Space & Astronomy

US to keep nukes to use against asteroids

By T.K. Randall
October 6, 2014 ·  23 comments

Can a nuclear warhead save us from an asteroid impact ? Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech There is no denying that large asteroids pose a risk to our planet. Palaeontologists have seen firm evidence that over the last few hundred million years there have been numerous mass extinction events associated with asteroid impacts including that of the dinosaurs which disappeared 65 million years ago.

Such impacts don't tend to happen very often but experts believe that the next one may be already overdue.It comes perhaps as no surprise then that the US government has halted the scheduled disassembly of several of its nuclear weapons so that they can be used to deal with an asteroid threat.

Described as "irreplaceable national assets", the warheads are being kept around "pending a senior-level government evaluation of their use in planetary defense against earthbound asteroids."

Fingers crossed however that we won't need to test this idea out any time soon.

Source: Washington Post | Comments (23)

Tags: Nuclear Weapons, Asteroid, United States