Scientists believe high-powered 'laser defence system' will save Earth from cataclysmic meteorite impacts

 

Scientists believe high-powered 'laser defence system' will save Earth from cataclysmic meteorite impacts

Scientists in California are testing a "laser-defence system" that could one day protect our planet from being wiped out by a meteorite .

The team, based at the Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), are shooting high-energy lasers at captured space rocks here on Earth. The idea is to find out how resistant the rocks are, before figuring out a way to vaporise them.

From there the researchers will scale up until they've got a full-on planetary defence system that will save us from incoming annhilation .

"It's not a matter of if, but when," said Megan Bruck Syal, who's leading the research.

"Our challenge is to figure out how to avert disaster before it happens," she said, referring to the eventual certainty of a large celestial object smashing into the Earth.

Bruck Syal is a member of the LLNL's planetary defense team - a small group of engineers and physicists working with NASA to find and prevent an asteroid impact.

Included in that number are 1,600 that come within 20 times the moon's distance to Earth. They're what NASA calls " potentially hazardous asteroids " and are what Bruck Syal and her team might have to deal with.

Lasers represent a better option than just firing a nuclear missile at an asteroid because, depending on how and where you hit it, it would just shower into smaller and equally deadly pieces.

"Each comet and asteroid has its own unique character, which presents a challenge for predicting how an individual target would respond to a deflection attempt," Bruck Syal explained.

"The makeup may vary significantly from asteroid to asteroid. An individual body may have an abnormal orbit or rotation, and its size would also affect which method we might use to deflect it."

The team at the LLNL will be practicing their theory on a pair of small meteorites that fell to Earth and were recovered in Antarctica.

"There's very little known about asteroid strength," Bruck Syal said. "We're doing everything we can to know more about how asteroid materials respond under extreme conditions."