Asteroid headed for Earth? Scientists say nuke it!

Asteroid headed for Earth? Scientists say nuke it!
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In the unlikely event of a gigantic asteroid threatening mass extinction on our planet, scientists are now confident such a disaster could be averted using nuclear weapons. Researchers running new and sophisticated simulators conclude it would take as little as 5 to 10 kilotons of energy to divert an asteroid. That's a relatively small nuclear weapon.

"The nice thing about any kind of intervention is that you only have to make it miss the Earth," said David Dearborn, a research physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "A very small change in its orbital period will do that." [Read more...]