00:03it's essentially the same premise as the film armageddon however experts now say that if an
00:08asteroid was headed our way a nuclear blast might just be enough to divert it experts recently
00:13conducted experiments in a lab finding that if a large asteroid was on a collision course we
00:18could circumvent the drills and simply detonate a massive nuke nearby it in a lab physicists used
00:23a high frequency electromagnetic wave generator to produce a 1.5 megajoule x-ray they then pointed
00:29it at an asteroid analog a grain of silica glass which was briefly in freefall the x-ray burst which
00:35was masquerading as one produced by a nuclear blast peeled away a micrometer thick layer of glass and
00:41created a shock wave across its surface with the physicist saying this is a proof of concept of
00:46what would happen with an asteroid in space if a nuclear bomb was blown nearby adding that the blast
00:51and resulting x-ray burst would be enough to move an asteroid measuring around two to three miles in
00:56diameter off course while nasa's double asteroid redirect test was a success more research still
01:01needs to be done to ensure a collision with an asteroid could indeed redirect one of them
01:05entirely meaning it's nice to know that we have a proof of concept for plan b
