Can We Stop An Asteroid With Nuke? DEBUNKED

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Use my code 'DEBUNKED' and get AtlasVPN for 82% OFF with 1 month Free + a 30 day money back guarantee: atlasv.pn/DEBUNKED

[@Rohan25]

Owner of this channel ... Pls pin this comment also ...so when this video of urs ...will get viral after some yrs. ..my comment is not lost at bottom somewhere ... Also pls share on youtube's community post ...some stats on ur video of surviving nuclear bomb for last 1-2 months ...and say something about the engagement on that video since last month and sudden popularity of that video and ur channel Thanks if u took out time to read this full msg ..

[@Corruptedhope]

@@Rohan25 dude you can’t pin a comment in a reply

[@Corruptedhope]

@@Rohan25 plus begging to do something isn’t good. I’d doubt he will do things you say bc he’s busy reading other comments about and making videos which other creators do

[@nagadioy9859]

A year later the DART mission has been a succes, so yes the kinetic impactor works

[@fredbloggs8072]

I believe it actually deflected the asteroid even further than the scientists & engineers expected.

[@A-Clear_View]

nooice thanks save me time i probely woulden't have spent.

[@DirtyLifeLove]

Stony type asteroids will likely break up when hitting earth into smaller and smaller pieces, and nuke will make them smaller. I would say that is better then nothing

[@miowacity]

If thr nuke were inside it might be able to split it up somewhat but a surface hit - the energy would mostly just bounce off.

[@MaxAbramson3]

Or send up a single ICMB, rotate the rocket around so that the mass of the rocket is turned to face the asteroid, set of the nukes, and blast the NEO with a powerful stream of hot gasses the blow it off course.

[@josenaranjo_26]

The level of production of Debunked is admirable! I love this channel!

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Thank you!

[@shreyaspatel424]

Your narrating ability and these animations explaining this concept were a treat to watch❤

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it 😊

[@michaelhawkins7389]

@@DebunkedOfficial could we use lasers to destory them?

[@EngineerGaming2]

@@michaelhawkins7389 idk

[@diyeana]

It's a good thing we have scientists working on the potential impact problem and not KZbin poll takers. 😅

[@tdog2111]

why so mad

[@pinehawk9600]

We would better off with youtubers

[@norml.hugh-mann]

Something bigger than cities would be beyond the scope of scientists or youtubers They wouldnt even tell us ..if they even knew...theres a big sky and we barely know whats coming from certain angles....0 from others

[@kaakorean1046]

You know scientists make many mistakes too

[@Cayd0s]

There might be a rogue Black hole heading straight to the Earth by 250,000 kmh that NASA hides to avoid a chaos fyi. So just live your life our fragile lives are too short to worry about crap.

[@redhood5074]

I would really hope that if it came to it, the countries of the world would come together and agree to allow nuclear weapons in space if it was to save the species from devasation.

[@FZs1]

But hopefully no country will "forget" an unused one there after successfully deflecting the asteroid...

[@kg4wwn]

Before Covid, I would have been sure that people would work together to save the world. Now I'm pretty sure that a good quarter of people will just deny it is there.

[@AnotherPointOfView944]

@@kg4wwn Good point. Conspiracy theorists are abundant and astonishingly stupid.

[@STSWB5SG1FAN]

@@kg4wwn Whatever you do, 'Don't Look Up'. 🤨😏😂

[@fredbloggs8072]

Yea I'm pretty sure they'd agree to an amendment to treaty so save the entire frigging planet. I'd like to think so anyway.

[@justandy333]

I love this channel, The narration is great, the animations are top rate and the research that goes into them is outstanding. Keep it up team! This channel definitely deserves more love than its currently getting.

[@WomanSlayer69420]

Imagine taking a nap on a sofa only for a random rock to hit you from out of nowhere.

[@yoboipanda2363]

You know it's an awesome day when debunked uploades

[@gameweb1453]

One of the most hardworking youtubers keep it up you are made to reach greater heights ❤️ love from india

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Thanks so much

[@gameweb1453]

@@DebunkedOfficial and again I like your replying concept this very encouraging for me to get a reply from a youtuber who's working so hard and deserves more 😉

[@GobKingYT]

That 43% is America as a whole. They like things that go boom.

[@everton3030]

I really like these kinds of videos. Keep it up

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Thanks for watching!

[@DebunkedOfficial]

What's your favorite Asteroid/Comet Movie?

[@inshort58]

Don't Look Up!

[@everton3030]

I don't have any but I do like the space movie 'interstellar'

[@yoboipanda2363]

I havent watched a lot of movies so ima say none

[@khumokwezimashapa2245]

Deep Impact and Armageddon

[@teslabull74]

Maximum overdrive

[@Adityatalks..W]

This such an underrated Channel🤯🤯. Just came across your videos and was engrossed🤓

[@teamvipershayer8360]

Then why came here ? Get out of here this channel is family friendly not haters conversation

[@Gibmeprimogemss]

0:03 MICROSOFT ASTEROID

[@DebunkedOfficial]

😆

[@matthewdrummond1340]

Dirty snowballs sounds like an happy hour drink.

[@DebunkedOfficial]

😆I thought the same!

[@annfranksus1531]

The sad part is, there would be people who think it's fake (even people in government) and do everything possible to prevent anything being done to stop the asteroid

[@angelicanavarro5311]

That’s why I think that experts shouldn’t say anything. Just so that something productive can get done. 😅

[@runitonce7791]

@@angelicanavarro5311 The experts don't have the power to stop things. They have to tell the idiots in power what's happening so they can handle it or chose not to

[@FalconWindblader]

@@angelicanavarro5311 Experts need resources to do what they need to, & unfortunately, it's usually those shortsighted idiots in power with those resources.

[@Humulator]

That's exactly what happens in the movie Don't look up.

[@vanceroday]

@@Humulator i was about to say 😂

[@jksupergamer]

I think the best way is to have some guy do 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 100 squats, and a 10km run every single day for 3 years. And have that guy punch it away.

[@DebunkedOfficial]

😆

[@Facepalm-Guy]

So if a hypothetical asteroid were to hit earth. The United Nations would _still NOT_ allow nukes in space to off set the trajectory? Talk about dumb.

[@SJR_Media_Group]

Would you rather get shot by a .50 caliber armor piercing bullet from 100 yards or a shotgun with bird shot? One will kill you, the other not. Choose Wisely.

[@alfred-vz8ti]

you don't destroy it, you nudge it.

[@TheRandomChannel_idk]

Isn't it weird that Apophis' nearest flyby is on a Friday the 13th?

[@DebunkedOfficial]

I thought that too 🤔

[@joegroup1]

God's little joke, He gets fed up living for eternity ! LOL

[@maddoxmonteza]

the animation in this channel is severely underrated

[@justinblin]

Good thing DART worked 😂

[@mad_like_a_hatter5469]

I remember when I was 6 years old me and my sister where at the Grand Canyon standing about 8 feet apart when a meteorite struck between us. It was flaming hot screaming out of the sky and embedded in the ground about 3 feet in and we dug it out it was only about the size of half a penny by the time we got it out but was amazingly cool and we didn’t realize it should have been terrifying.

[@cbsGD]

no it didn't happen

[@zizochemlali4639]

Wow that’s so true! It’s like the time I swallowed a nuclear bomb that somehow ended up in my hotdog! Stop making up stories

[@Cayd0s]

r/thathappened

[@sweetricecakeman8582]

I remember when I was 6 years old. Me and my sister **were** at the Grand Canyon standing about 2 centimeters apart when a horse-sized meteor landed right between us. I was so terrified until I realised this didn't actually happen and I was making a word salad for KZbin likes.

[@lucious6582]

4:46 ...and it's radius stretches nearly 1 mile...(Illustrates by drawing the diameter) Otherwise great video👍

[@aevenova9780]

I wish you had an archive of the old channel, Alltime conspiracy. That was really cool.

[@arthuraguiar5382]

Thank you for using the metric system in the explanations. No sarcasm intended

[@astr0o]

i love education!

[@artursoares86]

I'd like to thank u for using both imperial and international measurement systems. It's hard for us who don't use imperial system to have a reference. It's nice when the videomaker already converts it in the video.

[@Zebberz1031]

“One crossed wire, one pinch of potassium chloride, one wayward twitch, and KA-“ - a flippin good demoman

[@Willchannel90]

Most people tells, "They put a weakspots on the asteroid to go boom". Before it reached the earth's orbit.

[@ne0tic]

Amazing production man!

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Thank you! It's great to see comments like this 😊 Subscribe for our next video (we release 1 per month at the mo) and in the meantime you can catch up on some of our back catalogue.

[@mpetersen6]

1) What's the lead time? 2) What's the Asteroids composition? 3) What's the calculated velocity at interception? 4) What's the needed velocity change? The longer the lead time the less the delta vee needed. Is the body a rubble pile? A solid body? A multiple body? Primary with asmaller moon. Solid nickel iron? Lots of nickel, iron and other metals. Needed delta vee means earlier intervention the more it is. Best method in my opinion is if you have a large enough spacecraft park it to one side of the body and let it hover under very low thrust. Over a period of time your space craft will act as a gravity tractor to add or subtract velocityfrom the body. If you are early enough you might only need something on thescore of tens of meters per second. But once you have a way of deflecting asteroids you also have away of making them into weapon.

[@RAGNAAAA]

The test was successful 👍🏼

[@aaravcreationstv5537]

My day was trash, but after watching a Debunked video it instantly got better! :D

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Glad to have helped improve your day 😊

[@aaravcreationstv5537]

@@DebunkedOfficial :D

[@phred196]

Any given asteroid could be deflected by hitting it with earth based lasers in sufficient strength. Laser hits side of rock, heating it and thereby producing course altering thrust. When the lasers are not busy deflecting armageddon, they could be used to clear up orbital space debris by vaporizing it. Plus I could use them to carve my name on the moon.

[@joanjlopezrondoni8273]

Earth's atmosphere would interfere with the laser (light diffusion) diminishing it's performance, so they should be ultrapowerful to compensate. Aside the power consumption, the effects on the atmosphere would aggravate current global warming (plus all the radiation caused by air ionization). It would be better to have them in orbit. But again, putting a power plant powerful enough in orbit is a no go nowadays.

[@phred196]

@This The nature of a laser beam is that it doesn't spread out as much as natural light sources. Inverse square law largely does not apply. It would be quite practical to build a suite of beams which focused the majority of their energy on a rock out in space. It's not necessary to heat the rock to 2k either. At a great enough distance we need only provide a small amount of thrust. As an example, both Voyager probes are now significantly off course due to the thrust caused by a few degrees of radiant heat from their power cells. The energy of a hair dryer has effectively steered an interstellar spacecraft. Right now, we daily fire a gigawatt laser at the moon for the laser reflector experiment left by Apollo. If there was indeed a dinosaur killer rock, we would certainly create a network of ground based "deathstar" lasers to heat and deflect it. Assuming of course we detected it with enough advance notice - years/decades.

[@lunariclunestra8335]

@@joanjlopezrondoni8273 Why are we using lasers on earth if we could set them uuup on tthe Moon? Moon has literally zero atmosphere to intervene and a nuclear reactor powered laser would probably provide enough energy. Maintenance can be done by robots like the ones on the mars. Dunno but that sounds like a legit good idea to me, or I am just too high.

[@loganwork7024]

We don't have a laser anywhere close to that capacity, and NO ONE wants to see Fred engraved on the moon, especially spelled wrong

[@Heliocentric]

@@phred196 Lol. You have no idea what you're talking about. The inverse square law still applies to lasers without a culminating lens. There is a very real effect of beam divergence with lasers.

[@lool8421]

prob nuking it from the side to change the direction would make more sense, but you still would have to do a lot of calculations to estimate how strong the nuke has to be

[@Enchet0]

Jippie! If we need to deflect a astreoid we need to pait it into a yin and yang or drive a spaceship into it.

[@earthly_republix]

9:34 Nuking an asteroid is an example of fixing a problem with another problem.

[@RobertR3750]

Why?

[@Zenta-H]

So building Giant nuclear railguns like in ace combat 7 isn't an option? My life is ruined

[@jona2395]

That windows notification sound in the beggining got me

[@icata12345]

I love this channel so far ^^

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Thanks 😊 We’re releasing another video later this month!

[@willshad]

I'd love to hear the science behind how a 100 foot long object hitting another object with a 25,000 mile circumference can cause major damage. It akin to tossing a grain of sand at a basketball.

[@devdecker7812]

It really depends . Getting hit with a bunch of 100 ft meteors is better than one massive three mile wide meteor . Definitely better for smaller pieces .

[@fredbloggs8072]

Yea I would've thought so too, although scientists who study this sort of thing tend to think it would be just as bad, if not worse.

[@Potato-ko3oc]

honestly your sponsers are the only one i really trust, dont ask me why.

[@janus1958]

A couple of points: On the asteroid pieces "burning up in the atmosphere" idea. Even if you could assure that none them are large enough to make it to the surface, there is still a problem. A largish asteroid would still have a ton of kinetic energy and burning up in the air just means that it is pumping that energy into the atmosphere, which can still have disruptive ecological effects, disrupting weather patterns etc. And while the animations dealing with deflection of the asteroid all showed them being pushed to the side, depending on the trajectory of the asteroid, this might not always be the best choice. The Earth itself is a moving target, traveling its own diameter is in ~ 7 min. So, it might be more effective to "slow down" the asteroid, so that by the time it crosses the Earth's orbit, the Earth has already moved past that point. In addition, thrust applied along an orbiting object's velocity vector is the most efficient in terms of effecting that orbit. That being said, it must also be pointed out that the Earth is a bigger "target" than its physical size alone. The Earth's own gravity will deflect an incoming asteroid towards us, causing one that would miss otherwise to hit. How close the asteroid's unaltered path has to be to the Earth depends on the relative velocity. In this case, a slower asteroid is worse, as the Earth's gravity will have more time to bend its trajectory towards us.

[@ddelv1601]

I would think you would want to place nukes several meters deep in the astroid. The material above the nuke would be vaporized, but it would give the energy something to push against to help deflect the astroid. You would probably want dozens of them ready to go, then set them off in sequence.

[@Humanentity3888]

Soooo, Our moon casualy have 100% dodge chance for huge meteorites, I love it XDD

[@nicosmind3]

I vote we mine them into useful metals etc, then put those useful metals into orbit, turning a threat into a profit

[@DirtyLifeLove]

It was funny in 2013 when that Russian meteor hit because there was a scare about another asteroid that people thought might hit and I wake up to headline “asteroid explodes over Russia injurying dozens”

[@meskisz]

We will need to find Inuyashiki and Shishigami to destroy the asteroid.

[@ayushkumar5361]

Professional quality videos

[@egodeath6]

great video

[@StopMarxism]

you got a new fan

[@AdityaSingh-tf5hv]

Now iam going to share this information with my friends and act cool

[@davidgardner863]

I wonder if it would be possible to drill a hole in one of the asteroid’s poles, fill it with ice, and put in a heating element, in effect giving it a rocket engine to change it’s course.

[@devdecker7812]

Well at that point why not just use rocket , better than lugging up water and a heating element and a drill but your idea is definitely clever and would work, at least it would definitely change the course of the asteroid

[@davidgardner863]

@@devdecker7812 , If the asteroid already contains ice which I believe it does contain a certain percentage, the fuel is already there. It might work even better on comets.

[@devdecker7812]

@@davidgardner863 if the ice is already there definitely would make your idea easier , I still feel just landing a rocket on it with another rocket to push it would easier and simpler

[@MP-vc4nu]

@@davidgardner863 That would be a comet instead, Asteroid is mainly rock 🪨, comet is mainly ice 🧊

[@davidgardner863]

@@MP-vc4nu , Meteorites are found to contain up to 25% water and earth may have acquired much of its water from asteroids during the late heavy bombardment.

[@kainigwon5433]

Chicxulub Impactor. Good name. If one of those things come again, i'll be prepared.

[@flash_gif]

Only way to stop an asteroid is with a weapon called "Saitama".

[@jpmcfrosty]

Holy shit I’ll never look at a shooting stars the same again now I’m just gonna view them as interplanetary space soaring hot rock hazardous missiles

[@DebunkedOfficial]

😆

[@randomix4023]

What I fear most, except the size of the asteroid, is if it will be full of rare minerals like gold etc....

[@weirdochristoffel5285]

yes we lose tons of valuables if we can capture which is to put them in orbit we could extract the materials

[@conboi124]

2:12 sounds like foe when you say pho

[@pepe6666]

i think in the instance of a big rock coming to earth, the no nukes in space treaty can go out the window

[@DasSeltsameExemplar]

Ive got to mention that apophis is best mining operation target as its not too massive to move nor too lightweight to not be worth hundreds of million dollars of budget to send a rocket to space to slow it down to orbit earth

[@nic101]

Build a miniature death Star

[@EB-rz8zs]

I wonder which option the dinosaurs went with? They obviously obviously didn’t catch it enough time.

[@antipoti]

If planet killers come every 50M years, and the last one killed the dinos, than we are well overdue for the next one. 🙈

[@Buffalo_Soldier]

Noone mentions speed of said asteroid. Try to guess what would be worse - 1km asteroid just "dropping" from space near earth (it would need to orbit in-front of earth and gradually get pulled down), or car-sized asteroid moving at the difference of 99.9% of speed of light? Ofc it's over-eggzageration, but 10* speed difference = 100* more energy.

[@Just_Zara.17]

Yh yh you wrote the tittle all in capital letters BUT WHY NOT THE n and o (An/To)

[@vegitobluekkx2069]

0:00 nah, let it do his job, i am cherring the asteroid up bro

[@mikemchan4937]

What about a small nuke we put into orbit that like the same asteroids follow each gaining speed every couple of years. Then when we find something that needs our attention we just redirect it toward the asteroid?

[@edhikurniawan]

What if we could install parachute and thruster motor to slow down the meteor descend. Free metal, and probably a space archeological relic. Meteor fishnet system.

[@orangegibusgaming]

Wouldnt a vast network of underground bunkers and blast shelters protect us from an extinction level threat meteorite? (Maybe not ground zero, but the blast radius, smoke clouds and hostile climate)

[@weirdochristoffel5285]

not really since most people wouldnt fit

[@orangegibusgaming]

@weirdochristoffel5285 but what if it were an enough amount of people to preserve the human race and rebuild society?

[@Sparticulous]

We should also worry about anything that passing stars shove from the oorb cloud into the inner solar system

[@evilmindedful]

Don't worry Steve Carell, John Malkovich, Jimmy O. Yang, and everybody at Space Force are working on it, just wait Season 3.

[@kiltedvet420]

if a real huge one was coming for real, we would have nothing left to lose and would have to try anything

[@liiyu8795]

1:19 I HOPE NO 1 WAS LIVING ON THAT STATION! OOF!

[@Wised1000]

People forget that on earth, 90% of the damage of a nuke is from the blast, in space there is no such effect since there is no air! The effects would be short range and secondary predominantly due to heat and radiation. As many have pointed out, the nuke woul have to burrow below the surface leading, at best, to fragmentation of the "boleid". Not very useful.

[@ryansalman1481]

Bro really explained the movie Armageddon in 5 seconds

[@TheCarterKent]

One unmentioned factor here is that the Earth is continuously moving. if the asteroid is solid, a space device need only rendezvous with the asteroid, attach to it, and then direct thrust up and outward from the space device. Doesn't even matter where the thrust is pointed as the odds of affecting it's trajectory in a way that would be towards Earth would be vanishingly small. They would, of course, keep tabs on it to change the thrust if necessary.

[@divineconfetti649]

It’s not mentioned because everything in space is moving. And you wouldn’t be able to generate thrust in a vacuum

[@TheCarterKent]

@@divineconfetti649 ummm, perhaps you didn't read the message carefully enough. Three hints are: Space is a vacuum, rockets rendezvous with asteroids using thrust, and keyword "attach".

[@divineconfetti649]

@@TheCarterKent If you’re talking about a rocket that makes more sense, I don’t know what you meant by “space device.” A rocket is the only thing that can generate thrust in space. And the Earth continuously moving has no effect on an asteroid’s orbital path, if it did we wouldn’t be able to detect them years in advance

[@lonelyPorterCH]

Glad to hear it won't happen in the next 100 years^^

[@matthewmitchell3457]

*Panik* We spot a hazardous asteroid with no time to stop it *Kalm* It doesn't do much damage *Panik* It's carrying super-ultra-mega durable, super-strong, blind, super-fast, ultra-aggressive extra-terrestrials

[@hiroboy7506]

Oh, those poor dinosaurs.. Please make a video about mass extinction too !

[@DebunkedOfficial]

Aha, we actually have one in production!

[@JeffBourke]

If you want the long version, watch Armageddon 1996.

[@Wuzzup129]

0:04 Error!

[@lucidmoses]

Of course Oumuamua showed a wrinkle in all our plans.

[@xcoder1122]

Here's my estimation prior to watching the video: A nuclear explosion primary produces heat and radiation. The reason why it is so dangerous on earth is because radiation kills living creatures, heat sets stuff on fire and heat produces a huge blast damage as it displaces air pretty quickly (hot air expands and needs more space), causing a massive shock wave in all directions, just to almost leave a vacuum at the center seconds later, causing a air to rush back to the center at hurricane speed level and this fresh air is fuel to everything set on fire, causing a massive firestorm. But in space, there is no air. In space there won't be a shock wave. In space you cannot set things on fire. And a piece of rock doesn't care for radiation. So the only effect left is the plasma heat ball at the center that can melt rock, but melting rock won't destroy it, the damage is probably tiny in comparison to what would happen on earth. Unless you drill a hole into that thing and place some nukes near its center, you cannot break it apart by nukes. And even if you break it apart, you just turned a single big rock into multiple smaller ones, which may not help that much if all the smaller ones still hit the earth and are still too big to vaporize in the atmosphere.

[@xcoder1122]

Not that many facts on nukes but I feel that my estimation is more or less confirmed. One method the video did not cover is placing one or more rocket thrusters on the surface of the asteroid that keep emitting thrust at specific intervals to slowly change its curse or its speed. So instead of relying on a single heavy impact, exploding nukes, thermal forces (spray paint) or a gravity pull, you do the same thing that objects like satellites or the ISS regularly have to do: Adjusting course with conventional thrusters. The thrust may seem tiny in comparison to such a huge object but slow and steady wins the race. Keep in mind that changing the course or speed only a tiny bit will have a huge effect after this object has traveled several millions of kilometers.

[@CHE-Undercover]

Not having watched the video, if you run the calculations, so long as we a little notice a nuclear bomb would generate enough light to vaporize enough of the material off the surface to change the trajectory of the asteroid. Even if one weren't enough to redirect it successive blast within close proximity would definitely create enough of a change to send it off course.

[@CMxMatt]

Thanks for this vid. Dont look up made me legitimately concern

[@renshawfamily]

I don't see the solar sail idea where you we use solar winds to move the asteroid from hitting earth and sailing in into the sun so it can't come back toward earth ever again.

[@TheNeonRabbit]

Don't blow it up. Nudge it

[@SuperChicken666]

According to my favorite non politically biased source, Wikipedia, the "DART spacecraft successfully collided with Dimorphos on 26 September 2022 at 23:14 UTC about 11 million kilometers (0.074 astronomical units; 29 lunar distances; 6.8 million miles) from Earth. The collision shortened Dimorphos' orbit by 32 minutes, greatly in excess of the pre-defined success threshold of 73 seconds."😊

[@joegroup1]

I can't see how painting one side of an asteroid can actually be done, in the vacuum of space, surely the paint would float off into space.. Even if you could paint an asteroid. Just to paint an area 100m square with 3 coats of paint would need about 4 tons of paint.

[@bluey-next777]

0:04 Windows 8-10 error can be heard at this point OOPS

[@jeremygreenwood1021]

Rather disappointing, you made all the mistakes of popular science shows. The first half was stuff we mostly already know and irrelevant to the question. At least we were spared the sight of scientists walking around a lab drinking endless cups of coffee. The second half efficiently showed what can be done and was thought provoking, but again you dodged the question. You explained what can practically be done, but said nothing about theory. If an explosion was big enough to blast an asteroid to gravel what would happen? How big must the fragments be to cause harm? What if the explosion blasted the fragments into a sphere of debris so that the Earth avoided most of it and passed through the middle? Impractical proposals of a mad scientist I agree, but they deserve discussion. Overall 4 out of 10 for this one. Sorry.

[@toxicweas]

Nuking it is by far the worst thing you can do. Kinetic energy or that gravitational space craft methods are the ways to go.

[@hoppywanderer5942]

It seems to me if you nuke and shatter the asteroid far enough out, you will create an ever-growing sphere of fragments. Such events favor the creation of mostly small fragments, some medium sized fragments and few large fragments. As the sphere continues to grow and dissipate, most of the fragments will diverge from the collision path. If the nuke is too small to totally vaporize and shatter the entire body, the remaining main body will still have its velocity vector altered and, if hit far enough out, WILL result in it diverging from collision course. True, some fragments almost certainly are going to remain on collision course, but these are unlikely to be large enough to be worrisome. But if they are .... nuke them again.

[@jaceychan7099]

The movie don’t look up is what’s wrong! We’re so busy with controlling each other to notice a rock the size of a school bus that’s been on its way to earth for a hundred years but at least this should stop all the bickering

[@richardeastwick3517]

Thanks for this excellent video, but I would like to share these thoughts. At first you state that our chances of being hit by a PHO in the next hundred years are zero. Then you tell us that planetary defense scientists estimate that we have only found 40% of PHOs. These two statements seem to contradict one another. In fact, when one looks into the problem and does some thinking, one realizes that $150 million a year for planetary defense is a foolishly small sum of money. It needs to be billions a year. We need to find every PHO larger than 100 meters and practice pushing them around. After we get good at that, we can start mining them by putting them in stable orbits around the moon at first and then the earth. Then, and only then, should we make any attempt to send humans to Mars, in my humble opinion.

[@FalconWindblader]

Practice pushing them around sounds like a good idea... If not for the possibility of sending them crashing right on top of our heads by accident, a mistake that'd be very VERY costly to fix. Btw, the zero chance applied only the PHO currently identified & located, which was why Stu said that the chance could change with new developments.

[@watch_2011]

4:40 Wrong Spelling Of "Washington Monument"

[@pigeons3623]

Space is cool