Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (a division of Us Department of Energy) recently used a supercomputer to see whether an asteroid heading for Earth could be destroyed by a nuclear weapon, just like in Michael Bay's "Armageddon." The results were very encouraging. "Ultimately this 1-megaton blast will disrupt all of the rocks in the rockpile of this asteroid," said scientist Bob Weaver. "And if this were an Earth-crossing asteroid, would fully mitigate the hazard represented by the initial asteroid itself." And the entire process would be a lot simpler than in "Armageddon," since the nuke doesn't need to be deposited deep into the asteroid. The blast just has to occur on the surface. Weaver stressed that nuclear bombs would likely be deployed only as a last resort since the blast might have negative side effects, such as sending a hail of small space rocks toward Earth instead of a single big one.
- 3/13/2012
- WorstPreviews.com
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