00:04if an asteroid was headed our way what would we do well if the movies had it their way we
00:08would
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
00:18if
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 and
00:33push the asteroid away from its current trajectory they say this is an extremely computationally
00:38taxing prediction process as this study is looking to track the very photons penetrating into the
00:43asteroid from the explosion this new hypothetical model follows nasa's successful double asteroid
00:48redirect test or dart mission last year where they slowed the rotation of the dimorphous asteroid by an
00:53astounding 33 minutes simply by crashing a small spacecraft into it but the researchers who
00:58developed this simulation model say that in the event an impact scenario was discovered we would
01:03want every tool available at our disposal and nuclear weapons have the highest ratio of energy density per
01:08unit of mass of any human technology
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