Nuking a hazardous asteroid can reduce the threat by 99%, new study suggests

Blasting an incoming hazardous asteroid using nuclear warheads to avoid mass extinctions of Earth could actually work, suggested a new study conducted by physicists at  John Hopkins University in US' Maryland. Much like  movie Armddon, researchers ran a simulation where y fictionalised an incoming asteroid dubbed 2021 PDC, which gave humans on Earth less than six months to prepare, Daily Mail reported. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory based in California runs such simulations every two years to study impacts of possible asteroid collisions to Earth. 

Nuking asteroid can stop collision impact by 99%

Analysing simulation, where asteroid 2021 PDC is blasted with one megatonne nuclear bomb while on a collision course to Earth, showed that impact can be reduced by 99%. Here, size of approaching asteroid also significantly matters so for ir study, scientists chose a considerably large asteroid measuring one hundred metres.

In an interview with Gizmodo, lead study author Patrick King said that  impacting mass from hitting Earth can be prevented 99 per cent or more if a robust nuclear disruption technique is deployed at least one month before impact. In addition to this, study showed that impact can be averted by 99.9% in some cases if approaching danger was nuked two to six months prior. Although, results for asteroids relatively bigger than 2021 PDC weren't much to celebrate still better than expected. 

Published in journal Acta Astronautica,  study is a result of King's PhD sis while a student at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), reported Gizmodo. 

What happens to resulting fragments?

To answer this particular question, King's colleague Michael Owens reportedly developed a software called 'Spheral' to study orbital tendencies of fragments resulting from nuclear detonation. Needless to say, missile fired at a much later period will result in higher levels of threats by fragments as asteroid would be much closer to our planet.

Addressing same, King stated that Nuking an asteroid and its potential splattering into boulders are a compromise that must be considered while employing disruption technique. He furr added that its possible that threat might get multiplied with several fragments emerging from a single impactor but asserted that a disruption can work where deflection can t, as per Gizmodo. 

(Im: Pixabay)