Inch-wide asteroids could save the Earth

TINY asteroids measuring less than an inch across have been blown up with lasers in a laboratory to calculate how to prevent Earth being wiped out by a giant space rock.

A team of Russian researchers from Rosatom, the state nuclear energy corporation, and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), constructed miniature asteroids based on the composition of a stony meteorite that landed in Lake Chebarkul following the Chelyabinsk strike in 2013.

Using laser pulses to simulate the effect of a nuclear bomb, they found that to eliminate a 650ft-wide asteroid the blast would need to deliver the energy equivalent of three megatons of TNT – the power of 200 Hiroshima bombs.

The most powerful explosive device ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba, or “king of bombs,” built by the Soviet Union in 1961, which had an energy output of about 50 megatons of TNT.

“At the moment, there are no asteroid threats, so our team has the time to perfect this technique for use later in preventing a planetary disaster,” said Vladimir Yufa, an associate professor at the departments of Applied Physics and Laser Systems and Structured Materials, MIPT, who co-authored the study.

“We’re also looking into the possibility of deflecting an asteroid without destroying it and hope for international engagement.”

Asteroids consist of carbon, silicon, metal and sometimes ice, and can be as big as 550 miles across.

Travelling at 10 miles per second, the space rocks could obliterate all life on Earth, on a similar scale to the destruction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Nasa has said previously that Earth is overdue a huge asteroid strike and programmes are in places across the globe to map rocks as they move through the Solar System.

Prof Stephen Hawking has also said it is only a matter of time before the Earth as we know it is destroyed by an asteroid.