Asteroid-pulverizing system may be only way to save Earth from doomsday space rock

PULVERIZING asteroids could be humanity’s only chance of avoiding a similar doomsday event to the dinosaurs.

This is according to one planetary defense scientist who is working on a system to destroy space rocks before they hit Earth.

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Professor Philip Lubin from the University of California Santa Barbara is the man behind the potentially life-saving idea.

He’s making something he calls the PI-Terminal Defense for Humanity.

The PI part stands for “Pulverize It”.

A simple explanation of the system is that a rocket containing lots of explosive rods will approach a large incoming asteroid and smash it into tiny pieces.

These small rocky pieces then rain down on Earth and hopefully burn up in the atmosphere.

Anyone who saw Netflix’s doomsday movie Don’t Look Up may think this plan sounds very familiar.

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Lubin thinks this will be our best chance of protecting Earth from a devastating asteroid collision.

According to Universe Today, the professor previously presented his defense system at the 2021 Planetary Defence Conference.

His idea got spotted by Nasa and he’s now a Phase One awardee in the Nasa Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

That means Nasa will be supporting his asteroid smashing plans.

Nasa keeps an eye on close approach asteroids on a daily basis.

There are concerns that the US space agency and other space agencies around the world wouldn’t currently be able to save us from a deadly asteroid impact.

Fortunately, no large asteroids are expected to hit Earth any time soon.

Ideally, there will be plenty of time for scientists like Lubin to work on their defense ideas.

Lubin previously observed: “So far, humanity has been spared large-scale catastrophe as was visited upon our previous tenants, but counting upon being ‘lucky’ is a poor strategy in the longer term.”

The professors PI System is being designed to rocket up to a close asteroid and penetrate it with rods.

The rods would contain explosives that could be set off and tear the asteroid apart.

Lubin would like the asteroid chunks to be less than 33 feet in diameter.

These small space rocks should then form a cloud of debris.

Some of this debris may strike Earth but the hope is that a lot of it would break up in Earth’s atmosphere.

To observers on Earth, this would just look like a lot of shooting stars.

The effectiveness of the PI System would depend on things like asteroid size and how close it is to Earth at the time of the ‘pulverisizing’.

Lubin says his system could even orbit Earth one day and be ready for any surprise doomsday asteroids that come our way.

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In other news, Nasa has revealed some very important dates for Moon missions that should be happening this year.

The US space agency revealed a stunning image of an unusual ‘space triangle’ it was able to capture with the Hubble Space Telescope.

And, we looked into what would happen if you died in space.

This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk