These advanced computer models are the first step toward building a full-fledged planetary defense system that protects Earth from killer asteroid impacts.
Sabina Raducan has the kind of job you’d expect the protagonist in a 1990s Michael Bay movie to hold. In The Rock, Nicolas Cage’s Dr. Stanley Goodspeed is an FBI chemical weapons specialist who helps save the day. In Armageddon, Bruce Willis’ Harry Stamper is a veteran oil driller who helps save the day. And at the University of Bern, one of the largest universities in Switzerland, Sabina Raducan builds hyper-realistic models of asteroid impacts.
Scientists have been wondering about the possibility of protecting Earth against possible killer asteroids for more than half a century. In the mid-1960s, many people were worried about the possibility of Asteroid 1566 Icarus colliding with the Earth, despite the fact that experts were confident it would pass only within around four million miles. “Large Asteroid is Headed for Earth” screamed one newspaper.
Interestingly, not all of the data used for building Raducan’s models can come from real-life asteroids. Recently some of her colleagues trekked to Spain where they fired plastic projectiles at a substitute scale model of the asteroid Ryugu, made of sand and rocks, using a compressed gas gun. These results also make their way into her computer models.
It’s easy to think that, when it comes to possible killer asteroids, we should simply hit them as hard as we can. After all, the concept of overkill, exceeding the amount of destructive capacity needed to solve the problem, doesn’t seem too much of an issue when you’re dealing with a potential extinction level event hurtling towards Earth.
How can Raducan be confident her models are accurate? After all, in the event of a killer asteroid, a miscalculation could be disastrous. For now, the answer is … we don’t know. But we very well could soon.
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