Defending The Earth From Asteroids

I don't know if you know this or not, but the Earth has been getting buzzed by a lot of inter-space objects lately. Like, the meteorite that hit Russia a few weeks ago. Like, the pass-by of an asteroid that same day. Like, the three pass-bys this weekend. WTF is going on out there in space?

Phil Plait, astronomer and author of the scarily-titled Death From The Skies, says this isn't a new thing. There have always been scary death-rocks whizzing around out there (I'm paraphrasing, of course) we have just not been able to see them.

Fantastic. Thanks, Phil. That's a little like my grandma's not-comforting "Nothing's in the dark that isn't also there in the light." How'm I going to sleep now?

And what's really terrifying about these close encounters is that we didn't even see most of them coming! (Or so they say.) The big one that passed this weekend, we saw from about 6 months out. But that's too close to do anything about it, really.

I don't know what, exactly, we would do in the event we found an asteroid travelling on a collision course with Earth, anyway. Some of the suggestions have been:

1) Atomic bomb detonation to make it change path.
2) Laser array to make it change path.
3) Space probe collision to make it change path.
4) Send a team of deep-water oil drillers up to land on the asteroid, drill into its core and set off a bomb on the inside.

Now, I'm not an astrophysicist, but I did see Armageddon. And only one of these things has any chance of working.