If you’ve got some ideas about how to deflect an asteroid or comet heading towards Earth, there’s an opportunity out there to have your concept reviewed by some of the world’s top astronomers and physicists. The only restriction is that you must be a student or a young professional under the age of 33. [...]

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Oh so now it is agism!

I worked out a really good way to do this, but no one wants to listen to old folk.

Well, no young folk have come up with any suggestions, so I will.

COSMIC BILLIARDS

It takes quite a lot of energy to shift a large comet or asteroid that is heading towards Earth. So my suggestion is that instead of trying to change the orbit of a large object, we find a much smaller one that has an orbit that nearly intersects it and push a much smaller object into collision with the larger one, so changing its orbit by a little bit and avoiding danger. The energy required is then much smaller and can reasonably be achieved.

It does require more time to do this, and a knowledge of the orbits of many small objects, but in recent decades the data in this area has being growing at a huge rate. This knowledge also means that we can calculate well ahead when such an event as an Earth collision is likely.

In extreme cases we could even go for a triple shot scaling up from tiny to medium to large object being shifted. But again that would need extra time still. No need for atom bombs in space.