It’s been almost 25 years since Bruce Willis played the fictional character Harry Stamper in the blockbuster movie, Armageddon, he saved Earth from an asteroid headed for our planet.

In true Hollywood fashion, the protagonist saved her Earth detonating a nuclear bomb implanted in the asteroid, preventing what scientists call a “mass extinction event”. The whole world applauded the hero (at least in the movie).

People are now able to cheer in real life. In a study published in Nature Physics, physicists at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, US, say they have simulated a nuclear X-ray pulse directed at the side of an asteroid to change its orbit so it avoids a collision with the Earth.

How did the experiment work?

In a recent experiment conducted at Sandia National Laboratories, researchers used a machine Z to generate the X-ray pulses. This is one of the most powerful radiation machines in the world that can generate magnetic fields and X-rays.

To generate the X-ray pulse, an intense electrical burst is directed into a pocket of argon gas. This ignites an explosion of the argon gas and turns it into a plasma. The plasma emits a powerful wave of X-rays at the target, effectively simulating a nuclear explosion in space.

Scientists used a pulse of X-rays to simulate a nuclear explosion on the surface of an asteroid-like rock in conditions similar to those in space. The pulse created a cloud of steam that pushed the rock away.

“The vaporized material is ejected from one side, pushing the asteroid in the opposite directionDr. Nathan Moore, the lead author of the new study, said in a press statement.

In an interview with Space.com, a website focused on space exploration and astronomy, Moore said:

“You have to pack a lot of power, about 80 trillion watts, into a very small space, the size of a wire or a pencil, and very quickly, within about 100 billionths of a second, to create a very hot plasma of argon, several million degrees, so that makes a powerful enough burst of X-rays to heat the surface of the asteroid’s material to tens of thousands of degrees to give it enough thrust».

The solution was to use what is called “x-ray scissors”. This involved hanging the rock using ultra-thin aluminum foil wires about one-eighth the thickness of a human hair.

“A key fact was that asteroids in space are not attached to anything. But in a lab, everything is pulled down by Earth’s gravity, so everything is held in place by its gravitational attachment to something else. That wouldn’t let our funny asteroid move with the freedom of one through space. And the mechanical components would create friction that would disrupt the fake asteroid’s motionMoore said.

Have we tried to change the orbit of an asteroid before?

Changing an asteroid’s orbit may seem more fantasy than science, but in November 2021, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos and successfully changed the asteroid’s orbital path. Fortunately, the asteroid Dimorphos was not a threat to Earth. It was chosen to test whether an impact from another object could be a viable method to deflect an asteroid.