Chicxulub asteroid tagged posts

Nuking a Huge Asteroid could Save Earth, Lab Experiment Suggests

A big asteroid could threaten life on Earth -- but nuclear bombs could come to the rescue, a new laboratory experiment suggests
A big asteroid could threaten life on Earth — but nuclear bombs could come to the rescue, a new laboratory experiment suggests.

The biggest real-life test of our planetary defenses was carried out in 2022, when NASA’s fridge-sized DART spacecraft smashed into a 160-metre (525-feet) wide asteroid, successfully knocking it well off course.

But for bigger asteroids, merely crashing spaceships into them will probably not do the trick.

When the roughly 10-kilometer wide Chicxulub asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula around 66 million years ago, it is believed to have plunged Earth into darkness, sent kilometers-high tsunamis rippling around the globe and killed three quarters of all life—including wiping out the dinosaurs.

We humans are hoping to avoid a similar fate.

The...

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