A team of scientists from three Russian institutes has completed a study of how iron meteorites break up. The press service of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation reported that the results obtained will help develop more effective technologies to protect the Earth from dangerous meteors and asteroids. Scientists are confident that in the future these data will become the basis for preventing catastrophic collisions with cosmic bodies.
The research was carried out by experts from the Ural Federal University, the Institute of Metal Physics, the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Federal Research Center for Problems of Chemical Physics and Medical Chemistry in Chernogolovka. In the experiments, they studied how meteorites resist destruction during powerful impacts. As explained by research team member Razilya Müftakhetdinova, the team examined four iron meteorites, including Sikhote-Alin and Dronino. The results showed that the meteorites were destroyed under pressure exceeding atmospheric pressure by 40 thousand times, and their strength is only slightly lower than the best terrestrial steels.
According to scientists, these findings will help develop methods to prevent large asteroids and meteoroids from falling to Earth. For example, dangerous space objects can be destroyed in space using a nuclear explosion or a powerful industrial explosive. An alternative would be to change flight paths to avoid a collision with Earth.
Source: Ferra
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