To Deflect an Asteroid, Try a Lasso, Not a Nuke

By Adam Mann
To save the world from the real threat of a major asteroid impact, one engineer has imagined a scheme similar to George Bailey’s wish to lasso the moon for his sweetheart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The plan is to attach a gigantic weight to an Earth-bound asteroid using an enormous cord. This crazy-sounding contraption would change the asteroid’s center of mass and subsequently its trajectory, averting a potentially catastrophic scenario.
Aerospace engineer Major David French of the Air Force Institute of Technology mathematically modeled how different weights and lengths of tether would affect a killer asteroid’s orbit over time. The results are in the December issue of Acta Astronautica.
He found that, in general, longer tethers and larger masses would more significantly change the asteroid’s orbit. The alteration would occur slowly, taking anywhere from 10 to 50 years.
The technique would require no simple mission. The cosmic counterweight would tip the scale at billions of pounds, while the rope would range anywhere from six miles (about the height of Mount Everest), to 60,000 miles (long enough to wrap around Earth two and a half times).
This solution may sound unrealistic, but the threat is real. To date, NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, which tracks asteroids and comets that could approach the planet, has cataloged more than 5,500 objects. About 1,000 of these are classified as “potentially hazardous,” meaning they could wipe out a city, spawn giant tsunamis or, in the worst case, eradicate life with a planet-shrouding cloud of debris. Read Entire Article

A UFO apocalypse?

A UFO apocalypse is unfolding every single day before our very eyes. Are constant UFO sightings globally accompanied by dire Mayan prophesy of a polar shift along with solar flares and earthquakes as well as other cataclysms the writing on the wall for humanity and the planet?
Interestingly, the web-bot project also predicts a pole shift in 2012. Ufology and the countless UFO sightings seem to be waking up humanity even though far too many are just not paying attention. The forever recurring theme of waking up human consciousness with its unimaginable impact is what this seems to be all about. How many will come out of all of this unscathed? Tibetan monks with an alleged ability to remote view have seen for 2012 a world rattling with unprecedented turmoil with extraterrestrials intervening on a grand scale. Some claim we already have ETs intervening and leaving their indelible impact now all over the planet. Every government on earth should be investigating every genuine sighting: but they are not. Read Entire Article

Global warming may require higher dams, stilts

"Some biologists point to how nature has handled the changing climate. The rare Adonis blue butterfly of Britain looked as if it was going to disappear because it couldn't fly far and global warming was making its habitat unbearable. To biologists' surprise, it evolved longer thoraxes and wings, allowing it to fly farther to cooler locales."

By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP)
With the world losing the battle against global warming so far, experts are warning that humans need to follow nature's example: Adapt or die.
That means elevating buildings, making taller and stronger dams and seawalls, rerouting water systems, restricting certain developments, changing farming practices and ultimately moving people, plants and animals out of harm's way.
Adapting to rising seas and higher temperatures is expected to be a big topic at the U.N. climate-change talks in Copenhagen next week, along with the projected cost — hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it going to countries that cannot afford it. Read Entire Article

The Message is a New Hope