Taking out meteors
I've always wondered about that line that's always trotted out in the movies about shooting an asteroid/meteor would just leave us facing a *lot* of deadly missiles rather than just one.
I would have thought (with my admittedly O Level physics knowledge) that increasing the surface area of an incoming object by shattering it would be a good thing - more surface area would mean more of it burning up as it hits the atmosphere.
I understand that it would mean that there would be more impacts over a wider area, but in terms of the Earth, again I think this would be better than one big impact surely?