When I was a kid, I loved the
movie Armageddon. It had all the ingredients of a fun and
thrilling movie: humor, catastrophe, tragedy, zany characters: you name
it. And if I'm being honest, I still like it, though not for the same
reasons.
Now it is harder to believe in
something like that realistically happening. In the film, an asteroid
"the size of Texas" is coming to Earth, and the only way to stop it
is by sending a team of astronauts and drillers to set off a nuke in its core, splitting
it in half so it flies by without impacting Earth.
The first issue is that an
asteroid that big is far too rare to evade detection for as long as it did
(Bruce). It's also highly unlikely one that big would be heading for
Earth at this time in the solar system's history. The last real asteroid
that caused enough destruction to bring a mass extinction (including the
dinosaurs) was only 10km wide- about the size of a city. This has been
verified by measurements of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, where the impact is
thought to have happened about 66 million years ago (Parks). But if the
rock in the movie really were the size of Texas, it would have to be about
1,000km wide- 100 times bigger than the impact at Chicxulub!
That would make it impossible to
drill "800 feet to the core" to set off a nuke. If you think
about it, the dimensions of this asteroid would have to be similar to a pancake
in order for that to work. Also, would a single nuke really be able to
blow up an asteroid that big? Probably not, says Alistair Bruce, an
astrophysicist interviewed to critique the film. Even if it could, he
says, that wouldn't split it in half, only shatter it into smaller fragments,
turning one dangerous falling object into many.
A solution that makes the problem
worse. If that's not bad science, I don't know what is.
Bruce, Alastair.
2017. Everything Wrong with Armageddon, According to an
Astrophysicist. Retrieved from https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/armageddon-everything-wrong-according-to-an-astrophysicist-69043
Parks, Jake.
2021. Asteroid Dust Found at Chicxulub Crater Confirms Cause of
Dinosaurs' Extinction. Astronomy.com. Retrieved
from https://astronomy.com/news/2021/03/asteroid-dust-found-at-chicxulub-crater-confirms-cause-of-dinosaurs-extinction
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