Doomsday asteroid that could devastate Earth with impact blast 23 times stronger than hydrogen bomb 'CAN'T be stopped'
Tehran (KNA): The space boulder called Bennu is the size of a village and as tall as New York's Empire State Building.
A gigantic 'doomsday' asteroid is on course to slam into Earth in 2135 amid fears humans could be powerless to stop it without a new defence system.
The space boulder called Bennu is the size of a village and as tall as New York's Empire State Building.
There's a one in 2,700 chance it could crash into Earth on September 21, 2135, and wipe out life with an impact 23 times bigger than a hydrogen bomb blast.
Today's technology may not be advanced enough to stop the threat, but US space scientists have designed a concept spacecraft that would blow up or deflect oncoming asteroids with a nuclear explosion.
The 8.8-ton Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER) spacecraft would steer its "impactor" into a space rock or detonate a nuclear device, BuzzFeed reported.
The spacecraft is the brainchild of a collaboration between the National Nuclear Security Administration, Nasa and two Energy Department weapons labs.
In their study, the scientists used Bennu - which is 1,600ft wide and weighs 174 billion pounds - as an example to find out what it would take to prevent a direct hit.
The kinetic impactor is the preferred approach, but if there is little time to avert disaster a nuclear blast could be the only option, the study notes.
Bennu was chosen for the study because it is the best-studied of the known NEOs and samples will be obtained in a matter of months.
An impact on Earth would trigger an explosion about 23 times bigger than the largest hydrogen bomb blast, BuzzFeed reported.
Physicist David Dearborn, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, told the website: "If the asteroid is small enough, and we detect it early enough, we can do it with the impactor.
"The impactor is not as flexible as the nuclear option when we really want to change the speed of the body in a hurry."
But there is no guarantee the spacecraft which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds, or an alternative, will ever get built to protect Earth from Bennu or other objects in space.
Source: Mirror