Stopping Killer Asteroids and Planet Killers with Modern Technology

Killer asteroids pose a significant and immediate threat, with many only discovered days before close approaches, highlighting humanity's current lack of a viable defense strategy. While traditional methods and nuclear detonations prove ineffective, scientists have developed a new, technologically feasible approach using super-dense penetrators and a combined penetrator-nuke strategy for larger threats, capable of pulverizing these celestial dangers.

Key Points Summary

• The Threat of Killer Asteroids

  Asteroids capable of causing global devastation, like a stadium-sized object, are a real threat. Asteroids OK and MK were discovered just days or weeks before close Earth approaches, possessing destructive power equivalent to thousands of Hiroshima bombs. Humanity currently lacks an effective plan for such events, despite the potential for millions of casualties.

• Limitations of Traditional Asteroid Deflection Methods

  Existing scientific proposals for asteroid deflection, such as painting them to use solar radiation, landing thrusters to steer them, scorching with lasers, or crashing spacecraft into them, are largely ineffective. These methods only slightly alter an asteroid's trajectory, requiring years or decades of advance notice to achieve a miss, which is often not available.

• The Flawed Approach of Nuclear Detonations

  Nuclear weapons prove ineffective against asteroids in several direct applications. A head-on collision fails as the asteroid's immense speed of 70,000 km/h destroys the nuke before detonation. An air burst in space loses most of its energy due to the vacuum, only creating a dramatic crater without significantly altering the asteroid's path. Burying a nuke inside, while theoretically possible, is practically suicidal due to the nearly impossible challenges of landing a crew and bomb on a small, fast-moving asteroid with short notice and the painfully slow drilling in microgravity.

• The 'Smart Way' - Penetrators for Smaller Asteroids

  A new and effective method to destroy killer asteroids involves using 'penetrators' – slim, few-meter-long, super-dense tungsten cosmic bullets. These penetrators are positioned in the asteroid's path, allowing the asteroid's high velocity to cause a violent impact. The collision unleashes energy equivalent to 120 metric tons of TNT, vaporizing rock, melting tungsten, and blasting the asteroid into thousands of diffuse fragments. This strategy requires placing the penetrators approximately 2 million kilometers from Earth (four times the Moon's distance) to ensure fragments disperse harmlessly, and current rockets can achieve this with a two-week notice.

• The Enhanced Threat of Planet Killer Comets

  Planet killers, often comets from the outer solar system, are mountain-sized, faster (140,000 km/h), and more destructive than asteroids, capable of ending most life on Earth. They are difficult to track due to their distance and darkness, often discovered just months before closest approach. Simply breaking a planet killer into millions of pieces is insufficient, as the fragments would still be numerous and massive enough to cause catastrophic events; therefore, full deflection of all fragments is necessary, requiring destruction much further out, near Mars's orbit.

• A Combined Strategy for Planet Killer Comets

  A viable solution for planet killers combines penetrators with nuclear bombs, requiring all necessary components to be ready beforehand, including a super-heavy rocket like NASA’s SLS. Upon detection, a single rocket, carrying five massive penetrators in sequence and a final penetrator loaded with 300 megatons of nuclear warheads, would travel five months to reach the comet beyond Mars's orbit. The first four penetrators would create a deep tunnel into the comet, followed by the deep-burrowing nuclear warhead detonating within, vaporizing the comet from the inside and scattering it into millions of harmless fragments, thereby saving humanity.

• The Feasibility of Asteroid Defense

  The advanced defense strategies against both killer asteroids and planet-killer comets are technically possible with current rockets, engineering, and knowledge. Implementing these plans in reality demands unprecedented planning, precision, and global readiness, but the potential for successful defense against even massive celestial threats exists.

• Star Birds PC Game Promotion

  The video concludes with a promotion for 'Star Birds,' a PC game now available in Early Access. This strategy game invites players to mine asteroids, build production chains, unlock technologies, and create sprawling networks of floating space factories in a vast galaxy, developed in collaboration with Toukana Interactive.

Under Details