Chinese scientists have a crazy plan to lasso asteroids and bring them back to the ground in blankets

We thought launching convertibles in space with a David Bowie soundtrack was as crazy as possible

We were wrong.

A team of astrophysicists just announced plans for asteroid lbado and bring back all this damn Earth

Scientists from the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Science is confident that they can achieve this, and they described the mission of a crowd of optimists at a recent technology conference in Shenzhen

. choose your player. Researchers will focus on smaller asteroids "just a few hundred tons", which limits the search to objects of about 32 feet in diameter (slightly longer than the London double-decker bus)

A Once the target is selected, a robot swarm of the probes – yes, really – will trap the asteroid in some kind of butterfly net to delicately lead it to the Earth

This is where things get break down into a theoretical fantasy (No, not before). Objects entering the Earth's atmosphere usually incinerate during the descent. To prevent the asteroid from sinking into the smoke, our hive of robot probes should then wrap it in a thermal protection blanket that can also slow the speed of the asteroid to 7.7 miles per second (25,200 miles per hour) at 459 feet per second (313 miles per hour – slower than a Boeing 777).

Of course, there are many unanswered questions. Namely: How do you safely control where this captured asteroid would land? If it dives into an ocean (most likely given the percentage of the surface of our planet that is covered with water) the asteroid could be rendered useless. If it lands near a populated area, the risk to human life becomes uncomfortably high.

With all these caveats, you may wonder why researchers are so determined to see this idea through. The scientist Li Mingtao pointed out that this could be a valuable tool against asteroids close to the Earth, redirecting the potentially dangerous towards a safer trajectory.

A more likely reason, however, would be the rich deposits of precious metals on board. an asteroid. Psyche 16 – an asteroid in orbit between Mars and Jupiter – has been evaluated at 700 quintillions. The first country to exploit an asteroid will have access to a sudden and unlimited wealth …

And what started as a small theoretical experiment presented at a conference full of technical nerds in China could reverse the balance of the world power.