Often times I wonder how a nuclear explosion will work in a vacuum of space where logically; a chain reaction cannot happen where there are no molecules (atoms and ions) being the vehicles of the chain reaction. Let us hope that we will not have to face such a dilemma in the near future. Imagine a mile long asteroid is discovered heading towards earth. A computer simulation predicted with precise accuracy that it will hit continental USA. By deflecting it away from USA with a bomb; it will instead hit Europe, China or Russia. Question! Will Russia, China or Europe allow USA to deflect it? My guess is…no! They will blow away from the sky any armed rocket heading towards the asteroid that will trigger war between these superpowers.
How a Nuclear Bomb Could Save Earth From an Asteroid | Potentially Hazardous Asteroids | Space.com:
How a Nuclear Bomb Could Save Earth From an Asteroid
by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 12 March 2012 Time: 07:00 AM ET
A well-placed nuclear explosion could actually save humanity from a big asteroid hurtling toward Earth, just like in the movies, a new study suggests.
Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a United States Department of Energy facility in New Mexico, used a supercomputer to model nukes' anti-asteroid effectiveness. They attacked a 1,650-foot-long (500-meter) space rock with a 1-megaton nuclear weapon — about 50 times more powerful than the U.S. blast inflicted on Nagasaki, Japan, to help end World War II.
The results were encouraging.
"Ultimately this 1-megaton blast will disrupt all of the rocks in the rockpile of this asteroid, and if this were an Earth-crossing asteroid, would fully mitigate the hazard represented by the initial asteroid itself," Los Alamos scientist Bob Weaver said in a recent video released by the lab. [Video: Nuclear bomb takes out asteroid]
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