We could deflect a threatening asteroid… with a nuclear bomb

A nuclear explosion could make it possible to deflect an asteroid: researchers have carried out a convincing simulation in the laboratory, and it could become a credible option.

Vincent Nouyrigat, editor-in-chief of the magazine Epsiloon speaks to us today about the research of American physicists have just proposed a frankly radical solution to prevent an asteroid from crashing into Earth : a nuclear explosion…

franceinfo: Does a nuclear explosion seem a bit crazy as a solution?

Vincent Nouyrigat: You may remember the Hollywood blockbuster,Armageddon. Bruce Willis was tasked with heroically drilling a hole on an asteroid, to insert an H-bomb, in order to shatter the hyper-threatening car.

Well, this time, the idea is more serious: researchers from Sandia laboratories – the laboratory responsible for developing American nuclear weapons – are not planning to drill a well, but rather to trigger an atomic explosion next to the ‘asteroid.

The idea is that the burst of heat and X-rays emitted by the detonation should vaporize part of the celestial body, and this ejection of material – like a rocket engine! – will propel the asteroid in another direction.

How can they be so sure it would work?

Of course, a full-scale test is not at all possible, so they tested this technique in a rather special machine installed in New Mexico, the Z machine. It’s a pulsed X-ray generator, super -powerful.

They inserted a small fragment of quartz and silicon, a kind of miniature asteroid. They inflicted on him for a very brief moment, 6 nanoseconds, an enormous flow of energy – the equivalent of the power of 3 nuclear reactors per cm2, and a million times the atmospheric pressure.

And it works, the particle is deflected, propelled at more than 250 km/h to the side, and virtually the Earth could be saved.

But other diversion techniques already exist, no?

It’s true, two years ago, NASA carried out a first deviation, the DART mission. A 580 kg probe was deliberately crushed at 22,000 km/h on a small asteroid Dimorphos, 150 meters in diameter. The European vessel Hera is due to take off on October 8 to study the consequences of the collision.

This kinetic impact method is favored today, but it must be practiced several years or even decades in advance, and it can only work on asteroids of modest size.

The planetary defense method based on nuclear explosion could work with significantly shorter delays, and on larger objects – asteroids of the order of 4km in diameter, according to the latest calculations. So this could be our emergency procedure: trigger the apocalypse in space, to avoid the apocalypse on Earth.