Oct 08, 2021 23:00:00

You can save the earth from destruction by 'blasting an asteroid that is likely to collide with the earth with a nuclear weapon'

The movie '

Armageddon ' depicts the protagonists taking on the mission of setting a nuclear bomb inside an asteroid that is likely to collide with the Earth and changing its orbit by the explosion. A paper published by an American research team showed that such a 'blow up an asteroid with nuclear weapons' solution was actually effective in avoiding the destruction of the earth.

Late-time small body disruptions for planetary defense --ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576521003921

Late-time small-body disruptions can protect the Earth | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
https://www.llnl.gov/news/late-time-small-body-disruptions-can-protect-earth

Nuking an Asteroid to Prevent Armageddon Could Actually Work, Study Shows
https://www.sciencealert.com/our-last-line-of-defence-against-an-asteroid-hit-actually-works-study-shows

When an asteroid collides with the Earth, it can cause enormous damage, so NASA and others are observing near-Earth objects approaching the Earth to investigate whether there is a risk of collision. In addition, NASA is 'changing the trajectory to hit the spacecraft in near-Earth celestial bodies DART are also working on mission', launch the DART of the experimental machine in 2021 November 23, 160 meters in diameter collide with the asteroid that Dimofosu I am planning an experiment to make it.

In general, for asteroids that have more than 10 years left to collide, a solution is recommended to gradually add kinetic energy to shift the orbit and remove it from the course of collision with the Earth. However, not all asteroids that can collide can be detected far away from Earth, and the original plan can fail. Therefore, the research team of Patrick King and others, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University , focused on dealing with celestial bodies that are likely to collide with the earth, especially 'there is not much time left to avoid the collision'. I did a research to guess.

The research team envisioned five patterns of orbits in which an asteroid with a diameter of 100 meters approaches the earth, and detonated a 1-megaton (1 million ton) -class nuclear bomb installed several meters away from the surface of the asteroid to the earth. We simulated how much damage can be reduced. This time, he said that he also conducted simulations in different time spans from 1 week to 6 months before the collision and investigated how much the damage to the earth changes depending on the time grace.

You can see the simulation of detonating a nuclear bomb on the surface of an asteroid by the research team in the following movie.

Late-time small body disruptions for planetary defense --YouTube


The white dots at the bottom of the image are asteroids.

When a nuclear explosion occurs on the surface ...

The rocks that make up the asteroid break up and scatter into outer space.

The impact of the explosion extends to the back of the asteroid ...

Eventually, the asteroid shattered and blew away.

The research team used a modeling tool called Spheral to identify where the debris would reach after detonating a nuclear bomb on an asteroid, using gravity and other forces. ..

As a result of the simulation, it was found that if it explodes two months before it collides with the earth, the mass that falls on the earth will be reduced to 0.1%. As the asteroid's mass increases, the rate of dispersion due to the explosion decreases, but if it explodes six months ago, the mass that collides with the Earth could be reduced to 1%, the researchers report.

Michael Owen of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , co-author of the paper, argues that the study is important for understanding the consequences and requirements of destroying dangerous asteroids approaching Earth. 'If you find a celestial body destined to collide with Earth, but it's too late to change its orbit, the best option left is to completely destroy it and distract most of the debris from Earth.' rice field.