Nuclear Warheads Really Could Stop Asteroids Destroying Earth

Science & Tech — 13 February 2012

Scientists at the Los Alamos National Labs in the US have used Cielo, one of the top 10 supercomputers in the world, to model the impact of a megaton warhead on a hypothetical Earth-bound asteroid. In short, we’re safe.

The team, led by Dr Robert Weaver, ran a simulated asteroid through the gauntlet of nuclear weapon testing and found that a one megaton nuclear device would successfully be able to disintegrate an asteroid similar to Itokawa.

Cielo’s 32,000 processors can, as in the video above, simulate the full hydrodynamic effects of a nuclear explosion on an asteroid, in particular the impact of the resulting shockwave on the conglomerated, 500m length of granite.

The resulting explosions shows that it would shake the asteroid into small enough pieces of debris that it wouldn’t pose a further threat to Earth.

And if we didn’t feel like taking part in any Armageddon-style shenanigans, we could just deliver the payload with a rocket.

In any case, that’s one more important sci-fi movie scenario dealt with. Next time, how about simulating whether we could restart the Earth’s rotation with a nuclear device?