What will we do if...??

Question

What will we do if a astroid is comming towards us in great speed,...Very fast as fast as the speed of light...what will we do..and its also big as big as 16 kilmoters in lenth ,.

Answer 1

If it's coming at the speed of light, chances are that we won't detect it, and if it is coming that fast there's a pretty good probability that it would shoot straight through the earth (similar to a bullet penetrating any hard object) Either way, there is nothing we would be able to do about it.

Answer 2

We are all goners so say your prayers and repent.

Answer 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKXX6Fwxk...

Answer 4

Shooting it might not actually help. And regardless of how fast it's going if it comes from behind the sun we won't have time to do anything about it anyway.

Answer 5

A nuke wouldn't help that much. Look at a the nuclear detonations on Earth. The ground is still there. Similarly most of the energy will be deflected away from the object.

Right now that would be our only option if their was a strict deadline. If we knew about it well before hand than with a few calculations and a little nudge it could be pushed well out of the way of Earth, especially if it were orbiting the sun like most solar debris.

A nuke within the object could do a lot of damage to it but drilling into a asteroid or comet is well beyond what NASA is capable of right now. And if we were successful we would turn one large object into a LOT of smaller but still kinda big objects.

So, until we get the starship Enterprise's photon torpedoes operational the plan we will probably fall back on is to slow the speed of the deadly extraterrestrial object with the mass of Earth =)

P.S. RDB that video scared the living **** out of me!

Answer 6

Well, if there is enough time to do something, with any luck, we'll do it.  There are lots of ideas.

Park a heavy space craft next to it.  The mutual gravity will pull the rock towards the space craft.  Careful not to point the rockets at the rock.  Pretty slow.

Paint it.  This uses sunlight to push on it.

Put a mass driver on it.  Basically dig some of the rock up, and toss it away as reaction mass.  Assumes you can dig into it.  Assumes you can toss stuff away from it without it breaking up.

Shine a bright light at one spot.  The spot vaporizes and creates a little rocket like thing, deflecting it.  Perhaps all you need is a big mirror, held in space by some space craft.  Use the power of the Sun.

Nuke it.  Vaporizing one side may cause it to accelerate the opposite way.  Of course it has to be able to stand the blast.  Multiple nukes are probably required.

Nuke it to smithereens. Of course, if it all hits the Earth anyway, we may not have improved anything.

And so on.

If there's not enough time, or if the mission fails:  Perhaps it would be possible to build really good shelters for some people, animals, plants, to come back out when things have settled down.

Answer 7

if itz moving that fast, you wouldn't have time to destroy it

Answer 8

At least it will be shortened as it approaches the speed of light.  Just think, maybe it started out at 18 kilmoters aand shortened to 16.