Proverbial

I wonder what the impact of a 250-meters-wide asteroid somewhere on the Pacific Ocean would do to current global warming calculations. All those predictions about an economic breakdown setting the world’s population back to the 19th century would probably seem a little silly.

What amazes me is that, unlike global warming, this is a problem that we seem well suited to solve and protect ourselves from. And yet, relying on scientists’ claim that it is not a realistic threat - even though not a week goes by without a Hubble image or something forcing astronomers to reconsider everything they believe in -, the powers that be don’t think it is something that needs to be dealt with at this point.

My hope is that if China can build a weapon to shoot down satellites, they may be able to tweak it to make space rubble out of asteroids.

UPDATE: on MSNBC’s Cosmic Log, Alan Boyle details what are our current options against a killer asteroid.