Gathering Airs Schemes for Averting Asteroid Doom

摘要

Cosmic exponential billiards. The kinetic-energy cookie cutter. The big kerplunk. These are not new rides at the local amusement park. Rather, they were topics of discussion for 140 astronomers, physicists, and engineers who met late last month at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to discuss the risks posed by an asteroid or comet crashing into Earth and how this catastrophe could be averted. And far from being light-hearted, the meeting saw an escalation of concern'about these cosmic collisions and a proliferation of possible defenses.