Asteroid and comet deflection using powerful microwave sources

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Asteroid and comet deflection using powerful microwave sources (4/25/05)

If there is one thing we've learnt from the space program in the past couple of years, it is that water is amazingly common throughout the solar system, and probably the universe. It may come in different forms and may even come in odd forms such as hydrated silicates, but none the less, this side of the universe is littered with the stuff, including even asteroids and comets.

Now that is news to a lot of folks, but I doubt it is to the folks who spend their time dreaming up ways to deflect an asteroid headed on a collision course with Earth. I also suspect they've got a bunch of different ways to do the task based on what type of asteroid is headed at us, and so I'd like to take a moment and propose another if it hasn't been done yet.

A microwave works by using dielectric heating to excite the water molecules in our food. As anyone who has a microwave knows, the food sometimes explodes because all of that water produces a lot of steam, which means the water molecules are moving around a lot more than they were as a liquid. Put that process inside a small, enclosed space and the fireworks can be a bit messy.

Our microwave ovens aren't very powerful and so they only reach into the food about an inch, but some folks are working on very powerful microwaves. So, yes, I'm saying microwave the asteroids. While the pressure of the steam acting on the interior of the asteroid may not be enough to blow it up, it should be enough pressure to make it crack more easily, which might be just what we need to use existing methods of asteroid deflection, such as the space equivalent of bunker busters. Hit the asteroid with a bunker buster on a 30 second delay, and at T-minus 27 seconds set off a ring of directed HPM E-Bombs [PDF] to cook the asteroid. At T-minus 30, if we're lucky, we'll need some paper towels to clean up the pasta sauce.

There is an inherent amount of risk involved in making such drastic alterations to large quantities of matter so, if time allows, less drastic and more controllable methods [PDF] should be used. But, if necessary, perhaps this will work. I also wonder if a solar powered microwave "ray" could be made to work in tandem with Dr. Melosh's solar ray method. If the area the rays are focused on is also being hit by a strong microwave source, it could provoke a stronger rock vaporization effect due to the microwave ray's ability to penetrate deep into the asteroid and excite the water molecules.