Scientists in Albuquerque, New Mexico, say a potentially hazardous asteroid could be redirected by detonating a nuclear warhead more than a mile from its surface, then bombarding it with X-rays to send it hurtling in a different direction.
As seen in blockbuster movies like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact,” the traditional method would involve detonating a nuclear warhead on an asteroid or comet, shattering it into multiple pieces.
But scientists now say the method would turn a space object from a deadly Earth-bound bullet into a shotgun-like explosion of many shrapnel fragments.
Last year, the National Academy of Sciences released a report making planetary defense a national priority, and ongoing NASA surveys of celestial bodies show the threat is credible.
A stadium-sized asteroid that NASA considers “potentially hazardous” is expected to come “relatively close” to Earth.
Artist's impression of the giant asteroid that struck Chicxulub off the coast of Mexico 66 million years ago, causing the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. (Mark Garlick/Reuters)
According to a press release from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, surveys of the sky have revealed that there are approximately 25,000 objects large enough to cause varying degrees of destruction to Earth, but only about a third of them have been detected and tracked.
Many objects move unseen in the sun's glare: a relatively small object caused havoc in Russia in 2013, while a larger asteroid is thought to have ended the age of the dinosaurs.
“To most people, asteroid danger seems far away,” says Nathan Moore, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, “but our planet is hit by BB-sized asteroids every day — we call them shooting stars. We don't want to wait until a big asteroid shows up and then rush around trying to find the right way to deflect it.”
Moore's team conducted several experiments using Sandia's Z Machine, the most powerful pulsed power machine on Earth, to monitor the deflection of an artificial asteroid following a sudden jolt from the Z Machine.
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According to NASA, 2024 ON will be 621,000 miles from Earth on Tuesday night. (NASA)
While the machine is on Earth, all experiments are subject to gravity, but Moore's team was able to temporarily overcome the inevitable forces and create a better simulation of an asteroid floating freely in space.
Moore's experiment used a technique called X-ray scissors, which eliminated the distorting effects of friction and gravity for a few microseconds.
The X-ray scissors allowed the model to create the effect of a free-floating asteroid changing direction when hit by a series of nuclear explosions.
Although the experiment was conducted in an environment much smaller than space, it could be scaled up to predict the effects of a nuclear explosion on a real asteroid.
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An illustration of the asteroid. Measuring 300 to 650 feet (100 to 200 meters) long and roughly the size of the Roman Colosseum, the asteroid was discovered by an international team of European astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. (N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb), ESO/M. Kornmesser and S. Brunier, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org))
“I started working out the logic of how to orient a small asteroid in the lab in the same way we would in space,” Moore says. “The key fact is that asteroids in space aren't anchored to anything. But in the lab, everything is pulled down by the Earth's gravity, and everything is gravitationally anchored to something else. So our mock asteroid couldn't move freely like an asteroid in space, and the mechanical anchoring would create friction that would disrupt the mock asteroid's motion.”
That's where X-ray scissors come in: This method allows scientists to shoot mock asteroids, each one tenth of a gram in size and made of silica, into the vacuum of free space.
The substance was suspended in foil eight times thinner than a human hair and evaporated instantly when the Z-Machine was fired.
When the X-ray burst hit Silica, it was left suspended in air.
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The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is photographed after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Simi Valley, California, on Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
“It was a novel idea,” Moore says, “to float a mock asteroid in space. When it falls by one nanometer, Z will emit a burst of X-rays that will sweep across the surface of the mock asteroid, about the width of your finger, 12.5 millimeters, and ignore Earth's gravity for 1/20 millionth of a second.”
“The trick is to use enough force to redirect the incoming rock rather than fragmenting it into multiple, equally dangerous pieces heading toward Earth,” Moore added, referring to real-world interception scenarios such as NASA's recent DART experiment.
The news comes just days after NASA observed a “potentially hazardous” asteroid passing close to Earth last Tuesday.
NASA told Fox News Digital that the rock object, named 2024 ON, is 1,120 feet long and 600 feet wide, roughly 1,150 feet by 590 feet, making it larger than previous estimates.
NASA considers the asteroid to be “stadium-sized” and reported it to be 621,000 miles from Earth, which is considered a relatively close distance. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Fox News Digital that an asteroid this size would only come this close to Earth once every five to 10 years.
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Although the asteroid was close enough to Earth to be considered a “potentially hazardous object,” Farnocchia said there is no chance the asteroid will collide with Earth — an asteroid would need to be within a few hundred miles of Earth to be of concern.
The asteroid was one of five to pass Earth last week, although no other rocky objects were expected to come as close to Earth as in 2024 ON. The four asteroids are between 1.1 million and 3.9 million miles from Earth, and three of them are about 51 feet in diameter, roughly the size of a house.
Fox News Digital's Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
