Nuclear missiles could be our best bet against certain incoming asteroids.
To destroy a large asteroid that measures just over 200 metres across, you’d need a nuke that can deliver the energy equivalent of three megatons of TNT.
That’s around 200 times the power of the 15-kiloton bomb that the United States detonated over Hiroshima in Japan on August 6, 1945 during World War II.
The Hiroshima bombing killed 20,000 soldiers and somewhere between 70,000 and 126,000 civilians.
Hiroshima — and the Nagasaki bombing that took place three days later — remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.
To destroy a large asteroid that measures just over 200 metres across, you’d need a nuke that can deliver the energy equivalent of three megatons of TNT.
That’s around 200 times the power of the 15-kiloton bomb that the United States detonated over Hiroshima in Japan on August 6, 1945 during World War II.
The Hiroshima bombing killed 20,000 soldiers and somewhere between 70,000 and 126,000 civilians.
Hiroshima — and the Nagasaki bombing that took place three days later — remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.
A photo made available by the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum shows a view of the mushroom cloud photographed from the ground of the 09 August 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. It was the second such bomb America dropped on Japan.
The good news is the chances of us having to deploy a space nuke to kill an asteroid are very slim right now, according to Russia’s atomic energy corporation Rosatom and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, who worked on the study together.
Study co-author Vladimir Yufa said: “At the moment, there are no asteroid threats, so our team has the time to perfect this technique for use later in preventing a planetary disaster.
“We’re also looking into the possibility of deflecting an asteroid without destroying it and hope for international engagement.”
Earlier this week, the Nasa Hammer was unveiled — a bold plan for space scientists to neutralise incoming asteroids with nuke-toting spacecrafts.
The Hammer spaceship would fly into smaller asteroids and nudge them offcourse.And for bigger boulders, Hammer would detonate a nuclear weapon to ensure the asteroid didn’t hit Earth.
The good news is the chances of us having to deploy a space nuke to kill an asteroid are very slim right now, according to Russia’s atomic energy corporation Rosatom and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, who worked on the study together.
Study co-author Vladimir Yufa said: “At the moment, there are no asteroid threats, so our team has the time to perfect this technique for use later in preventing a planetary disaster.
“We’re also looking into the possibility of deflecting an asteroid without destroying it and hope for international engagement.”
Earlier this week, the Nasa Hammer was unveiled — a bold plan for space scientists to neutralise incoming asteroids with nuke-toting spacecrafts.
The Hammer spaceship would fly into smaller asteroids and nudge them offcourse.And for bigger boulders, Hammer would detonate a nuclear weapon to ensure the asteroid didn’t hit Earth.