[jfengel]

In what sense is this article new, aside from tagging it with the name of a recent movie (which isn't really about asteroids at all, but an allegory about climate change). We know all that; the DART mission is already on its way to go test the theory.

I get the impression that they're doing something novel here; there's something about "bolide fragmentation". But that takes up about half a sentence in the abstract; everything else seems to be telling us what we already knew about the dangers of asteroids.

Can somebody give me a better abstract of their paper?

[T-A]

"We previously showed that a smallish asteroid or comet can be broken up and rendered harmless using kinetic projectiles. Here we show that a larger (~10 km) comet can also be handled if we add nukes to the projectiles. Probably. It really depends on how well the energy from the nuclear explosions is transferred to the comet."

[spiorf]

Are nuclear shaped explosive charges a thing?

[codechad]

Conceptually they are:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casaba-Howitzer

[sjg007]

The cynic / conspiracy theorist would argue that the DART mission is evidence that something big is headed our way.