If you've always assumed that the idea proposed in Armageddon
could save us in the face of a crisis, by destroying an asteroid
to avert the destruction of Earth, think again. Physicists from
Leicester University, UK, have calculated that such a feat would
require a bomb a billion times stronger than the biggest bomb
ever detonated on Earth. The team of scientists considered the
energy dump required to neutralize the threat of an Earth-
destroying asteroid. Using the asteroid from Armageddon as a
yardstick, the team took into account the likely density of the
asteroid, its speed, its proximity to Earth and a handful of
other factors to work out how much kinetic and potential energy
it had. Turns out that 800 trillion terajoules of energy would
be required to split the asteroid featured in Armageddon in two,
in such a way that both pieces cleared Earth. By comparison, the
biggest bomb ever detonated on Earth—the Soviet Union's 50
megaton hydrogen bomb "Big Ivan"—provides only 418,000
terajoules. That a factor of