It looks like it is part of the skinningfrom the upper surface of a wing, immediately forward of the flap. (edit: forget that – no rivet holes along the upper edge….) No idea of type or country.

edit. I’d buy the bomb bay door idea. (Wing bay door?)

Amusing given that an extinction event sized NEO passed earth in 2009, 1/3 of the distance away than the moon is…. AND it wasn’t spotted until mere weeks away…..

Damn… i’d just IMDB’d it……. actually 2007, starring Cliff Curtis……

Why should it’s mass be less as it gets bigger?

Red Giants shed mass quickly as the gravitational forces on the outer limits of the star are considerably reduced.

problem is, by the time the sun gets big enough to do that, we’d be toast. A typical red giant is some 600 times the size of our sun, which would put it past Mars’ orbit by the time it started losing mass.

interesting article: http://www.universetoday.com/12648/will-earth-survive-when-the-sun-becomes-a-red-giant/

from the last ten minutes of frantic googing, it looks like the only advancement has been the passing of a Near Earth Objects survey budget…

One solar sail idea. (big words, sorry chaps…. 😛 )

http://www.universetoday.com/12906/an-elegant-proposal-for-near-earth-asteroid-deflection/

From my high level deductions (half sober, late at night) I can give you the primary school version:

Hit the meteor with something big enough to slow it down a bit. By the time it reaches a its collision point, the earth will have moved enough to avoid it. Hurrah, tea and biscuits time.

some good ones here: (half way down the page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance

The White paint theory is known as the Yarkovsky effect, but it would only work on asteroids smaller than 10km diameter

Personally, I’m going to adopt the Wile E Coyote stance and purchase a small umbrella…..

…or wear a hard hat AND high visibility vest – I will be invincible!

mildly vapourised.

somewhat obliterated.

It’d ruin your day, that’s for sure…..

EMP: Old weapons like this were Low yield nuclear bomb detonated at high altitude (stratosphere). Will kill all electrics within a few miles. Devices like that were to be the Soviet and Allied first strike which would mean that further missiles and bombers could not be tracked. Sound strategic sence. If you strapped one to the roof of your car, you’d be slightly killed.

These days, all you need to do is generate an EMF (using an electromagnet) to induce big voltages in little systems = overload. You can save your circuits by constructing a faraday cage around them….

and yes, you could strap one to the roof of your car….
http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/feature/ads_03-08/