Deflecting an asteroid, with paintballs
February 25, 2013
In the event that a giant asteroid is headed toward Earth, you’d better hope that it’s blindingly white. A brightly colored asteroid would reflect sunlight — and over time, this bouncing of photons off its surface could create enough of a force to push the asteroid off its course.
How might one encourage such a deflection? The answer, according to an MIT graduate student: with a volley or two of space-launched paintballs.
— MIT
Video Source: MIT
Comments (5)
by GatorALLin
I noticed some of the actual asteroids are spinning or flipping in weird ways….so I would guess this makes it harder to know what “side” or how to paint only the areas you want to reflect photons with….
by Bri
I read about this proposal awhile ago. I’m sorry it just hits my funny bone. We could turn this into a video game. Like the monkey controling a robotic arm, we’ll charge people money to take a shot at it!
by GatorALLin
Like it….LOL…win a prize carnival like game… (your prize is to avoid mass extinction for now)
by SmartAndSober
Actually, a lot of seemingly “wacky” concepts from video games are potentially very useful in real life.
by GatorALLin
__ I have to agree with your comment that good ideas can come from video games. There was a really interesting ted talk about the fact that in USA the average kid at age 21 has 10,000 hours being trained how to play video games very well…. The question was how to put all that time to good use. Check out the Ted video here.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
the book about 10,000 hours and becoming a master, was well written and worth a read here (if you want to study how the worlds richest people got rich or became masters) http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361895634&sr=8-1&keywords=outliers