Paintballs Could Deflect Deadly Asteroid, Researchers Claim (VIDEO)

For all of the many ways Hollywood movies have devised for humanity to deflect deadly asteroids, they've never considered paintballs.

But scientists have.

According to new research, a hypothetical asteroid heading for Earth could be deflected with little more than two, big and well-aimed, paintballs.

By coating an asteroid in paint, the idea is that the rock would become more reflective - and be diverted by photons from the Sun bouncing off its surface.

Sung Wook Paek came up with the idea, and this weekend it won a competition sponsored by the United Nations' Space Generation Advisory Council, named the 'Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition'.

No, there are no plans to weaponise the space shuttle with a giant paintball gun. Rest unassured: if a deadly rock were discovered to be hurtling towards us, we're just as defenseless as ever. But it's nice to know someone, somewhere, is working on it.


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/29/paintballs-could-deflect-_n_2037410.html


What colour??

wyatt1 wrote:For all of the many ways Hollywood movies have devised for humanity to deflect deadly asteroids, they've never considered paintballs.

But scientists have.

According to new research, a hypothetical asteroid heading for Earth could be deflected with little more than two, big and well-aimed, paintballs.

By coating an asteroid in paint, the idea is that the rock would become more reflective - and be diverted by photons from the Sun bouncing off its surface.

Sung Wook Paek came up with the idea, and this weekend it won a competition sponsored by the United Nations' Space Generation Advisory Council, named the 'Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition'.

No, there are no plans to weaponise the space shuttle with a giant paintball gun. Rest unassured: if a deadly rock were discovered to be hurtling towards us, we're just as defenseless as ever. But it's nice to know someone, somewhere, is working on it.


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/29/paintballs-could-deflect-_n_2037410.html


What colour??

there are numerous ideas for deflecting asteroids with space sails and the like which rely on capturing the solar wind, unfortunately all of them require discovering the asteroid early enough to apply the weak force for long enough, as has been shown time and again they rarely see them until the last moment as has been the case with several near earth misses in the recent past.
what we wont have them doing is blowing them up with nuclear missiles as that is probably worse than letting it hit. while it may fracture an asteroid it would create more of a shotgun blast than a single hit.

Flap Meister wrote:there are numerous ideas for deflecting asteroids with space sails and the like which rely on capturing the solar wind, unfortunately all of them require discovering the asteroid early enough to apply the weak force for long enough, as has been shown time and again they rarely see them until the last moment as has been the case with several near earth misses in the recent past.
what we wont have them doing is blowing them up with nuclear missiles as that is probably worse than letting it hit. while it may fracture an asteroid it would create more of a shotgun blast than a single hit.

Quite right, and if the UN is involved the meteor will have struck long before they come to any agreement :face: