How to nuke an asteroid...

This story originates in The Woodlands, located halfway between between Mike's spacious home and my own poor hovel...The movie cited in the article concerned a group of space cowboys who saved our planet by blowing up a large space rock hurtling toward Earth...Turns out that with a few tweaks it's a viable solution against real astronomical collisions...

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"If you've seen those movies, they're completely bogus," Lindley Johnson, the planetary defense officer at NASA headquarters, said during a media session on asteroids and the art of protecting Earth from them held at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference taking place here this week. "That's not how we would use a nuclear explosive device to do this at all."

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I suspect that certain politicians may be against the idea since it would prevent peaceful planetoid immigrants from migrating to Earth to take their rightful share in our wealth...:boom:...Ben

Odd that you should mention space objects crashing into Earth because that nearly happened last week, when a rather large one blew up in the atmosphere over the Bearing Straights reportedly with “the force of 10 atomic bombs the size of those in Japan.” I take it that it was a visitor we did not see before it came.

I tried to watch the first movie in Ben’s list, The Day The Sky Exploded (1958), but it was too cheesy for even me, and I love 50’s cheesy sci-fi flicks.

I found this article interesting and informative of the recent event over the Bering Sea.

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Originally Posted by Dave Grubb

I found this article interesting and informative of the recent event over the Bering Sea.

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A very informative article, Dave...It explained a lot of the nomenclature involved...This factoid put it in perspective for me:

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Putting it another way, this release of energy – all 724 trillion joules of it – is comparable to 724,000 average lightning strikes. That certainly sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that it pales in comparison to other natural processes. In fact, an average hurricane releases about this much energy through cloud and rain formation every single second.

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:nerd:...Ben