space shuttles) loaded with nukes.
3. Fact 1: the rock is 2 kilometers in diameter Fact 2: the rock travels at a speed of roughly 28 km/s. Do you have any idea what kind of movement energies we are talking here? A few nukes wouldn't do _anything_ to it.

So basically all we can do is hope that it misses, there's nothing we can do to stop it, even in 17 years.

Too tired to put down your claims now, I'll deal with you later. Except to say not to think in terrestrial terms.

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Pera


1. Space=Vacuum=No shockwaves
2. How were you planning to shoot those nukes there? We would have to develop a whole new type of missile. Though it might be possible to simply use normal rockets(the things that carry space shuttles) loaded with nukes.
3. Fact 1: the rock is 2 kilometers in diameter Fact 2: the rock travels at a speed of roughly 28 km/s. Do you have any idea what kind of movement energies we are talking here? A few nukes wouldn't do _anything_ to it.

So basically all we can do is hope that it misses, there's nothing we can do to stop it, even in 17 years.

1).Nuke=mass » Shockwave = mass = collision = course change (hopefully)
2). See 1).
3) Fact 1 : True
Fact 2 : Depends on too many variables. (gravity on the asteroid,  angle of impact, etc)

[LtNarol]

Im not sure you realize that a Nuke is based off of the spliting atoms, mass is negligable, however, the force of the explosion, given that enough hit early enough, may deter the asteriod.  However, being able to hit it is very very difficult, and even with today's technology, calculating its exact course close enough to even be able to impact it is litterally impossible until it enters the solar system.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Kellan
Also, correct me if I'm wrong - but surely blowing an asteroid into bits that then shower down on the Earth is only marginally less serious than the whole thing smacking us. Surely all the heavy elements will be distributed through the atmosphere and cause an Asteroid Winter.

Nope, lots of little ones are better as they're more likely to burn up in the atmosphere, plus even fifty little ones wouldn't do nearly as much atmospheric damage as the big one would. Plus one nuke detonated that far up probably woudn't increase the amount of radiation in any one place by more than a neglible amount.

The real danger is that you blow it up in just the wrong way and little bits start to orbit. This would be extremely badnews as satellites would be hit, sending more little bits and pieces into orbit, which would hit more satellites, more bits ad infinitum., with the ultimate result being that we will soon have so much crap moving around that no sattelites would be able to orbit, and we probably wouldn't even be able to get a shuttle, or any other type of space vehicle off the planet.

[Pera]

Originally posted by Tiara
3) Fact 1 : True
Fact 2 : Depends on too many variables. (gravity on the asteroid,  angle of impact, etc)

I was talking about this particular asteroid, I read the speed from a newspaper.

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Pera


I was talking about this particular asteroid, I read the speed from a newspaper.

Still the gravity can be different then you think, angle of impact (nuke > asteroid) can change due to gravity.

[Dark_4ce]

What I'm worried about is the ones we don't know about! If people will be monitoring one that'll MAYBE hit in 17 years, why not try and look for new ones that could hit maybe next week?

[LtNarol]

What im saying is that we will have a hell of a time trying to hit it with anything until it gets within pluto, and even then chances of hitting it are still around nill.  You have to take into consideration the effects of gravity from countless of stars (even if the amount seems negligible), planets, other satelite objects such as asteriods in our own asteriod belt, solar winds, its own center of gravity, and a bunch of other stuff as well I'm sure.

As for little bits, you'd have to pretty much incinerate the rock in order to get peices small enough not to be a problem.  A thing the size of a basketball can do plenty of damage; however, this is still better than having a chunk of rock a mile or two in diameter crash into the earth, resulting in a nuclear winter.

As far as blowing it up wrong so that parts go into orbit; orbits decay, and without thrusters to realign every once in a while, these smaller things will eventually hit the atmosphere and burn almost immediately given their angle.  That or they'll bounce and skip off into the sky and we never see it again.

[Zeronet]

Its years away, by that time we can shoot with a big ass laser, if we're lucky we could nudge it into a high orbit and mine it. .

[LtNarol]

Well, if they can get a few shuttles up there, attach some big retro rockets to it, they just might be able to put it into geo-stationary orbit, strip mine it, and then launch it off towards venus when they finish.

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Dark_4ce
What I'm worried about is the ones we don't know about! If people will be monitoring one that'll MAYBE hit in 17 years, why not try and look for new ones that could hit maybe next week?

What do you want it to do? Invent subspace drives?

[Kazashi]

To the disdain of many, I'm back

While the remnants of a nuclear explosion might not have much mass in itself, that's not the whole story. If you remember back to high school physics, you'll remember the equation f=ma. A nuclear explosion emits lots of particles, and while they may not weigh much initially, they are travelling extremely fast. In the vicinity of 100,000 times faster than that asteroid.

High intensity particles aren't the only constituent of a nuke, nor are they even the main constituent. The energy released in the form of photons, although not weighing much, still possesses momentum. If this were another time, I'd probably calculate the energy contained in both the rock and nukes and see what would be needed - I'm sure someone else in here is knowledgeable enough to do so (and check that this post makes sense in the first place...).

Unfortunately, using regular nukes won't have much of an effect. When a bomb explodes, its power is radiated in all directions, meaning its overall effectiveness is cut down to a fraction of what it really is. Also, certain types of asteroid can soak up such a blast, distributing it throughout its structure in a way that makes the initial blast pointless.

In this case, you'd want to use hundreds, if not thousands of warheads, to deflect it. And in that case, some hot-headed people would probably just say "blow the ***** up!" and hope that it's blown to bits small enough that they burn up in Earth's atmosphere (I guess you could meet halfway, blow up the rock into small chunks, then deflect those with the rest of the nukes). Beforehand, you'd probably want to listen to all the scientists and geeks and asylum inmates to see what whacky ideas they have. Most ideas involve either attaching something to it and towing/blowing it away, or blowing up a small part of it to make the rest shift direction. Either way, only a small change is needed

In any case, it's not as simple an issue as I may have implied in my first post.

[Pera]

Originally posted by Kazashi
To the disdain of many, I'm back

Yes, you were right about many things there, though the thing about photons left me wondering, I thought photons don't have mass at all? I mean, if photons can travel at the speed of light, they obvioysly can't have any mass. Or has the summer holiday made me forget everything about physics?

[CP5670]

I might be wrong here, but I think they have an extremely low (probably zero) rest mass but they gain mass at higher speeds.

[Mr. Vega]

Better idea: Fire mass concentrations of anti-matter at the rock. If you release it in space it won't blow until it touches the asteroid. It won't just incinerate the asteroid. It converts it to pure energy. The atmosphere will absorb the radiation.

[Levyathan]

See, the problem here is that you're all thinking in the wrong way.

What we have to do is nuke one side of the Earth to throw it off-orbit, wait for the asteroid to pass, then nuke the other side to get it back on.