AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Do you worry that an asteroid will slam into Earth and end all life on this planet?
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RASCOE: Perhaps scenes from movies like "Armageddon" keep you up at night. We may have something to make your sleep a little better.
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RASCOE: Scientists may have discovered a way to knock an incoming asteroid off course. And for anyone who ever wondered, why don't we just throw a bunch of nuclear missiles at it? Well, you're kind of right.
NATHAN MOORE: A little bit different concept, but we think it may even be more effective.
RASCOE: Nathan Moore led a team of physicists at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. They have discovered, you just need to set off a nuclear explosion near an asteroid, and the burst of X-rays will send it safely off target. The idea has been around for decades, but the only way to test it is with a nuclear weapon.
MOORE: And those are difficult to come by. So we invented a laboratory experiment where we could test this idea to generate an incredibly strong burst of X-rays in the laboratory.
RASCOE: His team used magnetic fields to produce these X-rays and recorded their effects on two mock asteroids, roughly the size of Tic Tacs.
MOORE: Not only does it work, but it works better than we thought.
RASCOE: And on any size asteroid. But Nathan Moore cautions that all asteroids are not alike.
MOORE: Asteroids come in many different flavors. They're made of many different types of rocks. We've only done a test on one type of mineral, so it will be important to test this idea on different minerals in our laboratory experiments to develop a full understanding of how we would deal with every type of asteroid.
RASCOE: But it's good to know we humans have options that those dinosaurs didn't when it comes to asteroids or when they come to us.
MOORE: It's certainly reassuring to know that if we are surprised by either a large asteroid or one that shows up with very little warning, if it needs a hard shove, we have a way to deal with it.
RASCOE: Bruce Willis, thank you for your service.
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AEROSMITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah - I don't want to close my eyes... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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