Edtharan

What is even more funny is that he says that this is impossible. He flat out states that the continent can't move around on their plates. So the animation directly contradicts what he is saying. He says it right at the start (from 00:20 to 00:35). Then you can clearly see continent twisting al little later (01:40 to 01:53). If he can't even make a cartoon Earth shrink without violating what he says, what chance is the real world going to have to match up with what he says.

I am discussing this same video on another forum.

Hey Diddle diddle... I have actually met people that believed the Earth was flat . Either through ignorance passed down, or plain misunderstandings people do get confused about these things. If you think about it, most people don't usually deal with a lot of astronomical terms. Just like you might misunderstand about CPUs, GPUs or Co-Processors if you didn't know much about computers. Most of these people that make these mistakes, what they remember of astronomy at school is that the Universe is "out there" and that the Moon orbits the Earth. As the Moon is out there, then it is part of the Universe. The don't remember (or vaguely remember) stuff about planets, but as they are not obvious (like the moon and sun are) and they couldn't point them out to you, they are not though about. And the Stars just seem as if they are little lights in the sky, not actual objects. Also, a lot of the Sci-fi shows and books (at least the earlier ones) made a lot of little mistakes like this and this is usually what most people (who make these mistakes) are exposed to. They have learnt their terminology from sources that have made mistakes and then these mistakes perpetuate if they are never corrected. It is not all that surprising. You might confuse the function of a fuel injector and a turbo if you had only heard little bits about them and never understood the context they were used in. If you don't know a lot about a subject (and why should everybody what to learn about astronomy?), then you will make mistakes about it. It is only when they keep insisting that they are correct, or they use these mistakes to justify their beliefs (or knowingly perpetuate these errors) that there is a problem.

We need photon waxing (anyone seen a Brazilian photon?).

I used to work in a Science museum. You would be surprised at how many people (non astronomers) make this kind of mistake. I had heard people use the word "Universe" to mean everything from: The Earth Moo system" to "The Solar System" to "the Galaxy" and to "Galaxy Clusters". It is a common mistake and can usually be attributed to a slip of the tongue, or ignorance of the meaning of the word.

I meant: from the first species of Dinosaur that give the disease to the Pterodactyl. I understand that a Pterodactyl is not a Dinosaur. Sorry my wording was not clear .

I have been thinking a bit more about this since my last post. What if it was a retrovirus. If this virus, when inserting it's self into the genome of the host creature, made a change to the host that wasn't immediately lethal. What if the change produced a regressive "mutation" in the host, that is it wouldn't show up unless two "parents" have an offspring together. I am thinking an effect a bit like sickle cell anaemia. If one parent has it, then it is either neutral or maybe even beneficial (it might protect against other diseases like SCA does). But if two parents have it, then it becomes a disease. The result of this disease could be that it makes the offspring sterile. This of course would not be the primary effect of the disease. So animals can become infected with the retro virus, pass it along and not get too sick. However, if a creature that was infected mates with another that wasn't infected, then they produce an offspring with the retrovirus caused mutation in one of their chromosomes. As this progresses, the virus (due to the fact that it is not lethal) is able to spread widely and even cross species barriers (it would have the time), but as it develops, more and more animals will encounter another that has either been infected or carries the mutation. If these two mate, then they produce an offspring that is sterile. This kind of sterility has been used by humans (we use radiation to cause the sterility) to control insect plagues. I don't know if a retrovirus could cause such a mutation, but it could easily devastate large populations if it could. Also, the fact that this sterility is a regressive rather than a dominant trait means that it lies dormant in the population until it reaches a critical threshold and then reproduction becomes very difficult and the population (and ecosystems) crash. Of course, this is pure speculation in an attempt to think of a way that a disease could gain such a wide spread foothold that it could cause such a mass extinction event across multiple species and ecosystems (not to mention geographic locations too).

If it wasn't for the fact that we are able to rapidly travel to all parts of the globe, HIV would not have been as serious as it is. It would have been confined to a small part of the world and probably evolved (along with the humans in that area) to less deadly to them. Take for example diseases like Chicken Pox. To those of us that have been exposed to it (and our immune systems have acquired resistance) and the fact that we have evolved along side this disease for millennia, this disease is not too serious (it can be fatale in a few cases), however, when Europeans were colonising the world, they brought this disease to populations that had not been exposed to it and so were not evolved to handle it (and the diseases they have, we are not evolved to handle), and so it spread through their populations killing most of them. Evolution towards non lethality is both in the host and the disease. However, it is also true that there are some disease that appear and are extremely lethal and the hosts and the disease don't have the time to adapt to each other. There can also be other factors, like the disease being able to exist within several different hosts (a bit like what they think is occuring with Bird flu at the moment). As the disease starts to cross species boundaries, it has two (or more) hosts that it can exist in, so if it is deadly to one, it is not too big of a problem for it. Even in this scenario, if the disease is going to spread in the second population, it still needs to evolve less lethality or it will still only be a local problem. If a disease was virulent enough to kill its hosts quick enough so that they couldn't adapt, then it would also kill it's hosts fast enough to limit it's expansion. For this disease to also kill off the dinosaurs, it would have to cross species boundaries many, many times which requires long repeated exposures. These two situations are almost mutually exclusive. Is it possible that it could occur? Yes. Is it even remotely likely? No. This would be one way that it could work. But it still has the problem of jumping species multiple times as well as crossing geographical barriers. However, as there were no fast transportation systems (no jets, highways, etc), it would have taken generations for this kind of disease to spread across the world. So if it make them all sterile, how would have it been able to take generations to spread? It would have to be more than 2 superbugs as Gondwana and Laurasia were also breaking up at the time the Dinosaurs went extinct. Not to mention all the small islands and such that existed. For the superbug to hitch a ride on Pterodactyls, it would first have to cross the species barrier (remember that Pterodactyls are not dinosaurs) to them, not be lethal enough to kill them all (but then re-evolve that lethality later) or make them too ill to fly between continents, and finally re-cross the species barrier back to a different species of dinosaur. And this has to not only occur ones, but many times across every continent and island. If this superbug didn't get to every single island, then there would ahve been an island (maybe like Madagascar), where they could have survived as that ecosystem would have not been decimated by the superbug and therefore would have remained intact. Even with modern humans ability to travel anywhere in the world quickly, the chances that something like this occuring with us is astronomically small. Imagine this occuring without passenger jets or other modern transportation systems. Disease just is not capable of wiping out all of the Dinosaurs, even if it was bad enough to disrupt ecosystems, the world is just too remote for it to occur.

At the K-T boundary, the super continent (Pangea) had already broken up, so there would have been very little transfer between the new continents (Gondwana and Laurasia - and these were also breaking up around the K-T boundary too). This means that a plague that started in one location would not have been able to travel (easily) to another continent. Unlike today, we have international travel that allows us to move quickly between all parts of the world. This is what has allowed the pandemics to occur. It is possible for diseases to spread over natural barriers (mountains, oceans, etc) like what is happening with migratory birds and H5N1 influenza. So even if there did evolve a disease that effected enough individuals in an ecosystem to crash it, there were many different ecosystems and on several different continents. This makes ant global plague almost impossible. But, a disease that is fatal enough to wipe out entire species will have a negative feedback effect on it transfer (as the carrier species would be subject to it, or the species that it relies on would get wiped out). Also, diseases are a "parasite" as they can only exist within their hosts. So any disease that wipes out it's host species would be on an evolutionary dead end. As the disease started wiping out it's hosts, it would have less and less chance to transfer it's self, whereas a disease that was less lethal would have more hosts to transfer to and so would out compete the more lethal strains. Also, any individuals that had a resistance to a highly lethal strain would have a major advantage, so as the disease progressed through a population, and wiped out most of them, those that were left would be faced with lots of resources (less competition) and a resistance to the disease. These survivors would encounter fewer animals that had the disease (due to the fact that there are less animals, any one the had the disease would be more likely to die before encountering another to transfer the disease), and so would transfer the disease less often. Coupled with an increase resistance, this means that a highly lethal disease would most likely make it's self extinct before it's host population (or the host population would be come resistant). More likely though, the disease would evolve into a less virulent or less lethal strain.

"Vacuum Energy" is not the same as "absence of air". Vacuum energy is a theoretical conclusion of Quantum Mechanics (as demonstrated by the Casimir effect). What you seem to be talking about is using the pressure differential of an empty space as compared to the atmosphere to provide energy. It is possible to generate electricity from Air pressure (what you seem to be talking about), and there have been experiments attempting to run vehicles off of air pressure. But the costs of launching a rocket into space to bring back a sealed container without air in it would be far more expensive than just running a vacuum pump here on earth to remove the air from a container. Also, a large enough container, evacuated of air, might even "float" in the atmosphere, much like a steel ship floats on water. Of course, this would depend on the weight of the container and how much volume it takes up (just like a steel ship). If the weight of the air it displaces is greater than the weight of the container, it will "float" in the air (I bet Archimedes never though of that ). However, it is extremely doubtful that a material would be strong enough to withstand that kind of air pressure and weigh less than the air it displaces. So: Air pressure differential is not the same as the "Vacuum Energy" of quantum mechanics. They might use the same word "Vacuum", but they are not the same.

Diseases can leave traces in fossils. Have a look at the "Big Al" fossil. It shows that "Big Al" had a chronic infection in his foot. Not all diseases will leave a trace, but it is possible. Also, there were many species of Dinosaur, so this disease would have had to cross species boundaries. It would be a bit like a disease that today effected all Mammals (with none having any resistance - otherwise there would be survivors). Plus, there were many more species of Dinosaur than there are Mammals today, so this disease would have had to have been far worse than any plague known. So it is extremely unlikely that a disease wiped out the dinosaurs.

The Airlock has an analogy in Cells. In the Cell walls there exist proteins that act as pumps and channels that allow molecules in and out of the cell ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)#Cell_membrane:_A_cell.27s_defining_boundary ). So attaching small pumps to the outside (with a hole drilled into the Dome) would make the system like a cell. An airlock is just a bigger version of the pumps that allow the passage of larger objects (people and machinery).

You could attach pumps to the outside of the dome and then have them drill through to the inside. The pumps can be used to pump air into the dome (possibly from the surface) and pump the water (if any is in there) out. To get in and out, you could attach an "Airlock" to the outside of the dome. First you would need to make a water tight seal to the dome, say a large rubber ring pressed against the side (or welded on) of the dome. Next you need to attach the Airlock to the seal. The airlock contains a set of two doors and a pump that can pump water and air into and out of the Airlock (maybe with connections to the surface to get the air to pump into the airlock). Once this Airlock is attached to the Dome, you can flood the inner chamber (between the double doors) of the Airlock with water and open the outer door. Get into the airlock (with drilling equipment) and close the outer doors. Next, pump air into the Airlock and the water out. You can now open the inner doors to expose the outer surface of the Dome. Using the Drilling equipment you can then drill through the wall of the Dome and form a passage into the interior of the Dome. Entering the dome will require you to (the inner and outer doors doors should both be sealed except when needed for this procedure): 1) Flood the airlock with water 2) Open the outer doors of the Airlock 3) Enter the Airlock through the outer doors 4) Seal the outer doors of the Airlock 5) Pump air into the Airlock and pump the water out 6) Open the inner doors of the Airlock 7) Enter the Dome through the inner Doors 8) Seal the inner doors Exiting the Dome will require you to (the inner and outer doors doors should both be sealed except when needed for this procedure): 1) Pump the water out of the Airlock and Pump air in. 2) Open the inner doors 3) Enter the Airlock 4) Seal the inner doors 5) Pump water into the airlock and the air out 6) Open the outer doors 7) Leave the Airlock through the outer doors 8) Seal the outer doors

Excellent video. I my self have experimented with some evolutionary algorithms and what he has done with the clocks is great (I had though of doing something similar myself). I agree that they are not going to look that up themselves. However, when in a discussion with a creationist, it allows us to direct them to that video. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, how many words is a 9 and a half minute video worth .

Where to start... 1) Not all mutations are negative. It stands to reason that if a mutation can change the letters of DNA to be one thing, then it is possible that it could randomly change it back (or to it). The thing is - it is completely random. If it was only bad, then this would not be completely random. Now, the chances of a helpful mutation appearing is quite small, but it is possible (remember if a mutation could change a G to an A then it must also be able to change an A to a G, or all DAN would end up as a single letter type). This means that mutations can be "reversed". So what is bad can be turned into good. So, your claim that it can't happen is completely wrong. 2) Well first you say that it is impossible (which I refuted above), but now you are saying it is possible. Which is it? Well Evolution says that new and helpful features can be evolved. You give certain statistics 1 in 1*10^50 chance of it happening. Where did you get these statistics? Would a feature that only required the mutation of a single gene have a greater, lesser or equal chance than one that required several genes to be mutated? As a reliable "statistic" you have provided no connect in which we need to make sense of it. On its own, that statistic is pretty meaningless. However, lest assume (for the sake of argument) that it does have some meaning. Take the common house fly. They can reproduce approximately every 12 to 14 days and a female can lay over 9,000 eggs. So 9,000 each generation from every 2 parents. Over summer (3 months which equals around 90 days), divide that by the generation time of 14 days gives 6 (a bit more really) generations. If all 9,000 flys survive, that would be 9,000 * 9,000 * 9,000 * 9,000 * 9,000 * 9,000= 59,049,000,000,000,000,000. That is only over one breeding season in one year. I'll leave it up to you to do the maths, but how many flys might have existed in your lifetime? Even if only 5% of the flys survive to breed, how many then? Given 1,000 years, how many flys are there? Life reproduces exponentially. If each animal was good enough to survive to breeding (that is evolution did not exist), then there would be (after only say 100 years), far too many creatures to be able to survive on this planet (I estimate that it would actually exceed the volume and mass of the earth by several times). Something must be killing off those animals that don't make it to breeding age. Could this be the fact that mutations usually cause animals to survive poorly? What if one pair of flys produced offspring that allowed 6% of them to survive to breeding age? Then this pair of flys would have more offspring able to breed, so there would be more new flys with this inherited trait. Lets work it out: Starting with 1 pair and each pair produces 9,000 eggs but only 5% survive to breed. This gives us 450 breeders from each pair (this is assuming no in breeding) and each pair giving us a further 450 breeders. Over 6 generations this gives: 450 * 450 * 450 * 450 * 450 * 450 = 8,303,765,625,000,000. Now if we look at the 6% breeders: 9,000 * 6% = 540. 6 generations = 540 * 540 * 540 * 540 * 540 * 540 = 24,794,911,296,000,000. That is over 16,00,000,000,000,00 more! That is only with a 1% increase in successful breeding rate over one breeding season in one year! Life reproduces exponentially. This is important because a small increase leads to a huge difference. This is flat out wrong. There have been many cases where mutations have had positive effects. Each year pesticide companies spend millions of dollars in researching new pesticides. Why woudl they throw money away like this if there was no reason? The shareholders would be up in arms. These pesticides have never before existed in nature so the pests should have no defences against them (that is no genes coding for defences against that particular chemical) as they have never before needed any defences against them. However, the pests will experience mutations. This will occasionally give one of them a resistance to these chemicals. These will survive and then they will be able to breed (whereas all the others have been killed). Their offspring survive and because they inherited the resistance form their parents, they can survive the next dosing of pesticides and then breed. Generation after generation go on like this, sometimes the mutations reduce the resistance and these don't go on to breed (or produce less offspring), usually there is no significant mutation (that effects the breeding potential of the generations) and these go on as normal. However, occasionally, rate though it is, they mutate again, giving increased resistance (maybe the mutation was to code for a protein that neutralises the pesticide and not they produce more of the protein - doubling of a gene sequence is a known form of mutation), these then have a higher resistance and so produce more and offspring than their parents or the ones with the reduced pesticide resistance. Maybe this is just a 1% increase overall in survival rate, but as you could see with the flys, 1% can be a big advantage. Eventually, this pesticide is just not able to kill enough of the pests to be useful any more. If evolution could not produce new and positive effects, like the resistance to a toxin (pesticide) that had never before existed in nature, then how come pesticide companies have to spend so much money in researching new pesticides? And, that old pesticides stop working? The situation with pesticides and pests is a perfect example of Evolution in Action. It actually proves that evolution is occuring. If evolution didn't occur, then a single type of pesticide would eventually be able to wipe out it's target species in no time at all. "Archaeopteryx" (for the correct spelling) is a link between Dinosaurs and Birds. The name actually means: Ancient Feather or Ancient Wing (archaios means ancient and pteryx means wing or feather). It is not a link between reptiles and Mammals. What you probably are wanting is a Cynodont. Like mammals, they had fur, and like mammals they very likely produced milk (you can tell by the juveniles teeth). But, like reptiles their back bone flexed side to side (unlike mammals that flexes front to back), among other traits that are typically seen as reptilian. They are not a "Mammal", but neither are they a "Reptile". They are in fact a "transition" species (actually all species are a transition species if you think about it). But going back to Archaeopteryx: It displays features of Birds, namely feathers. But how many birds do you know that have teeth? How many birds do you know that have claws on their wings? Actually there is one bird that I have heard of, but only in the juveniles (I can't remember it's name though). So it is not quite a bird, but it is not quite a reptile. Sounds like a transition species to me. The Coelacanth did not evolve into land animals. The Coelacanth is a modern animals and an ancestor of it would have evolved into both land animals and the modern Coelacanth. This ancestor species might have had very different behaviours than the modern Coelacanth. It might have existed nearer to the surface for one thing. Also, the Coelacanth is only one possibility. It might have been a related species, or even only a distantly related species. The Coelacanth just looks very similar to what the fossil ancestors of land vertebrates looked like. However, due to its similarities, it is quite likely that they are related (but there have been around 360,000,000 years of evolution between the amphibian ancestor and the modern Coelacanth.

It's a random event' date=' correct no more often than chance would dictate.[/quote'] It is not random. It is a product of selective reporting or remembering things differently to what happened. How many times in a life time will one person think that something has happened to someone they know. Lots. It is called worrying and we all do it. But, out of all those time you got it wrong, you might get it right (or nearly right) and then this stick out in your mind, not because you were really right, but because you worry. Secondly, memories can change. Scientists have found that when we remember something we rewrite that memory. So, you might have remembered that one time you worried about the person that was injured, then in doing so you rewrite that memory with details of what happened to them and then the next time you remember it those details are included too. This makes you think that what you actually did was to "predict" the accident, but all it was was worry and retroactive rewriting of you memory. Here is an experiment. Each time you think that something has happened to someone you know, write it down on a an index card (with the time and date you had this "prediction"). Then when you next see that person, if that "prediction didn't come true, throw that index card into a box labelled "Wrong", if it did come true place it is a box labelled "True". How full will the "Wrong" box get before you get a "True" response? Writing them down (with the date) is to help safe guard against retroactive memory rewriting. Also, if you seem to "remember" making a correct prediction, you can check it against what is written.

The term Extra-Sensory Perception is a bit of an Oxymoron. To perceive something then you need a Sense for it. So how can you perceive something without a Sense? To date, there have never been any controlled experiments that prove that there exists "Extra-Awarenesses". Think about this in terms of evolution. If there was a method that allowed a creature to see the future, then it would never be eaten by a predator (or if a predator, when the prey would escape and so therefore not have to waste energy attempting to catch it). This would be such a huge evolutionary advantage that if such abilities could exist, then they would almost certainly have evolved. Also, reading minds, would eliminate the need for communication methods that would reveal ones location (so then why do all animals still use communication systems that expose them?) This kind of thinking can be applied to any "Extra-Sensory Perception" and it shows that such things can't exist, or if they did they would be common place (and so not extra-sensory).

Only during the "explosion". You can have the interior of the sphere at 1 atmosphere, but then the structure of the sphere has to be able to withstand the difference in pressure. If you had identical pressures, then the surface of the bubble can be as thin and membranous as you like.

The main problem I see with this is that when the explosion occurs, it pushes everything outwards. This leaves an empty void inside the bubble and the pressure outside would collapse it. Just normal air pressure is 1kg/cm^2 at around sea level. When you go underwater, this level increases dramatically the further you go underwater. I think it is at 1 atmosphere (1kg/cm^2) for ever 10 metres you go down, but I am not sure (so correct me if I am wrong).

I make long posts because I am interested in what you have to say. Just because I disagree with you does n ot mean that I don't read or understand what you write. To think that if someone disagrees with you, then they must not have bothered to attempt to understand you is small minded. What if someone went to all the trouble to read and understand your posts, but then found that you were wrong? Would you believe them? Or do you think that you are so intelligent and so infallible that you can never make any mistakes at all evener in your life? Can you accept the fact that you can be wrong, and that if someone says that you are wrong it is not out of mean spiritedness, or just because they have some sinister grudge against you? Can you understand that someone might actually say you are wrong because they when you to be right? I started off reading you essays and wanting you to be right. I was interested in helping you to fix any errors in your essays. I would have liked to contribute something that would advance the worlds understanding of science and how the worlds around them works. But guess what. Because of your attitude to me and others that have attempted to contribute, you have driven us away. Because of the way you have treated us, we now have reason not to take anything you post seriously. That is why you end up in pseudo-science. Not because we dislike you or what you have to say, but because we wanted to help you and you treated us badly. Don't blame us for your actions.

The phrasing of that statement indicates that even if we could find evidence of time travel you would not accept it. So what would the point be of us even attempting to give you evidence? How about indirect evidence? If there was some phenomena that we could measure, that was not time travel, but it relied on the assumptions that our current model of time is correct and that, that model allowed time travel in certain circumstances, would you accept that as evidence? Well, if you will accept that indirect evidence then I give you the evidence of Light and how it bends in a gravitational field. For light to behave as it does in a gravitational field, space must be curved into a 4th dimension and that dimension must act as a time dimension. According to all observations made on the behaviour of light within a gravitational field, this has to be the way it really is, otherwise light would not follow the path it does in a gravitational field, it would curve either more or less than it does. I require evidence before I will accept something. I also require evidence to stop believing in something too. The reason being is that before you dismiss something as false, you should have reason to believe that it is false. You have provided no correct evidence for us to not accept the current theory of time (which there is evidence for, just not direct evidence), and neither have you provided any evidence that your alternative is correct. So, by your own claim: we should not just accept something without any evidence for it. I challenge you to present evidence that the current theory is incorrect before we accept that it is incorrect. We have multiple times, but you don't seem to accept it. Why is that? My evidence: 1) Light curves by a specific and predictable amount in a gravitational field. 2) This can only be explained if space is curved into the 4th dimension and that dimension is actually Time. If it is only space that is distorted (twisted), then either the gravitational field will be too strong or weak (this is why Newtonian gravity has been shown to be incorrect - among other reasons), or the Light would curve by different amounts (or not at all). Can you come up with an explanation that gives as accurate a result for the curvature of light in a gravitational field as the current theory. If not, then your alternative can't be correct as it would be giving results that differ to reality. I know that as part of your presented alternative you have proposed that the velocity of Light needs to be variable, but this has knock on effects over a large swathe of physics. If light could have a variable speed, then calculations like the amount of energy released by matter/antimatter annihilations would be different for different observers, or many other effects which have not been observed (which means that if any alternative requires it then the alternative has to be incorrect).

look for a Touch lamp in your house. I used to be able to do this quite regularly (and even used it to freak out some friends ). We figured that the touch lamp was sensitive, and that any slight electrical disturbance in the house would cause the touch lamp to turn on or off. I have an accomplice in the other room that was listening to what we were doing and then turned on several lights at the same time. This would cause the touch lamp to turn on or off at command. Now, about your experience, it was probably that the light in the room was about to blow and maybe (a big maybe here) that when you screamed it caused the light filament to break (may be wobble a bit and then break). Now I reckon that you didn't turn off all the lights. I think that most of the lights in the house could already have been off, but because the sudden darkness occurred unexpectedly, you remember it as all the light turning off. Our memories are actually very fluid things and they can be rewritten just by trying to remember the event. Light here in Australia usually, when turned "down" are actually on (up of off). You can get sensors that detect the presence of a person in a room, and if your school has these in the class, then they would be used to save electricity. If it detects that no people are in the room it turns off the lights (even if the switch is "down"), as soon as it detects that people are in the room, it will turn on the lights. Next time you are in that room, look for a small white box like object with a curved surface near the top or bottom and it might have a red blinking light in it. This is an inferred detector and it would be used to detect people in the room. They are also common in security systems as they can just as easily be used to turn on an alarm as they are able to turn on lights.

The question here is: What is meant by "Energy"? Actually I would consider Life at its "simplest remove" as a complex chemical reaction. It doesn't really "Store" energy, except as a regulatory means.

A solution to this might be to divert it into the Moon. If it collides with the Moon, then it can no longer collide with Earth. Sure there will be some ejecta, but it will be smaller and the ejecta that did reach Earth would then likely burn up in the atmosphere (and being smaller, the impacts would be a lot smaller if they did hit Earth). However, a really large asteroid would not be able to be handled in this way and diverting it for a complete miss would be the only solution.

Why? Please then explain how gravity effects objects. You have justy made another claim without any support.