Can we actually nuke a meteor if it endangered our planet?

Question

In most of these "big rock coming to earth" movies they just nuke it or something like that. In real life what would be the actual solution or do we just hope for the best?

Answer 1

No, then we'd just have a nuclear asteriod heading for us. Would that really be an improvement? Doesn't sound like it.

Technology is being developed to divert asteriods, should the need arise. All we really have to do is bump something into it and send it off track by a few hundred miles - it doesn't take much to miss us, and it wouldn't take much to move one off track if we saw it soon enough.

And there are asteriod watch programs all over the world looking for the next big one headed our way.

Answer 2

One astrophysicist put it this way. So, you send up a nuke and it explodes and turns the big chunk of space rock into lots and lots of little space rocks. Now, instead of one bullet, you have a whole bunch of buckshot coming at the planet.
The key to most any scenario is early detection. With enough time, a more likely use of the nuke would be to detonate near the rock instead of impact on it. The resulting energy would hopefully nudge the rock into a different trajectory that would not collide with the Earth--this time around the Sun anyway.
Problem with the whole detection thing: there are more people on a single shift at a McDonald's than there currently are total trying to detect potential Earth impactors.

On a side note to respond to a previous answer...
Radiation would not be a problem as long as the device was detonated beyond the Earth's magnetoshpere. Right now there is something millions of times more powerful than our measely fusion devices generating HUGE amounts of energy and throwing it at us. That fusion reactor is also called our Sun. The Earth's magnetic field deflects the majority of the resulting charged particles safely around and away from us.

Answer 3

The farther an asteroid is from the earth, the greater chance we have of deflecting its course with a nuke. The closer it gets to Earth, the more energy it will take to deflect it. Unfortuanately, the farther away it is, the harder it will be to send a rocket to intercept it. If an ansteroid gets really close to Earth, deflecting it with a nuke will be like that scene in the Lord of the Rings movie when Aragorn told Frodo to "lean forward" when they were standing on what must have been a swaying million ton rock. It's like this: when an asteroid is far away, a very small anglular deflection will make it miss earth by a large degree. When it's near the earth, a very large angular deflection might not even be enough. Travel distance is a factor.

Answer 4

The good news is that a Titan II missile or an equivalent russian
SS-18 missile with a 5 to 10 Megaton warhead can probably
vaporise an asteroid 300 to 600 feet in diameter with an inpact
point within 500 miles of the missile's launch site. It would only
take a near miss to accomplish this. It would also only take a
few hours for a computer to calculate an intercept trajectory and
to reprogram the missile for an intercept. It would than take about
half an hour to ready the missile for launch and then intercept the
asteroid. The nuclear warhead might be able to blast apart an
asteroid up to one and a half miles in diameter into small enough
rocks that could burn up on entry into the Earth's atmoshpere
but don't count on it! NOW FOR THE BAD NEWS!!

1) Near miss asteroids are normally detected when an
astronomer looks at a photograph of the sky. The asteroid shows
up as a streak on the photograph. The astronomer can then
calculate the asteroids orbit and determine how close the asteroid came to the Earth. By the time that all this has happened
the asteroid has already passed by the Earth. An asteroid on a
collision course with Earth won't show up as a streak on a
photagraph but will only appear as a dot. This is because it is
coming right at us so it has no lateral motion. It would probably
not even be noticed until it is too late.

2) Only about five percent of deep space is scaned by radar. So
it is very unlikely that the asteroid would be spotted by radar. It
could be spotted up to ten hours before Earth impact but there is
a 70% chance that it would not be picked up at all by any radar
beam until it is too late.

3)All large nuclear missiles have been deactivated by the U.S.A.
and by Russia because of various strategic weapon limitation
treaties. The largest warheads on missiles nowadays are about
one Megaton which could only blast a 100 to 200 feet diameter
asteroid. No Titan II rockets have any nuclear warheads on them
anymore.

4)98% of the Earth's surface is not within 500 miles of a nuclear
missile silo. The biggest problem that an asteroid would cause
would be a Tsunami or giant tidal wave if it lands in the ocean.

5) There is probably nothing we can do about an asteroid that is
five to ten miles in diameter ( or a comet like comet McNaught )
slamming into the Earth. ( Comet McNaught will miss us. YEAH! )
Such an asteroid will end 99% of life on Earth. We would probably
need a hundred years notice to blast an asteroid of that size.

Neither Bad News Nor Good News:

About ten year years ago I attended a lecture by Freeman Dyson
at the University of Minnesota on the subject of deflecting an
asteroid up to fifty miles in diameter on a collision course with
Earth. He said that the best method would be to put a nuclear or
solar powered mass driver on the asteroid and shoot rocks from
the asteroid off into space at high speed. This would deflect the
course of the asteroid and make it miss the Earth. We could also
deflect the asteroid enough to have it collide with the moon. Then
we never have to worry about it again. It would, however, require
a thousand year advance notice to deflect a 50 mile diameter
wide asteroid. It would only require a ten year advanced notice to
deflect a five mile wide asteroid.

IN CONCLUSION:

THE DINOSAURS BECAME EXTINCT BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T
BOTHER TO HAVE A SPACE PROGRAM. WE CAN'T DO IT
RIGHT NOW BUT WE SHOULD TRY TO ACQUIRE THE
CAPABILITY TO DEFEND EARTH FROM ASTEROIDS AND
COMETS WITHIN THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS!!!

Answer 5

Your concern is whether would there be a ballistic missile or any obstacle to neutralize the LARGE meteor (Asteroid) before it hits earth.

You have to understand one thing that is energy would not come out of nowhere, back to Newton's Law. Energy is transfer into different form during this collision. If the missile able to neutralize an asteroid, the amount of kinetic energy is transfer into heat energy is catastrophe. This heat will eventually hit back to earth in a radiant heat.

The most effective missile is to hit the asteroid at an angle and probably without any warhead; the intention is to divert the meteor course, away from the earth orbiting to the sun.

Answer 6

We could, but nuking a meteor would endanger out planet even more than allowing it to hit us. The radiation would spread so vastly around the planet, people would be dying for years after, probably even more than if the meteor would have just hit.

I hope I was helpful. Good luck!

Answer 7

Anything big enough to be a major threat would be way too big for a nuke to split apart like in "Armageddon". In most cases we should have years of advance warning, though; possibly time enough to gently nudge the rock into a slightly different orbit. However, the technology to do this is only in the discussion stage.

Answer 8

At present, no. It is conceivably possible that the US government could develop the technology to do the trick, but we are talking about the same people who saved New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, right? Does that make you feel safe?

But even under ideal political conditions, it's a highly questionable effort. We would have to deflect the rock at a great distance, which means we would have to know it was coming. At present, the greatest danger from a near-earth object is from one we don't know is coming until we see the flash and hear the bang, which gives you just enough time to say good-bye to your dog.

Finally, to imagine how difficult it would be to hit an approaching asteroid, imagine trying to hit a particular raindrop with a bow and arrow in a thunderstorm at midnight. Not easy.

Answer 9

Film companies exist to make profits, not to be realistic or educational.

The web page below describes other methods of dealing with meteors or asteroids. They work far better than a nuke would, but they're not as exciting or dramatic.

Answer 10

If one nukes a meteor, we could be saved, or be killed.

It all depends on the size on the meteor. If it is a small meteor, and we blow it to bits with a nuke, the small pieces may just burn up in the atmosphere

But if it is large, instead of getting one large meteor we would get a thousand semi-large one

That would without a doubt destroy life as we know it

Answer 11

Yes, we can, and blow them up into thousands of smaller pieces raining death and destruction all over the planet Earth. That's why the favored solution today is to use "gravity tractors", taking advantage of fact that in the weightless outer space, even a small spacecraft can exert gravitation pull on a meteor, and very slightly pull it out of its trajectory. The idea is to do this years before impact, so that it would take only a very slight pull to throw it off track and miss the Earth.