[Defiant]

Wouldn’t the size of an object that block’s Betelgeuse’s emissions from the earth be tiny, because it is so far away? It is a dot in our sky, what if we could place a basketball sized object in space at the exact distance where it blocks the star completely, and keep it in position there? Would something like that be possible?

[Bogie]

One of the problems, as I understand it, is that some of the debris gets captured by our sun’s gravity and creates a “long period” comet. The comet then goes way out to the Ort cloud and , many years later, returns. The fact that it keeps making passes ups the chances of getting hit.

A good read is: https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Serpent-Victor-Clube/dp/0876633793/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1490282825&sr=1-4&keywords=the+cosmic+serpent

[Bogie]

BTW, there is a school of thought that believes that we could save earth from a strike by an Apollo asteroid that our computers show us will be striking, if we could knock it 1 degree off course when it is way out there.

The idea is to use a nuke.