Scientists in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have the potential to divert a potentially dangerous asteroid by detonating a nuclear warhead more than a mile from the surface, showering it with X-rays and sending it flying in a different direction. It states that there is.
Previous methods have involved detonating nuclear warheads on asteroids and comets, shattering them into multiple pieces, as seen in blockbuster movies like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact.”
But scientists now say the method transforms a space object from a deadly bullet headed toward Earth to a multi-fragment shotgun blast.
Last year, the National Academy of Sciences released a report saying planetary defense is a national priority, and ongoing NASA sky surveys say the threat is credible.
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An artist’s impression of the large asteroid that hit Chicxulub on the Mexican coastline, causing the mass extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago. (Mark Garlick/Reuters)
According to a press release from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, a survey of the sky found that there are about 25,000 objects large enough to cause varying degrees of destruction on Earth, but about 3. Only one in ten are detected and tracked.
Many objects move invisible in the glare of the sun. In 2013, a relatively small celestial object caused chaos in Russia, while a larger asteroid is thought to have brought an end to the age of dinosaurs.
“For most people, the dangers of asteroids seem remote,” said Nathan Moore, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories. “But our planet is hit by BB-sized asteroids every day. We call them shooting stars. We wait for a large asteroid to appear and then try to deflect it. I don’t want to rush to find the right way to do it.”
Moore’s team conducted several experiments using Sandia’s Z machine, the most powerful pulsed power machine on Earth, to monitor the deflection of a synthetic asteroid hit by a sudden Z impact.
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According to NASA, 2024 ON will be 621,000 miles from Earth on Tuesday night. (NASA)
All experiments are affected by gravity while the machine is on Earth, but Moore’s team was able to temporarily overcome the unavoidable force and create a better simulation of an asteroid floating freely in space. I was able to do that.
Moore’s experiment used a technique called X-ray scissoring, which removed the distortion effects of friction and gravity for a few microseconds.
Using X-ray scissors, the model was able to create the effect of a free-floating asteroid reorienting itself when hit by a series of nuclear-strength explosions.
Although the experiment was conducted in an environment much smaller than space, it could be scaled up to predict the effects of a nuclear explosion on a real asteroid.
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This is an illustration of an asteroid. The asteroid, about the size of Rome’s Colosseum and 300 to 650 feet (100 to 200 meters) long, was detected by an international team of European astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb), ESO/M. Kornmesser and S. Brunier, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org))
“I started working on the logic of how we could reorient small asteroids in the laboratory the same way we would in space,” Moore said. “The important fact is that asteroids in space are not attached to anything. But in the laboratory, everything is pulled down by Earth’s gravity, so everything has gravitational attachment to everything else. In this, the simulated asteroid moves freely in space and the mechanical attachment causes friction and is simulated. It will disturb the movement of the asteroid. ”
That’s where X-ray scissors came into play. This method allowed scientists to eject simulated asteroids made of silica, one-tenth of a gram in size, into the vacuum of free space.
The substance was suspended in foil eight times thinner than a human hair, and evaporated instantly when the Z-machine ignited it.
When the X-ray burst hit, the silica remained floating.
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A DART spacecraft (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen from Simi Valley, California, after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
“It was a novel idea,” Moore said. “A simulated asteroid is suspended in space. In a 1-nanometer drop, Z produces a burst of X-rays that sweeps the surface of the simulated asteroid, which is about 12.5 millimeters in diameter, so a 1-nanometer drop would cause Earth’s You can ignore gravity.” The width is about the width of a finger.
“The trick is to split the incoming rock into several equally deadly subsections that travel toward Earth,” Moore said, referring to real-world interception scenarios like NASA’s recent DART experiment. “The key is to use appropriate force to change the direction of the vehicle,” he added.
The news comes just days after NASA monitored a “potentially dangerous” asteroid passing by Earth last Tuesday.
NASA told FOX News Digital that the rocky object, dubbed 2024 ON, is 350 meters long and 180 meters wide, which equates to approximately 1,150 feet by 590 feet, making it larger than previous estimates. Ta.
NASA reports that the asteroid is considered “stadium-sized” and 621,000 miles from Earth, which makes it relatively close to Earth. David Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Fox News Digital that an asteroid of this size comes this close to Earth only once every five to 10 years.
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Although the asteroid was close enough to Earth to be considered a “potentially hazardous object,” Farnocchia said there was no chance the asteroid would hit Earth. An asteroid would need to be within a few hundred miles to be a concern.
The asteroid was one of five to pass close to Earth last week, but no other rocky objects were expected to be as close as 2024 ON. The four asteroids were located between 1.1 million and 3.9 million miles from Earth, and three of the asteroids were approximately 51 feet in diameter, about the size of a house.
Fox News Digital’s Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
