This guy is talking about zapping asteroids…seriously

Is this a good idea?  The controversial Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses such ideas in the following video.  On one hand the best way to prepare for something is in advance as opposed to waiting until the last minute.  We’ve all seen the asteroid movies and know how little time there is 😉  On the other hand, maybe it is better to focus on other space things?  If nothing else here is some interesting news about an unusual formation of asteroids:

A new study using data from NASA’s NEOWISE space telescope has traced some dark Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) back to their likely source – a family of large, low albedo asteroids known as the Euphrosynes.

The Euphrosyne asteroid family occupies a unique place in orbital element space among families, located in the outer main asteroid belt at very high inclination.

The asteroid after which they are named, 31 Euphrosyne is about 156 miles (260 km) across and is one of the ten largest asteroids in the belt.

Here is a cool artist’s rendition of the kuiper belt which is beyond the orbit of Neptune and contains many asteroids, cold bits of ice and other “space stuff” like comets

Here is a bit more information on these particular objects and what may be manipulating their path currently, as well as in the future:

According to the authors of the study, this asteroid family may be the source of some of the dark NEOs found to be on long, highly inclined orbits.

“The Euphrosynes have a gentle resonance with the orbit of Saturn that slowly moves these objects, eventually turning some of them into NEOs. This particular gravitational resonance tends to push some of the larger fragments of the Euphrosyne family into near-Earth space,” said Dr Joseph Masiero of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, lead author of a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint).

And below is a related video discussing some of the concerns about an asteroid coming close to earth.  I’m not sure what camp to be in, but it may be interesting none the less.

thanks to sci-news.com for the great info

thanks to NASA and Cal Tech for the pic