Meet the researchers testing the “Armageddon” approach to asteroid defense
1 min read
Summary
Scientists regularly find new asteroids heading towards Earth and work on ways to prevent them impacting.
The favoured method is to deflect them using a kinetic impact - hitting the asteroid to push it away.
This technique was demonstrated successfully by Nasa in September 2022.
But there are some asteroids which may be too big for this to work, and a nuclear explosion may be needed to move them.
That could violate international law and do great harm to Earth, as well as accidental nuclear fallout if the explosion went wrong.
To explore this option safely, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque used their Z machine to generate an x-ray blast like a nuclear explosion, on a very small and safe scale.
The results show that we could defend the Earth with a nuclear blast if we had to.