[meteorite-list] How to blow up an asteroid (Bruce Wills joke already taken)

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Jun 16 21:22:39 2006
Message-ID: <37m692ha372qurn2nfiufo7vresnn857gh_at_4ax.com>

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13321754/

Supercomputer takes on cosmic threat
Simulation shows that many small blasts work better than one big one
By Leonard David

Senior space writer
Space.com


Updated: 3:05 p.m. ET June 14, 2006
A super-powerful computer has simulated what it might take to keep Earth safe
from a menacing asteroid.

Researchers have utilized the number-crunching brainpower of Red Storm, a
supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Red Storm, a
Cray XT3 supercomputer, is the first computer to surpass the 1
terabyte-per-second performance mark ? a measure that indicates the capacity of
a network of processors to communicate with each other when dealing with the
most complex situations ? in both classified and unclassified realms.

The massively parallel computing simulations have modeled how much explosive
power it would take to destroy or sidetrack an asteroid that has Earth in its
cross-hairs.

For the computer runs, asteroid 6489 Golevka was chosen. Golevka isn?t going to
hit the Earth, explained Mark Boslough, a Sandia scientist and asteroid threat
analyst. This particular asteroid was used as a ?proxy? because solid geometry
data about the object existed, he said.

Since its discovery in May 1991 by astronomer Eleanor Helin, asteroid Golevka
has been repeatedly radar-scanned. It is about a third of a mile (one
half-kilometer) across, but tips the scales at about 460 billion pounds (210
billion kilograms), according to asteroid experts at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The Golevka asteroid has been a particular object of interest since 2003. That?s
when NASA scientists discovered its course had changed.

Keeping tabs on Golevka has helped pin down the Yarkovsky Effect ? a minuscule
amount of force produced as the asteroid absorbs energy from the sun and
re-radiates it into space as heat. Over time ? lots of it ? that force can have
a big effect on an asteroid?s orbit.

Deflection and disruption
Boslough said the actual geometry from radar measurements of asteroid Golevka
were used in the computer simulations.

?Of course we don?t know the internal structure, so we had to assume something,?
Boslough said. He and his colleagues tried both heterogeneous and homogenous
simulations, but selected the uniform strength and density for the
high-resolution demonstration mainly for simplicity's sake.

The researchers applied the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" principle of avoiding
unnecessary complications ? don?t try the hardest thing first, Boslough added.

In general terms, several findings stood out in Red Storm computations that
might be useful for future planetary defense systems.

Boslough first noted that there are two ?end-member strategies? in the Golevka
work:

Deflection: Keeping the asteroid in one piece and changing its trajectory to
miss Earth.
Disruption: Blowing it to smithereens and making sure all the bits miss the
Earth.
?There are a range of in-between options,? Boslough told Space.com, ?but the
deflection end of the spectrum is much more realistic.? On a kiloton-per-kiloton
basis, small, shallow explosions are much more effective for moving the asteroid
than large, deep ones.


Bruce Willis: encore coring
One demonstration simulation ? 10 megatons at the center of mass of the object ?
is the most spectacular "end member" of the range that the research team
explored. But it's the least likely scenario, Boslough explained. "It also
neglects a fundamental problem of how you would get the device inside an
asteroid."

Bruce Willis and his team may have drilled into the core of an asteroid and
planted a nuclear bomb in the 1998 movie "Armageddon," but that scenario just
doesn?t seem likely in the real world, Boslough said.

Playing out Golevka?s hypothetical demise even on a super-fast computer took
longer than the movie. Sandia?s half-second, billion-cell simulation of a
10-megaton explosion at Golevka's center took 12 hours to run on 7,200
processors of Red Storm.

The supercomputer is a product of a partnership between Cray Computers Inc. and
Sandia National Laboratories, developed for the Advanced Simulation and
Computing program of the Department of Energy?s National Nuclear Security
Administration laboratory.

Low-yield, high payoff
The Red Storm computational output provided useful insights.

In particular, Boslough said, was the realization that using multiple,
low-yield, deflecting explosions is much better than using one high-yield
device.

"There are many advantages" to this approach, Boslough observed. "For one, you
don?t need to rendezvous with the asteroid and drill a hole or otherwise place a
device. You can set it off as a surface burst. Contrast the time it takes to
?land? something on the surface of an asteroid ? like NASA?s Near Earth Asteroid
Rendezvous spacecraft ? to how long it takes just to get there, like NASA?s Deep
Impact," he said.

You want to solve the problem quickly, Boslough said, "even if we know about an
impact decades in advance ? the public perception will be that time is of the
essence."

If asteroid deflection is the game plan, there?s need to avoid accidental
breakage.

A low-yield blast lessens the volume of material that is subjected to the
highest tensile and shear stress, reducing the likelihood that the object will
come apart.

"If you do break the asteroid, you want to make sure none of the big pieces hit
the Earth," Boslough said. "Multiple low-yield bursts over an entire hemisphere
[of the asteroid] would reduce the likelihood that anything big would get left
behind on the impact trajectory."

When saving Earth, have a Plan B
The fact that you can get a low-yield device to a menacing object fast also
means that you are more likely to have a second chance, Boslough noted. He said
that equates to a viable "backup plan" for other, more elaborate, expensive and
time-consuming methods.

"When you are saving the Earth, it?s good to have a Plan B. I suspect that if a
near-Earth object were confirmed to be on an impact trajectory, public opinion
would demand fast action, and this would become Plan A, if it wasn?t already,"
Boslough said.

Boslough said that follow-on work regarding defending Earth from near-Earth
objects is slated. Specifically on tap is delving into momentum transfer for a
variety of assumed asteroidal and cometary materials and structures.

? 2006 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13321754/
Received on Fri 16 Jun 2006 09:25:02 PM PDT