00:00if an asteroid was headed our way what would we do well if the movies had it their way we would
00:08nuke it however experts have long said that at best that would likely only break the asteroid
00:13up into many pieces which would still rain down on us but now a new study has sought to see if
00:18blowing one up near an asteroid might be able to push it off course instead they developed a
00:23computer simulation to test a technique called nuclear ablation or the explosion's radiation
00:27actually vaporizes part of the space rock surface that vapor is then predicted to produce thrust
00:32and push the asteroid away from its current trajectory they say this is an extremely
00:37computationally taxing prediction process as this study is looking to track the very photons
00:42penetrating into the asteroid from the explosion this new hypothetical model follows nasa's
00:46successful double asteroid redirect test or dart mission last year where they slowed the rotation
00:51of the dimorphous asteroid by an astounding 33 minutes simply by crashing a small spacecraft
00:56into it but the researchers who developed this simulation model say that in the event an impact
01:01scenario was discovered we would want every tool available at our disposal and nuclear weapons
01:06have the highest ratio of energy density per unit of mass of any human technology
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