Engineers set their sites on asteroid deflection
Pioneering engineers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow are developing an innovative technique based on lasers that could radically change asteroid deflection technology. The research has unearthed the possibility of using a swarm of relatively small satellites flying in formation and cooperatively firing solar-powered lasers onto an asteroid this would overcome the difficulties associated with current methods that are focused on large unwieldy spacecraft.
A step into the unknown
New or “disruptive” technologies take time to be adopted by the mainstream and the challenge of making something completely new for mass market can be daunting. Why is this? Because human nature has a tendency to stick with what it knows and understands leftfield thinking can appear risky what we do works, so why change?
Becky Silverton writes...
A report coming out of the Centre for Economics and Business Research suggests that scrapping bank holidays would add £19bn to Britain’s annual economic output, because of the extra contribution that the service sector would make over those additional eight working days.