Scientists, like film producers, are used to considering different apocalyptic scenarios, such as the sudden eruption of an asteroid heading straight for planet Earth. And they have found a promising solution, not so far from a Hollywood scenario: using nuclear rays to deflect the big rock from its trajectory, we learn from an article in the Guardian.
Physicists at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL)—whose primary mission is to develop, build, and test the nonnuclear components of America’s nuclear weapons—have turned this idea into reality by showing how a nuclear explosion could save the world, if it were far enough away from Earth. To test this hypothesis, physicist Nathan Moore and his colleagues conducted an unprecedented experiment. In a vacuum chamber, they exposed small pieces of fictional asteroids to intense pulses of X-rays, similar to those emitted during nuclear explosions. They were able to record, down to the nanosecond, how the pulse of X-rays would reach the side of an asteroid.
A big rocket
The phenomenon is so violent that it heats the surface of the asteroid to tens of thousands of degrees, producing a plume of gas capable of deflecting the asteroid from its trajectory. In fact, if the calculations are done correctly, the shock of the X-rays against the asteroid would be enough to postpone the apocalypse until later.
Unlike Bruce Willis in Armageddon (who drops a bomb directly into a hole in the asteroid), it is more efficient to carry out a nuclear explosion far from the target, so that the radiation then pushes the big rock. “The vaporized material is thrown to one side, producing a force that propels the asteroid into the…
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