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Earth

Forget Hollywood, science has real plans to defend us from asteroids

Forget Armageddon-sized rocks, just one of 25,000 smaller asteroids could destroy a city on Earth. How to Kill an Asteroid by Robin George Andrew shows how science plans to save the planet

By Chris Stokel-Walker

30 October 2024

D5YXF5 A Meteor glowing as it enters the Earth's atmosphere

A meteor burns up as it nears Earth, unlike asteroids that can hit the surface and wreak havoc

James Blake/Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust

How to Kill an Asteroid
Robin George Andrews (W.W.Norton)

FOR a generation of scientists – and science fiction fans – Hollywood movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact have helped shape and scare society. The risk of an asteroid wreaking havoc on our planet, wiping out large swathes of Earth and the humans on it, are real.

But as science journalist Robin George Andrews writes in How to Kill an Asteroid: The real science of planetary defence, the danger…

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