A huge asteroid hurls toward Earth. In desperation, scientists send a group of astronauts to blast the deadly rock with a nuclear bomb and save humanity.

It is a scenario that has been depicted in Hollywood films, but new a U.S. study suggests that a timely nuclear explosion could save us from a devastating asteroid impact.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory conducted a supercomputer simulation to test the effects of a nuclear weapon on an asteriod, according to Space.com.

They “hit” a 500-meter diameter asteroid with a 1-megaton weapon, which is about 50 times more powerful than the bomb used on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II.

Researchers found that the blast from the bomb would “disrupt all of the rocks in the rockpile of this asteroid” and mitigate the damage that would be caused by impact.

Movies such as “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact,” suggest that a nuclear blast would have to take place inside the asteroid to have a significant impact.

But the simulation showed that blasting the surface could be effective, sparing astronauts the dangerous job of navigating their way inside the asteroid. But even a successful blast could have negative side effects such as sending debris toward Earth.

Such a mission would therefore likely be a last resort if we had just months to stop the impact, Los Alamos scientist Bob Weaver said. 

One alternative could be to send a robotic probe to ride along the asteroid, which would be tugged by the probe’s gravitational field out of the Earth’s path. Another scenario is to slam a spacecraft into the asteroid to push it off course. 

Both scenarios have real-life precedents in part. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is currently orbiting the huge asteroid Vesta and a spacecraft was sent to crash into a comet in 2005.

Astronomers say it is a mathematical certainty that Earth will eventually be hit by a hazardous space rock.

It is just a matter of when and whether we will be ready for it.



By Yoon Min-sik