Scientists Ponder Over Putting off Doomsday

It was believed for a long period that there could be no protection from meteorites
Scientists say that protection of the planet from meteorites is getting a rather burning idea. As is known, large meteorites hit the Earth approximately once in one million of years. At that, the International Institute of Asteroid Danger estimated that the planet collides objects of 50 meters in size once in 100 years on average.

A special conference dedicated to protection of the planet from meteorite attacks was also a presentation of laser guns and nuclear weapons meant for repulsion of such attacks. However, realization of the projects requires dozens of billions of dollars and several years of investigations.

There are many traces of large meteorites dropped on this planet. It was believed for a long period that there could be no protection from such space bombs. Only Russia and the US have services controlling the near-earth space that trace and discover space objects and catalogue information about them.

High orbit space objects are watched with passive devices functioning in the wavelength optical band. Military structures pay special attention to geostationary orbits having space communication systems, navigation and reconnaissance devices and so on.

Russia was the first country in the world that created the Okno (Window) optoelectronic complex in the early 1980s. Its basic equipment is completely automated, it may function unmanned within a working session and provide online data about known and newly discovered space objects. Several complexes of this kind may patrol the coelosphere and warn of any approaching danger.

It is not enough to obtain information about an asteroid approaching the planet, it is also important to have resources to liquidate it. Russian researchers have achieved greater success in this sphere. They created an optical quantum-mechanical amplifier with nuclear pumping. The new device helps protect the Earth from any threat emanating from the space. If a reactor with a well-tuned system is fixed at a satellite, its strong radiation can destroy a meteorite or change the trajectory of an asteroid approaching the planet. In a word, creation of anti-asteroid defence is the task that can be accomplished already now.

Maria Kuznetsova