"Don't Look Up": The end of the world could be avoided

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Filmmakers have already grappled with the question of what happens when an asteroid crashes into Earth.

This image is from the movie »Armageddon«.

Photo: Mary Evans / IMAGO

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid largely destroyed life on earth, and the dinosaurs are the most famous victims of this impact.

The film "Don't Look Up", which is one of the most successful films on the Netflix streaming platform to date, plays with a scenario in which another huge asteroid is hurtling towards earth.

The asteroid measures ten kilometers in diameter, and there are six months between its discovery and the calculated impact.

Two physicists from the University of California at Santa Barbara have taken on the question of what if the fiction portrayed in the film became reality.

If a giant asteroid were actually hurtling towards Earth, would humanity have a chance of averting global catastrophe?

The advantage over the dinosaurs: a planetary defense system

Yes, is the verdict of the scientists - at least as far as the technical possibilities are concerned.

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"We show," says the 15-page paper, which appeared on the preprint server Arxiv, "that humanity has crossed a technological threshold to prevent us from following the path of the dinosaurs."

For their analysis, the physicists calculated the extent of the destruction caused by a comparable asteroid impact.

The impact energy could therefore actually correspond to that of the impact that ended the era of dinosaurs.

If an object of the dimensions described enters the earth's atmosphere, this could, in extreme cases, lead to a drastic increase in the atmospheric temperature by 300 degrees Celsius.

The result would be a mass extinction, wiping out most of life on Earth.

Are nuclear warheads the salvation?

Yes, mankind has ways of fending off asteroids.

Various options are presented in the publication, such as the so-called »PI method« – PI as for the English expression »Pulverize It«.

Nuclear explosive devices could break up the asteroid into fragments, i.e. "pulverize" it.

The individual parts should then either miss the earth or be so small that they burn up in the atmosphere.

This is already the case with asteroids with a diameter of less than one kilometer.

Radioactive fragments hitting Earth shouldn't be a big problem.

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Politically, the paper goes on to say, this solution would be challenging. Because the detonators would have to be tested before use. Such tests are currently prohibited by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In the event of a realistic, existential threat, however, a solution can hopefully be found, write the authors of the analysis.

And humanity is actually preparing for such eventualities.

Space agencies of different countries and communities of states operate departments for planetary defense.

Experts have been researching ways to predict and avert impacts for years.

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, for example, holds an annual conference at which experts discuss mitigation scenarios, legal issues, and how to communicate.

And six months, according to the publication, offer enough time to implement measures.

For emergencies: bunkers in the sea

But what if all efforts failed?

According to the analysis, this case also does not inevitably mean the end of all human life on our planet.

Mankind could save itself in underground or undersea bunkers.

"Recording life underwater or underground would be a wise civil defense-based strategy to ensure the survival of humans and other species."

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According to a report in the British newspaper The Guardian, the response to the comparatively optimistic attitude that emerges from the analysis is divided.

For example, Mark McCaughrean, a senior adviser on science and exploration at the European Space Agency, said the work answers technical questions but "completely misses the point of the film, which is that the advice of scientists is routinely ignored."

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