A nuclear bomb could save Earth from a catastrophic asteroid impact, according to a first-of-its-kind laboratory study.
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The new experiment, conducted using the world's most powerful laboratory radiation source, showed that detonating a coordinated nuclear strike near an asteroid would produce enough force to deflect it from a deadly collision with planet .
But the explosion itself wouldn't do all the work. The deflection would be done by the powerful X-ray burst that would result from the explosion, according to the team that operates the Z-machine radiation source at Sandia National Laboratory. The researchers published their findings Sept. 23 in the journal Nature.
In 2023, the US National Academy of Sciences published a report arguing that planetary defense is a national priority. Previous simulations have shown that the shockwave generated by a nuclear bomb could provide enough force to successfully deflect an approaching asteroid. But the asteroids that were deflected harmlessly in these scenarios were those that had been detected decades earlier. Asteroids that appear just a few years away from Earth were considered too close to deflect without sending dangerous debris to Earth.
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Even more worryingly, an ongoing NASA sky survey has estimated that about 25,000 objects large enough to cause significant damage lurk near Earth. And because many of them are hidden from the glare of the sun, only a third of the potentially hazardous asteroids have been detected.
To investigate how a nuclear bomb could prevent Armageddon, the researchers behind the new study placed a tenth of a gram of asteroid-like silicon on a piece of ultra-thin aluminum foil inside Sandia's Z machine.
After firing the Z engine, it created magnetic fields that compressed the argon gas into a plasma as hot as the sun. This immediately dissolved the foil, producing a burst of X-rays that left the coffee bean-sized nugget of silica floating in the air for about 20 millionths of a second.
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Having confirmed that their experimental setup works, the researchers will use it to create a database of possible impact and deflection scenarios, based on a library of hypothetical asteroids that they could consult before an actual collision.
Source: livescience
