Remember " Chicken Little " ? Was the little critter right?

Asteroid, Meteor, Deep Impact, and now, Armageddon; how come all the " death raining from the heavens " movies lately? Is there something really coming? Is the limited planetary lineup, beginning to occur shortly around the turn of the millenium, going to cause more space debris to come Earth's way? Interesting thought, huh? We all know gravity pulls objects toward the source; will the larger planets being lined up " behind " the Earth cause a larger than normal amount of junk to be pulled our direction? I just don't know if we should be alarmed or not about it; or if the powers that be would tell us if we should be concerned. If you are interested, contact a local observatory and talk to a qualified astronomer about the planetary lineup and its possible effects.

This whole asteroid thing made me think about the possibility of building an asteroid defense system. Maybe everyone could agree that the threat of our extinction would be a good reason to build one ( like, why do I think anyone would care when we don't even have a ballistic missile defense system ). But, maybe a defense designed to save the entire world, not just one country, would get more interest; and even worldwide support. It might help to bring the different countries of the world together a little bit, like the " international " space station.

Now that we have decided to build an asteroid defense system, what would it be? A large space based energy beam of some kind like in Star Trek or Star Wars? Maybe some big nuke(s) on missiles out between us and the moon? Both of these ideas do have their own drawbacks.

The energy weapon idea has the most obvious drawback; we don't have the technology yet. Or, at least, we the public aren't being told about it. This defense system idea will have to wait until we are able to construct the " beam " and deliver it to whatever orbit it would have to be in.

The big nuke idea seems to be one that could be done with our current level of available technology. It has a political drawback; we signed a treaty years ago not to put nukes in space. Maybe we could get around this by having the UN ( I can't believe I am about to say this ) control the weapon. We could also work in some safeguard that wouldn't allow it to be pointed ( targeted ) at the Earth or maybe even the Moon ( for the safety of a possible future moonbase ).

Don't be alarmed; the sky is not really falling - famous last words...

- Bongo ( I wonder if there was a dinosaur named " Chicken Little " ? )