Gizmorama - June 10, 2013

Good Morning,

When asteroids are headed for Earth - instead of sending Bruce Willis and company to stop it - our best line of defense in reality is to play a serious game of cosmic billiards. What could go wrong?

Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Russian Academy of Sciences elects prominent physicist as new head --*
MOSCOW - Vladimir Fortov, a prominent Russian physicist, has been elected by his fellow scientists as the new head of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the academy says. Fortov, the director of the Institute of Thermal Physics of Extreme States whose research into high-density plasma has won international acclaim, received 766 out of 1,313 votes in a secret ballot at the general meeting of academy members in Moscow, RIA Novosti reported Thursday. His candidacy was supported by the RAS presidium and the majority of RAS branches, giving him a large margin over the 658 votes needed to be elected. President Vladimir Putin must now approve his election. Fortov said that if approved his key goal as RAS president would be to turn the academy into a generator of ideas for the advancement of Russia. "The academy has good potential ... and must take a more active, I would even say slightly aggressive, position [in generating ideas]," he said. Responding to persistent criticism the RAS had become ineffective and should be disbanded, he said bureaucracy in scientific institutions was to blame and he intended to curb that. "We are choked by bureaucracy, with the number of [regulatory] documents, reports and senseless notes exceeding all logical limits," Fortov said.


*-- Scientists suggest cosmic 'billiards' to protect Earth from asteroids --*
MOSCOW - One way to protect earth from the risk of asteroid collisions would be to use tame asteroids in a serious game of cosmic billiards, Russian scientists suggest. Several near-Earth asteroids could be towed closer to Earth to serve as a cache of celestial projectiles against incoming space threats, Natan Eismont of the Space Research Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences said. The orbiting captured asteroids could be "lined up" so that one passes 50,000 to 100,000 miles from Earth every few weeks or months, ready to be used as projectiles to target non-catalogued and hazardous asteroids, research by the Space Research Institute and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow suggested. "I was skeptical about it myself, until we actually tried to do computer modeling of the situation," Eismont, one of the project's authors, told RIA Novosti. It is currently possible to send an unmanned Proton rocket -- a staple of the Russian space program -- to land on an asteroid, carrying up to 2 tons of rocket fuel, Eismont said. Properly anchored, the rocket fuel could then ignite at a designated time, changing the tame asteroid's orbit to intercept an asteroid dangerously approaching Earth and diverting it. The program would cost about $1 billion per Proton launch, he said, and the equipment needed to maneuver an asteroid into position could be developed within 10 to 12 years. "Nobody can tell you when the next asteroid will come, but everyone would tell you that come it will," Eismont said.

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