Robin George Andrews (W.W.Norton)
FOR a generation of scientists 鈥� and science fiction fans 鈥� 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 isn鈥檛 from super-large space rocks that could be on a collision course with us, but from the smaller ones.
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We have spotted those larger bodies that could careen into our world and know we are safe from them for now, says Andrews, but the slightly smaller ones that slip through our monitoring systems could cause nearly as much havoc. Some 25,000 asteroids, each large enough to destroy a city, are on orbits that could threaten Earth, but we don鈥檛 yet know where they are.
This vividly written book, which reads as much like a thriller as the film plots it is trying to correct, helps explain the risks involved. From the first page, Andrews throws us into the action, with his own science-fictionalised look at an imagined asteroid collision with Seattle in 2046, which could create a hole about 1220 metres wide and nearly 500 metres deep at the point of impact. The language is beautifully chosen, and the future leaps into life through his words.
Books like this usually take one of two tacks. They can oversimplify, leaving slightly more scientifically experienced readers feeling unfulfilled as generalisation takes precedence over fact and detail is blurred in favour of readability. Or they can force readers into submission through scientifically accurate, but deathly prose.
Walking this tightrope is tricky. Well-sourced and rigorous analysis often doesn鈥檛 make for engaging writing. And if you commit the cardinal sin of judging this book by its cover 鈥� a schlocky sci-fi design, giving the impression of a young adult novel or 1970s B-movie 鈥� you might worry about the opposite. Neither are a concern here.
Andrews鈥檚 dexterity in explaining complicated concepts, including how to knock asteroids off-orbit, makes this book well worth picking up, but that verbal vivacity is matched by deep reporting.
He isn鈥檛 in the press room where the world鈥檚 media are cooped up at the September 2022 culmination of humanity鈥檚 wild, multi-year plan to deliberately crash a spaceship into an asteroid and change its trajectory, a NASA mission called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test). Instead, thanks to an entrepreneurial decision to shake off his media minders, he is at a barbecue held on the same campus, getting the real low-down among the staff who worked on the mission as they see it successfully pulled off.
The innate drama of defending against killer asteroids goes a long way towards explaining its appeal for Hollywood. But the detail of what it takes to compute the variables that go into launching a mission to disrupt an asteroid on course for us could easily turn a pacey yarn into a treacly mess.
Luckily Andrews never gets bogged down in the science, but also doesn鈥檛 leave out any important information. You will finish the book as informed as you are entertained.
You may also end it feeling a little worried. Talk of potential disasters is prone to invoke apprehension, of course 鈥� and one chapter, where Andrews sits in on an exercise that war-games the international response to an imminent asteroid hit that results in the entire destruction of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is hauntingly written. But there is positivity too, as we realise the brightest minds are working to protect us from doomsday.
Chris Stokel-Walker is a writer based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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