E-Paper
Earthbound asteroid too big to blow up
If an asteroid was on its way to hit Earth, could we take a cue from the movie Armageddon in order to save the planet?
If an asteroid was on its way to hit Earth, could we take a cue from the movie Armageddon in order to save the planet?
The answer is definitely ‘no’, according to research carried out by University of Leicester physics students.
In the 1998 film, Bruce Willis lands on the surface of an Earth-bound asteroid, drills to the centre and detonates a nuclear weapon, splitting the asteroid in half. The two pieces then pass either side of Earth.
But the group of four students worked out that this method would not work, as we simply do not have a bomb powerful enough.
Their research concluded that 800 trillion terajoules of energy would be required to split the asteroid in two. But the energy output of the biggest bomb detonated on Earth — the Soviet Union’s 50 megaton ‘Big Ivan’ — is only 418,000 terajoules. We would thus need to construct a bomb a billion times stronger.
They also found that scientists would have to detect the asteroid much earlier if we were to have any chance of splitting the asteroid
This would leave no time for Bruce to travel to the asteroid and drill into its center — let alone share any meaningful moments with Ben Affleck or Liv Tyler along the way.
