EOS plans to make Earth into a real Death Star

EOS plans to make Earth into a real Death Star

Imagine space. You'd probably conjure up images of sleek starships, scary aliens or lightsaber fights in your mind. You wouldn't think of junk like scrap metal, screws or other pieces of inconsequential objects floating around in the inky blackness. In reality, that's exactly what's filling our skies. Broken off pieces of satellites, scattered remnants of defunct parts...that's what actually surrounds the Earth at any given time if you can see it from space. It's only a matter of time before these pieces do major damage to a satellite or even to space missions. In a world as dependent on satellites as ours, can you imagine how much chaos and disruption that would cause?

Enter EOS (Electronic Optic Systems). Remember when we reported on those Australian physicists who're working on a tractor beam? EOS is working on something similar, except this time, they're using lasers to move things in space. Not big parts, just teeny things like screws and whatnot. Since things move incredibly fast up in orbit, it's actually the smaller things that can cause the most damage because you don't see them coming.

As lasers exert pressure on whatever they land on, EOS plans to use them to push these small pieces of debris out of orbit and into reentry of Earth's atmosphere, where they'll burn up. Believe or not, but this is actually the easy part of the plan. The hard part is detecting those debris from the ground, as they're too small and blend in too well with the stars. EOS is working that right now though, and if they succeed, hope to have a network of lasers around the world working tirelessly to bring down these small pieces in a decade or two. The idea may sound far-fetched but it's apparently feasible enough that it has attracted aerospace giant Lockheed-Martin's attention.

Meanwhile, we're wondering how much longer after these lasers go up before they'll be weaponized, turning Earth into a Death Star.

Source: BBC