How to stop an asteroid hitting Earth: Would people cooperate to face a global peril? - from TRUNEWS

Earlier this year, while war and chaos continued to unfold further east, scientists gathered on the outskirts of Rome to discuss another sort of catastrophe. Astronomers and physicists from some of the world’s top institutions grappled with a dire scenario: an asteroid up to 1,300ft in diameter – big enough to cause epochal damage – was hurtling towards Earth, and the countries likely to be hit included some of the poorest and most unstable in the world. Policymakers bickered over whether to try to blow it up or move it, and nations nearly went to war over whether deflecting it would make the fiery rock more likely to land on them…

Relax. It was only a drill. Had it been a real emergency, you would have been instructed to kiss the world – or a large chunk of it – goodbye.

Watching this five-day asteroid war game from the wings were two Americans, one from the scientific world and one from the military. These elder statesmen of what’s called planetary defence have been responsible for reminding policymakers that the planet and all life on it have been shaped by big rocks from outer space slamming into it. Dave Morrison was one of the first researchers to suggest that, unlike the dinosaurs made extinct by an asteroid impact, we might be able to defend ourselves.

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