Yay. We Do Have Asteroid Defense Programs!

Golly gee whiz, videos of a meteor hitting the Earth this week and also a close asteroid fly by kind of give all a glimpse of the impermanence of our lives.  We can eat all the fruits and vegetables we want, exercise, get good sleep, to increase our life expectancy but a meteor might fall on our heads and kill us anyway.

Damn!.

Might as well have some laughs in the meantime.

[For those still concerned, meet the NEOShield, an actual in-the-works collaboration between private and national research institutions across Europe, Russia, and the United States working toward, as its name implies, a shield for earth. No, not a big surrounding enclosure, but a series of techniques to deflect not just meteorites, but also other, even larger Near Earth Objects, like asteroids. (Again, exhale: today an asteroid is coming as close as we've ever known, but it's not hitting the planet. Today still is a rare day.) Here are the three methods the project is developing. They're all the stuff of intergalactic childhood fantasy andvideo games:]
Read more: Global Asteroid Shield - Earth Shield in the Works - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/the-global-asteroid-shield-15104338#ixzz2L79xuuDv