Physicists Discover Nuclear Explosions Might Be Able to Steer Asteroids

Amaze Lab

It’s essentially the same premise as the film Armageddon, however experts now say that if an asteroid was headed our way, a nuclear blast might just be enough to divert it. Using lab-based analogues, physicists have produced a proof-of-concept for just such an eventuality.

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00:00it's essentially the same premise as the film armageddon however experts now say that if an

00:08asteroid was headed our way a nuclear blast might just be enough to divert it experts recently

00:13conducted experiments in a lab finding that if a large asteroid was on a collision course we

00:18could circumvent the drills and simply detonate a massive nuke nearby it in a lab physicists used a

00:23high frequency electromagnetic wave generator to produce a 1.5 megajoule x-ray they then pointed

00:29it at an asteroid analog a grain of silica glass which was briefly in free fall the x-ray burst

00:35which was masquerading as one produced by a nuclear blast peeled away a micrometer thick layer of glass

00:41and created a shockwave across its surface with the physicist saying this is a proof of concept of

00:46what would happen with an asteroid in space if a nuclear bomb was blown nearby adding that the

00:50blast and resulting x-ray burst would be enough to move an asteroid measuring around two to three

00:55miles in diameter off course while nasa's double asteroid redirect test was a success more research

01:01still needs to be done to ensure a collision with an asteroid could indeed redirect one of them

01:05entirely meaning it's nice to know that we have a proof of concept for plan b

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