Chinese scientists may have just found a way to save the world from a future Armageddon after calculating exactly how to detonate a nuclear bomb to stop a doomsday asteroid. And no, it’s not how Bruce Willis did it.
According to their new study, the absolute best method isn’t just dropping a nuke on the surface of the space rock, nor is it hitting an asteroid with a regular spacecraft (like NASA did in 2022). Instead, using a high-speed spacecraft to blast open a deep crater first and detonating the bomb inside that opening is the best way.
The NASA 2022 experiment was largely successful, but the scientists found that it doesn’t pack enough punch if a giant rock is on a fast collision course with us.
Testing two strategies to determine a winner
The research team, led by Xiaowei Wang at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, used computer models to test two different nuclear strategies against a database of fake killer asteroids. They looked at what would happen if we had anywhere from 1 to 20 years of warning time.
The first strategy is simply a nuke right onto the asteroid’s surface. The problem? The scientists found that this method wastes a lot of energy and requires a bomb tough enough to survive crashing into a solid rock at supersonic speeds without breaking.
The “pre-excavation” strategy takes the crown
The winning strategy is called “pre-excavation detonation.” The scientists propose using a “penetrator device”—a high-speed robotic spacecraft—that slams into the asteroid at extreme speeds to blast open a deep crater using raw kinetic energy. Then, a nuclear warhead would be detonated deep inside that hole.
Because the explosion is trapped inside the rock, it transfers far more energy. The researchers found that a deep-core nuclear blast is powerful enough to completely wipe out a 330-foot (100-meter) asteroid, or easily shove a massive, 1-kilometer-wide rock clean off its path.
The deep explosion plan is a logistical nightmare
Executing this plan is not going to be a stroll in the park due to the logistical problems it poses. Implanting a precise crater into an asteroid requires advance planning and preparation.
Asteroids come in different sizes, shapes, and compositions. Some are solid iron, while others are just loose piles of cosmic rubble. Knowing exactly how deep to dig before flipping the switch is a puzzle humanity will still have to solve before we can truly play the movie Armageddon in real life.
While nuking the inside of an asteroid is incredibly effective, launching live nuclear weapons into space and dealing with the flying radioactive debris is still a massive risk.
While drilling a hole in the asteroid before nuking it may be the more effective method, it only works if we have enough time to plan. The scientists admitted that if Earth has almost zero warning time, a chaotic surface blast remains our only immediate option.