Dr. Gianmarco Radice and a group of students from Glasgow University think they have a workable idea for redirecting an Earth-threatening asteroid: paint the sucker. Commonly envisioned schemes of blowing up asteroids (or detonating a bomb near them) could potential turn one deadly jumbo lump of ice and rock into a number of them. The Glasglow team believes that by painting parts of the asteroid (dark to increase temperature, light to decrease it), you could alter its course. The team has been given 300,000 pounds for three-year study on the feasibility of sending robot graffiti artists into space to go Christo all over any asteroids in our path (such as Apophis, a 390-meter ball of dirty-ice fun that could wreck havoc with Earth in 2036). Other methods will be studied too, such as using a space mirror to melt a portion of the asteroid to create a natural propellant stream.
Hardware Beyond the Hype