Precisely detonating a nuclear bomb on an incoming piece of space rock may be our best hope of avoiding disaster. A laboratory experiment conducted by an international team of researchers has confirmed that X-rays from a properly sized atomic explosion can knock asteroids off course by about 3 to 5 kilometers (about 2 to 3 miles).

While there is no evidence that such a device is urgently needed to prevent the end of the world, the consequences of being caught off guard by a dangerous asteroid near Earth are not insignificant, so it is vital that we develop a game plan that ensures the salvage of our skin. NASA recently demonstrated that a heavy probe should avoid hitting Earth if it hits a relatively small chunk of rock with enough force.

The smaller member of the binary system Dimorphos and Didymos, which is just under 800 meters across and is made up of loosely bound pebbles and rocks, has shifted enough in its orbit that astrophysicists are confident that a directional collision could be used to push similarly sized objects into less dangerous orbits.

Despite the promising results, it’s clear that we need much more data before we start throwing bits of metal at any old asteroid in the hope that it might avert disaster. A larger, more solid rock might be a different story.

Luckily, there’s more than one way to roll a mountain across the sky—for example, combining it with a powerful fusion engine or using a focused laser to lift off the surface of an asteroid to create a rocket effect.

More conveniently, heating a small area of ​​the asteroid’s surface with an intense beam of radiation could also create a rocket effect, vaporizing minerals with such force that the escaping gases could theoretically push the mass enough to change its orbit.

The basic principles of rock vaporization using electromagnetic radiation can be tested and adjusted for different materials and mineral structures on Earth.

Researchers led by Nathan Moore, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in the US, used a high-frequency electromagnetic wave generator called the Z Pulsed Power Facility to squeeze 1.5 megajoules of X-rays from an argon tank.

This radiation “bubble” destroyed the thin piece of metal foil that held the fused silica grain (also known as quartz glass) aloft, leaving the sample in free fall for so long that it resembled a small asteroid drifting through space.

Less than a second later, a pulse of X-ray radiation passed through the target, removing micrometers from its surface and producing shock waves that provided important data. This could be used to predict the effects of a much larger X-ray burst in interplanetary space. In fact, the resulting momentum transfer means that asteroids up to 5 kilometers in size could be plausibly moved using this approach.

“More detailed models, such as the radiation-hydrodynamic model shown here and models from other studies, can be tested on experimental data obtained with this technique and used to improve predictions for a variety of asteroid intercept missions,” the team notes in their report.

Of course, asteroids aren’t just made of molten silica, they also often contain a mix of volatile materials that come in a variety of forms. Using the same approach, every potential scenario could be tested without having to assemble expensive missions and wait years to analyze the results.

Ideally, this is information we will never need. Although many city-destroying asteroids are predicted to approach Earth’s cosmic moustache, there is nothing on the map that promises an impact anytime soon. After all, no one likes surprises. If a bullet bearing our name comes whistling out of the darkness, we need to know exactly how to send it back into oblivion. The study was published on: Nature Physics.