A nuke against an asteroid in general is a VERY bad idea!!! See, this would 'maybe' work if the asteroid were a hard object, but since we recently landed probes on asteroids and have an idea about its general makeup, we know that this not only will not work, but you will probably make the situation much much WORSE!!!
Anyway, the one way to devert an asteroid of any significant size is to know about it long before hand - like a year, and be prepared for it. Then send a solar sail to collect solar radiation and focus that radiation to a tiny point - just like a magnafying glass, and this should slowly push the giant rock several thousand miles off Earths course given enough time.
-S
PS. Solar sails like I describe have actually been recently tested and fully deployed. I'll see if I can dig up some information on it. bb.
PPS. By the way, April 13th (Yes, it will be a Friday!), 2029 looks like the date of impact for 2004 MN4. It will be bad - a 1 in 40 chance of hitting the Earth.
|