This is what we in the business refer to as a “dumb idea”. That is to say, nearly every part of it demonstrates a lack of understanding of physics that is so complete, one does not no where to begin to try to explain why it would not work.
The short answer, it wouldn’t work for the same reason a Zippo lighter won’t actually protect you from a .357 Magnum fired point blank into your jacket pocket. The object is traveling so fast that it will simply blast through whatever is in its way as if that object did not exist.
As a reference, Meteor Crater in AZ is about 2/3 of a mile in diameter and was likely formed from an object about half the size of a football field traveling 12-20 miles per second.
The solution is simple: we set our clocks forward 12 hours, confusing the rock. The rock will adjust it’s timing 12 hours and hit somewhere along the China-Mongolia border, and who cares about that? NYC saved! YAY!
Actually, I suggest that we set the clocks back 12 hours. Same result, and I could use the extra sleep.
i maintain that if dust blotting out the sun is the problem when the meteor hits, you move the stuff that would cause the dust out of the meteor’s way. and furthermore:
If we provide Wile E. Coyote with an Acme Anti-Asteroid Umbrella, he will be fine. Maybe he will be umbrella-bell-shaped for a short time, but otherwise fine. The umbrella will come through without a scratch.
There is no measurable difference between an impact at ground level and an impact in a hole a mile deep. The speeds and energy levels involved in an asteroid strike cannot be contained by just digging a hole for the asteroid to fall in to. There is nothing we can conceivably make that is “indestructable” enough to line the hole to prevent this damage.
i mean… forget the unobtainium thing. i was simply thinking that if you dont want the pie on the window sill to make a mess in your house cuz the kids are throwing a ball around, you move the pie.
if theres no pie (i.e. dust) then it cant make a mess (i.e. blot out the sun). no? all ive pretty much heard from you intellectuals is “lol ur dum”, i haven’t really gotten a reason that it wouldnt work to move the dust-causing materials since the dust is the problem in the end. if i want to hear “lol ur dum” i can post the question on the wow forums or 4chan or something.
You’re not throwing a ball at the window. You’re thowing a stick of dynamite through the window. The pie will be ruined no matter where it is in the house.
Any part of the Earth that is hit by an asteroid is going to turn to dust, a lot of dust, and digging down through the crust would just make it easier for the impact to break through to the mantle (which would be even worse – picture the oceans pouring into a heat source that is big enough to boil all of the surface water of the world).
i dont know, pat. i was just thinking that if the hole was deep enough, the dust would have farther to travel and maybe instead of creating an impenetrable ring of death around the earth, a lot of it would be caught up in a subterranean dust-grotto.
also yeah the thing about the oceans sounds pretty bad.
If I’m not mistaken, launching nukes at the meteor isn’t considered an useful solution. What should apparently be done would be landing rockets on it and use the rocket’s thrust to slightly alter the course of the meteor (given enough warning time, a very small change in the initial trajectory would eventually alter it enough that it could “miss” the earth).
Not sure this could work with an extinction-event sized meteor. I’ve no clue about the mass of such an object, let alone if it would be feasible for us to alter significantly the trajectory of a body that large.
The dust isn’t so much projected into the atmosphere by the force of the impact, but rather drawn up by the rising mass of superheated gases produced by it. The height that column will reach is determined by the heat of those gases and the density profile of the atmosphere. If we are talking about a large object, so much energy is involved that the debris cloud will rise into the stratosphere, no matter how deep the hole is. (In any case, since the stratosphere starts at about 10 km up, you would have to dig a heck of a hole to equal its depth in the first place.)
You guys worry too much. I saw a movie when I was a teenager where an asteroid was going to smash the earth to hell and gone and every nation on earth worked together to lay pipelines all the way to the south pole and then light off the natural gas in those pipes and the thrust changed the earth’s orbit enough to move it out of harms way and the asteroid went hurtling by, muttering curses and the earth was saved. Laying the pipe lines took like three days and everyone spoke English, even though it was a Japanese movie. Well, actually, it was a documentary and not a movie. I remember it and if it worked once, it would work again. Don’t sweat it.
