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A team of researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, is devising a new planetary defense method called Pulverize It (PI). PI is appearing in papers published in Advances in Space Research.
Specifically, the PI plans to put a penetrating rod on the path of a large asteroid that can threaten the Earth and crush the asteroid into hundreds of small pieces.
The rod is about 1.8 to 3 meters long and contains explosives. The team says the asteroid can be crushed into relatively harmless pieces long before they reach the atmosphere. Of course, even if it is finely crushed, it does not disappear, so it is poured into the earth. However, it is said that this is very small compared to the impact of the meteorite that fell on Rusira Chelavinsk Oblast in February 2013, that is, the 30 atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima.
The research team explains that the difference between one large asteroid and hundreds of smaller ones is similar to dropping a 500 kg grand piano from a height of 1 km onto your head and dropping a 500 kg Styrofoam ball from the same height.
NASA is tracking the movement of more than 8,000 asteroids 140 meters in diameter or larger near Earth. However, damage from the Chelavinsk meteorite occurred when astronomers did not foresee the meteorite’s arrival. One of the advantages of PI is that it can theoretically launch a rocket full of rods in minutes before the asteroid reaches the atmosphere. Related information can be found here.
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