Asteroid Harness
Turns out the sky IS falling!This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science Going a bit Chicken Little on ya. Because NASA does keep tabs on about one thousand asteroids that COULD smash into Earth. Uh-oh. Remember the dinosaurs? One solution? An asteroid harness! So says David French of North Carolina State University. French suggests leashing a six-point-six million pound weight - say, a Saturn Five rocket -- to the menacing space rock. Asteroid and rocket would be connected by a tether--perhaps tens of thousands of miles long. The rocket's added weight should shift the center of gravity AWAY from the asteroid. Instead of flying through space like a baseball, the new rocket-asteroid duo would sling around each other like giant nunchuks. They'd veer off course, steering clear of our atmosphere. Away they'd go to threaten another fragile pocket of life in the universe. It won't be easy, friends. The bigger the asteroid, the longer the leash. And we'd have to harness the asteroid decades before it would strike. However, you have to admit the whole notion of the cosmic nunchuk is extremely cool. That alone.
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