LIVERMORE, USA, Oct. 14, 2026 - What if a city-killer asteroid were found heading for Earth with little time to spare? Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have tested one answer on a computer: a nuclear blast.^[1] The team, led by Isaiah Santistevan,^[2] published the work in The Planetary Science Journal.^[3] Their virtual target was a 160-metre asteroid,^[4] about 525 feet across and shaped like the real asteroid Bennu, with a one-megaton weapon detonated nearby.^[5] The blast's X-rays heat the rock's surface and drive fractures rather than shock waves;^[6] as surface material blasts off, it can push the asteroid off course and crack it apart.^[7] Two of the three scenarios showed strong signs of the asteroid breaking up.^[8] With the bomb 10 metres away, 98.2 percent of the rock was damaged,^[9] and in one run 97 percent of the material flew off faster than the asteroid's own escape velocity.^[10] Surprisingly, moving the bomb farther away caused more widespread damage.^[11] Getting there took patience: a single 145-millisecond simulation ran for 59 days on 1,680 processors.^[12] The runs follow only the first instants after the blast,^[13] so nobody yet knows whether the pieces would scatter safely or pull back together.^[14] Space Nugget. Escape velocity is the speed something needs to break free of a body's gravity for good. For a small asteroid it can be slower than a brisk walk, which is why even a modest push can send rubble drifting away, and why scientists worry that slow fragments might fall back and gather into a new rubble pile.