An asteroid hurtling toward Earth could be deflected without a spacecraft ever touching it.
The trick is using X-rays to divert the space rock, researchers report September 23 in Nature Physics. In lab experiments, scientists heated the surfaces of free-falling faux asteroids with X-ray radiation, producing vapor plumes that pushed the objects away. Subsequent computer simulations demonstrated that X-rays emitted by a distal nuclear blast could deflect some asteroids that are about as wide as the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is long.
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