LONDON - Scientists have found an unusual way to prevent our planet from overheating: Move it to a cooler spot.

All you have to do is send a few comets in the direction of Earth, and its orbit will be altered. Our world will then be sent spinning into a safer, colder part of the solar system.

This startling idea for improving our climate comes from a group of US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) engineers and American astronomers.

They say their plan could add another six billion years to the useful lifetime of our planet - effectively doubling its working life.

The plan put forward by Dr Laughlin, and his colleagues Don Korycansky and Fred Adams, involves carefully directing a comet or asteroid so that it passes close by our planet and transfers some of its gravitational energy to Earth.

"Earth's orbital speed would increase as a result and we would move to a higher orbit away from the Sun," Laughlin said.

Engineers would then direct their comet so that it passed close to Jupiter or Saturn.

The comet would pick up energy from one of these giant planets. Later its orbit would bring it back to Earth, and the process would be repeated.

In the short term, the plan provides an ideal solution to global warming, although the team was actually concerned with a more drastic danger.

The sun is certain to heat up in about a billion years and so "seriously compromise" our biosphere - by cooking us.

Hence the group's decision to try to save Earth.

The plan has one or two worrying aspects, however. For a start, space engineers would have to be very careful about how they directed their asteroid or comet towards Earth. The smallest miscalculation in orbit could fire it straight at Earth - with deadly consequences.

There is also the question of the Moon. As the current issue of Scientific American magazine points out, if Earth was pushed out of its current position it is "most likely the Moon would be stripped away from Earth," it states. This would radically upset our planet's climate.