Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean. Shorter, more focused posts specialising in astronomy and data visualisation.

Friday, 6 February 2015

Photographed for NASA, nuked for Discover Magazine

Photographed for NASA, nuked for Discover Magazine

Subscriber-only article, but the asteroid may look a little familiar...

Will write more when the propriety period expires and I can release a larger image. It's an interesting article about using multiple nuclear explosions to deflect an asteroid. The "Z machine" was used to simulate the effects of an X-ray blast on the surface of an asteroid (cough cough ORION PUSHER PLATE ABLATION cough cough).

And I have to give a big round of applause to Discover Magazine for being an absolute delight to work with. They were very keen to get the image as realistic as possible, running it by the scientist responsible for the research to make sure everything was as it should be. They even sent me a Christmas card ! :)
http://discovermagazine.com/2015/march/15-how-to-stop-a-killer-asteroid
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1 comment:

  1. Gilmoure deTrimar7 February 2015 at 00:21

    Sweet! I haven't had a chance to see the Z Machine but nice to see it's work showing up in the outside world.

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