Can we destroy an asteroid with a high powered laser?

[Benm]

Perhaps. I'm sure there would be loads of creative solutions if we tracked some object that is on a collission course with earth in a timespan of decades or centuries.

If its something we don't see coming way ahead of impact, i'd recommend running or ducking depending on how far you are from the impact area

 

[millirad]

Oops, Houston is there a problem? ...........

 

[boosted_4cyl]

Oops, Houston is there a problem? ...........

I remember this! I was only 2 at the time. The great boom of 1986 is what they called it

 

[Benm]

"Problem... is there a Houston?"

 

[chipdouglas]

Perhaps. I'm sure there would be loads of creative solutions if we tracked some object that is on a collission course with earth in a timespan of decades or centuries.

If its something we don't see coming way ahead of impact, i'd recommend running or ducking depending on how far you are from the impact area

watch this LoL.. from the beginning till 50 seconds in.

 

[ixfd64]

They actually tried to blow up an asteroid in this movie. Needless to say, it didn't work too well.

 

[Razako]

The best plan is simply to blow up some large nukes NEAR the asteroid to alter its path. Alternatively if you had a lot of time you could mount solar sails to it.

 

[Coherent Light]

Best plan if a big rock is coming is to KISS your ASS goodbye! Unless We have a few years to develop a way to deal with the sucker.

 

[Lazy Laser]

There was a show on the Discovery channel yesterday about destroying asteroids,comets..ect
Before they hit the earth and they brought lasers up as one of the options for melting icy comets
so that the gas that comes from the melting ice would in theory push it hopefully into another direction.

Sure enough they whip out the Hercules by LaserGlow for a small scale test.

Small scale test: Fail
Use of safety glasses: Certainly a win!

 

[Coherent Light]

@ Tikilaser WHO SAID I WAS TALKING ABOUT PIDDLY LITTLE APOPHIS!!!

 

[Coherent Light]

UMmm Oh wait maybe just maybe there is a Big Ass Rock we haven't seen coming our way..Nah we would already have it charted and logged in the minor planet center database, SO since it's not in the system it's not out there somewhere....Ah we can all rest easy now!

 

[Coherent Light]

Don't discount the Ort Cloud anything screaming in from out there will be Cold & Dark, so that We won't see it Optically or in Infared until it's Too close to deal with unless We already have a defense option in place.

 

[Bluefan]

With radio telescopes you can see objects that are really really cold, so I wouldn't worry about that. Unless the comet is ~2.7K which is equal to the background radiation. But with the nice & warm sun in our solar system that's not gonna happen.

 

[Tonga]

You're still to close for this one man! Heck if Russia gets there first it'll probably hit us twice! Just kidding!
I think we can nudge it to a different orbit, but would it be a safe one is the real question.

 

[Bluefan]

As I said it is currently a 0 on the torino scale as the keyhole is only 600m wide and the chances of it going through are slim to none. It has less than a 0.1% chance of impact and is not a concern to any extent. Even if it passes through, there is about a 20% chance of an impact that would cause any problem due to the fact that the earths oceans cover almost 80% of earth, and the asteroid isn't big enough to cause a tsunami large enough to reach land, let alone cause damage. Over all less than a 0.02% chance of impact. Don't worry, we will be fine.

To dig up the post in question. We keep track of tens of thousands of satellites, a silimar number of pieces of space debris and we catalog over a million asteroids in the asteriod belt of our solar system. If anything comes flying at us, we'll know it or it's too small to ever notice it's there (perhaps a shooting star would be visible, but that's all).

 

[AJ_Dual]

There was a show on the Discovery channel yesterday about destroying asteroids,comets..ect
Before they hit the earth and they brought lasers up as one of the options for melting icy comets
so that the gas that comes from the melting ice would in theory push it hopefully into another direction.

Sure enough they whip out the Hercules by LaserGlow for a small scale test.

Small scale test: Fail
Use of safety glasses: Certainly a win!

I saw that test. I LOL'ed. There was no proportionality whatsoever in that test, it made for good video though. Even at the scale of the snowball on that frictionless air-hockey table it was like trying to use a laser during the last 30 seconds before impact.

The albedo of your average comet looks to be darker than roofing tar. It would absorb the laser radiation quite nicely. Should have covered the whole thing in coal dust. A better test would have been a much better isolation frictionless table, and seeing if you could get any jetting from the comet stand-in to impart any velocity with a laser.

If you have an intercept that begins even 3 months before impact on a comet, if you can impart even so much as .5m/s radial velocity to it from it's main course, lasers, bombs, kinetic impactors, solar sails or mirrors, that's 7776km off it's original impact point, a little over half of one earth diameter. Give it six months, or enough oomph to make it 1m/s imparted velocity, that's one whole Earth diameter. And presumably it won't impact dead-center, so there's a shorter distance to the Earth's edge you could aim for.

And that's not counting if there's any accruing gravitational effects from the Earth or Sun that would compound that distance change even further.