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Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.
The so-called Gravity Tractor could maintain a position near the threatening asteroid, exerting a gentle tug that, over time, would deflect the asteroid.
An asteroid the size of Apophis, which is about 460 feet
long, would take about 12 days of gravity-tugging, Lu added.
Mission costs are estimated at $300 million.
Originally posted by Palasheea
Well scientists are saying that they can't just blow this thing up 'armageddon-style' because then we would then have thousands of pieces of this thing flying toward earth rather than just one big one. Granted the smaller pieces would have less impact and do less damage, it's still bad news no matter which way you want to look at it because hundreds of thousands of lives would still be lost.
Originally posted by johnb
Just because a group chooses not to help it does not follow they are against you.
I doubt if any of these secret agencies would care much if a few million or indeed billion of us Proles were to die off but at the same time they may well want to demonstrate their power to their competitors.
Also remember all these people have pre-designated underground bunkers that would probably be capable of taking a direct hit from a fairly large asteroid.
With almost 30yrs to impact there are probably quite a few possibilites - solar sails, explosions to deflect......
Originally posted by jemblem62
......so some of you guys are telling me that ETs have been visiting earth for thousands of years studying us, disarming our nukes, trying to engauge us so we become a peaceful part of space and they wont take a minute out of their time to simply deflect the asteroid with their technology that is 1,000,000 yrs more advanced than ours? lol we can almost deflect an asteroid, they could probably deflect hundreds of them if they wanted too