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Today's SF Short Story Idea

Scientists on Earth detect a large asteroid on a likely collision course with the planet. They have time to analyze the situation and develop a plan. Analysis of the composition of the asteroid shows that it is likely too dense to break into small enough pieces with the amount of explosives or even nuclear devices they could launch that distance, assuming they all were on target. The best plan seems to be to deflect it, strike it just hard enough to make it miss. Unfortunately, the calculations based on the spin of the asteroid and its movement relative to the planet make it an extremely risky scenario. The interfaces designed to simulate the situation are refined to be more intuitive, since there seems to be a high degree of chaos in the system, and results vary wildly. One night, the simulation programmers decide to try putting a billiards interface on the system, and have a contest to make The World's Most Important Pool Shot. Their results are actually slightly better than they had achieved with the other interfaces. A call goes out for better pool players to try it. They get even better results. And soon it becomes clear, someone really will have to take the shot and try to save the Earth...