Space & Astronomy

Anti-asteroid space laser proposed

By T.K. Randall
February 17, 2013 ·  34 comments

Image Credit: ESA The devastation wrought over Russia by a meteor just 50ft across has brought in to focus the apocalyptic potential of a larger impact on our planet. To help defend against such disasters in the future a group of scientists has developed a new concept for a defensive weapon called DE-STAR (Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids). The system would harness energy from the Sun and use it to focus a laser blast at an approaching rock to either deflect or evaporate it.

"This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek," said researcher Gary B. Hughes. "All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we'd need - scaling up would be the challenge - but the basic elements are all there and ready to go."[!gad]The devastation wrought over Russia by a meteor just 50ft across has brought in to focus the apocalyptic potential of a larger impact on our planet. To help defend against such disasters in the future a group of scientists has developed a new concept for a defensive weapon called DE-STAR (Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids). The system would harness energy from the Sun and use it to focus a laser blast at an approaching rock to either deflect or evaporate it.

"This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek," said researcher Gary B. Hughes. "All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we'd need - scaling up would be the challenge - but the basic elements are all there and ready to go."

Source: Yahoo! News | Comments (34)

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