Universe Today by Nancy Atkinson 12/21/2023
A modeling tool developed by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shows the progression an asteroid being
broken up by a theoretical nuclear device detonated near the the surface of the near-Earth object.
Graphic illustration courtesy of Mary Burkey.
While it has been a favorite disaster movie theme, nuking an incoming asteroid in the real world has been touted as a very bad idea. While a nuclear bomb could possibly obliterate a smaller asteroid, nuking a larger asteroid would only break it into pieces. Those pieces would still threaten our planet, and perhaps even makes things worse by producing multiple impacts across the planet.
But is using nuclear weapons on an incoming asteroid really a bad idea? If the right technique is used, a nuclear blast could possibly be used as an asteroid deflection device.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have now created a modeling tool that can simulate what might happen if a nuclear device is detonated above the surface of an asteroid. The tool is helping to improve the understanding of how the radiation from a nuclear blast interacts with an asteroid’s surface, and also looks at the shockwave dynamics that might affect the inner asteroid.
The explosive technique called nuclear ablation, where the blast’s radiation would vaporize part of the asteroid’s surface, generating an explosive thrust and a change in velocity in response.
More:
https://www.universetoday.com/164932/finally-a-productive-use-for-nuclear-weapons-asteroid-defence/
