Posted on 03/14/2018 6:18:52 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Researchers in Russia have modeled the destruction of dangerous space rocks in the lab, using tiny asteroid replicas and laser blasts to mimic the effect of nuclear warheads.
The team determined, among other things, that it would probably take a 3-megaton nuclear bomb to obliterate a 650-foot-wide (200 meters) stony asteroid. And any nuke's destructive power would be increased by exploding it inside a crater or cavity within the space rock, the researchers found.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Wouldn’t it be better to nudge it into a safer trajectory?
No bomb. Blasting it into pieces makes it much more difficult to keep track of the pieces and to predict where they will fall.
Easier too, I suspect.
Gotta ask Bruce Willis and tommy lee jones about how to alter or destroy a comet. Ref Space Cowboys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cowboys
Tiny little pieces expanding out and away from the point of detonation.
Apparently the plan is to vaporize it. Hence the need for such a large yield.
Seems like it would be a lot cheaper just to attach a small rocket to change the rock’s orbit..............................
The idea is you’re blasting it precisely because ALL OF IT is heading straight for you.
Better to blast it into smithereens, and put up with a few fragments maybe striking you instead.
Bruce Willis was in Armageddon about destroying a comet headed for Earth. Space Cowboys was about a Russian satellite called Ikon that whose orbit was decaying.
Don’t you need Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones?
If not, maybe just have Chuck Norris roundhouse kick it back?
A bomb powerful enough to eliminate New Jersey should do the trick.
I see what I did there.
3 megaton would make a mess of it.
And some of Philadelphia as well.
It depends on the size of the asteroid.
The whole idea is nuts.
If God wants to smite us, He ain’t gonna miss.
If you hit it with a 1-metric-tonne steel penetrator, going at 30 km/sec, the kinetic energy would be
0.5 * 1000 * 300002 = 4.5 * 1011 joules, which is about 100 tons of TNT
While not of nuclear magnitude, the shock wave from the penetrator would likely shatter the rock better than an explosion at the surface of the rock.
You don’t need a big bomb. Given the size of most asteroids, a small nuke in the 10 kT range would be enough to “nudge” the asteroid to a new orbit that avoids the Earth.
Anything smaller than a bus will heat and break up on entry. It may make a noise like the Russian one a couple of years ago, but not much more.
So all we would need to do is create pieces, not dust.
I doubt we’ll ever do it.
Do explosives even work in oxygen deficient atmospheres?
DOH! You are correct!
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