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Should Nuclear Devices Be Kept On Hand To Protect Against Near Earth Objects?

Posted by samzenpus on from the break-out-the-mini-nuke dept.

Lasrick writes: Seth Baum ponders whether nuclear devices should be kept on hand for the purpose of destroying near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a threat to the planet. Baum acknowledges that "The risk posed by NEOs is not zero, but it is small relative to the risk posed by nuclear weapons." Even so, Baum writes, since the consequences of an NEO hitting the earth would be catastrophic, keeping 10 or 20 nuclear devices available might be a good idea, and would be "insignificant compared to the thousands now held in military arsenals."

7 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. You mean NEOs like Russia? by tlambert · · Score: 5, Funny

    You mean NEOs like Russia? You can't get any nearer to Earth than that.

    Probably "yes".

    1. Re:You mean NEOs like Russia? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean NEOs like Russia? You can't get any nearer to Earth than that.

      +1 - humor is a great way to get at the tough issues. To put it more bluntly, though: "no, nuclear devices should be kept on hand to protect against politicians". The nuclear-armed nations have not gone to war with each other, and they won't because nuclear weapons (along with ICBM's) ensure that politicians can't simply send poor boys off to die for their lustful ambition on wealth and power without also impulsively risking their own safety.

      This is unprecedented in the history of the nation state mechanism and has had major positive effects (if one considers empirical evidence rather than irrational fear). Sorry, it's not the pretty table at the UN that keeps bad leaders from misbehaving; until we can ban politicians, taking away their risk exposure would be the stupidest course of action conceivable. In the US only 5% of the population even trusts them to make sound decisions.

      Maybe I should just change my .sig to "incentives matter" - the fear-mongers love to pretend otherwise, so this never stops coming up.

      --
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  2. Effect of nukes on NEOs by maroberts · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you seen how much effect a nuke is likely to have on a significantly sized NEO? None whatso fucking ever. If an NEO is enough to wipe us out, it won't be screwed by a nuke.

    Also the ideal launch point for such a nuke would be from space, not Earth.

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
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    1. Re:Effect of nukes on NEOs by Spazmania · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, the idea is idiotic. You blow up the NEO. Wonderful. The million pieces still have the same mass, velocity and therefore kinetic energy heading towards the planet.

      You don't blow up threatening space objects. Space is really big. All you do is give the object a little nudge while it's still far enough away. The little nudge is all it takes to miss the planet by a very large margin.

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      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    2. Re:Effect of nukes on NEOs by g0tai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Many more pieces, with a lot more surface area to:

      1) burn up with.
      2) decelerate with.

      One big problem becomes less significant the smaller it gets.

    3. Re:Effect of nukes on NEOs by Moses48 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The article quotes a NASA study from 2007 on the best way to "deflecting NEOs". They found nuclear devices to be "10-100 times more effective than the non-nuclear alternatives analyzed in this study." You are actually saying what the article is saying. The article doesn't say the nukes are to explode the NEO, leave it to Slashdot to have a misleading summary.

    4. Re: Effect of nukes on NEOs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The actual thermal effect of a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere is almost exclusively due to the fact that there is an atmosphere. In the immediate milliseconds following fission you get a very intense burst of soft x-rays, these are in turn absorbed in the first 2 miles or so of the atmosphere, superheating its component gases and causing it to radiate white, IR, and UV light. FUMP. This emitted IR/UV/White is the intensity that causes flash fires, vaporization, deflagration, etc.

      In a vacuum, a nuke goes off like a _very_ short flash bulb followed by a rapidly expanding cloud of _very_ whispy very superheated plasma that is composed of the nuke's fomer mass - only. What you don't see however is that the intense surge of X-rays does not get captured by anything, and instead continue on, rather lethally for hundreds to thousands of kilometers.

      A nuke against a NEO would best be used well ahead of time, in close proximity of 5 to .2 kilometers depending on the item's composition. Upon detonation the x-ray burst would get captured by the first few centimeters of the objects surface material facing the nuke. Material would boil off to several mm of depth, almost explosively for a few fractions of a second, and deliver a soft shove to the object conversely away from its boiled off char.