In article ,
John Wilkins  wrote:
>Anthony Cerrato  wrote:
>
>> And longer too, once we get manage to get that honking-big
>> asteroid splitting gun working.  :)           ...tonyC
>
>That's right. Instead of a massive amount of kinetic energy in one
>place, we want to disturb the ecosystems of the entire planet by
>spreading it around in slightly less damaging parcels.

Now, now.  If the seperate chunks have any motion at all
relative to each other (methinks they would) and if you
split the asteroid, say, a year before it collides with the
Earth, then those pieces will be spread over many tens of
thousands of kilometers-- only a minority of them would
strike the Earth.  

It makes for an interesting problem.  If there is, say, a
10% chance of the asteroid hitting the Earth, you would think
that people would want to do something about it.  But if your
only workable option is to trade a 10% chance of the whole 
thing hitting in one place, vs. a certainty of some littler
pices hitting in many different places...

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