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Saving Earth, averting Doomsday
At the turning point in time when science has made many science-fiction ideas take shape in fact, one sometimes wonders what scientists will come up with next. In an effort to achieve the seemingly impossible, scientists try to move heaven and earth to prove their point. Well, this time, though heaven stays put as always, Earth is supposed to be moved to a new location! Bizarre and absurd? Yes, but not impossible according to some new research.
It is frightening to know that our good old Sun, which comes up every morning to fill our blue and green planet with life-nurturing radiation, will one day die. But, the scientists say, the Sun will get redder and hotter and increase tremendously in size.
In its death throes, the Sun will turn into a red giant and engulf all the inner planets, including our Earth — eventually evaporating it. The death of the Sun is estimated by experts at 7 billion years. In a billion years from now, it will be 11 percent brighter, turning our planet into an unbearable greenhouse and in 3.5 billion years it will be 40 percent brighter than it is today.
For scientists, Earth’s evident death is not only a matter of concern but also an event they are researching how to avert.
Fred Adams, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan, Gregory Laughlin of NASA and Don Korycansky of the University of California, have come up with an idea of how Earth can be made to shift its orbit away from the Sun. The idea is soon to be published in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science. The effort is basically to prove that it can be done rather than actually doing it. It is an answer to the question “what happens to Earth? Is there a way out?” Says Adams.
In the experiment, the researchers first simulated an asteroid six times larger than the one that is thought to have killed the dinosaurs, (100km wide) and to guide it on a planned course through our solar system. This could be done by using a manned or robotic spacecraft and by attaching retrorockets to the asteroid, like the ones which are used to guide the spacecraft.
By maneuvering the asteroid so that it passes close to Earth, our planet’s orbit will be somewhat altered and shifted slightly away from the Sun due to the effect of the asteroid’s orbital energy. A technique similar to the one NASA uses to propel its spacecraft by orbiting a planet to boost them to new courses at much faster speed. After the comet or asteroid has helped in shifting Earth’s orbit, it would be sent out to Jupiter and Saturn, regain its orbital energy and still further away. This procedure, if repeated every 6,000 years by bringing the space rock back with the same technique, would nudge Earth a little outward from its orbit. Dr Benny J Peiser, a researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, who studies the prospects of asteroids and comets hitting Earth and of ways to keep them away, thinks it is a relevant theory provided Earth survives the next couple of centuries.
Talking about the eventuality that Earth is hit by an asteroid or comet which would send us hurtling back to the Ice Age or perhaps doom, he says, “in the short term, we have only one cosmic problem to worry about: Whether humanity will get that far at all.”
“But”, he stated, “once we’ve solved that problem and I am confident that we are on course to succeed, we can focus on other extravagant attempts to save life on our little planet from becoming extinct.”
At present, scientists and researchers from around the world are cataloging the thousands of asteroids that could pose a threat to our planet.
According to Adams and other researchers, most of the technology required to divert a comet is already available but one that is needed to change Earth’s orbit may take some doing. But, as Adams says, we have a few million years to get started.
“It’s not any pie-in-the-sky kind of thing. All you have to do is just to drive out to the edge of the solar system,” he explains.
In addition, there would be a lot of hazards to think about. First of all, we no longer would have our Moon and Mars would also have to be shifted to make way for Earth’s departure. Not forgetting the fact that Earth might encounter many threatening asteroids on its shifted path.
A notion Adams cautions about is: “You have to do the calculations very precisely and change the asteroid’s orbit very carefully, he says. Otherwise, “you’re actually going to hit the Earth with the asteroid and you’re going to kill the dinosaurs again.” Which would, of course, be us!
It is one thing to teach primates to talk, map the human genome and clone people here on Earth while the Sun still comes up and the Earth still stays on its path but moving planets and shifting orbits is far-fetched in more ways than one. Nevertheless, it has given new meaning to the words:
“Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.” (Archimedes, circa 235 BC)
The writer
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