Scientists develop mini Death Star to protect us from asteroids

GOOD news for humanity. Scientists have created a mini Death Star superlaser that can deflect space objects heading towards Earth.

Earth in space with a flying asteroid, abstract background

AMERICAN researchers believe a laser beam could be used to deflect asteroids on collision course with Earth.

The team at the University of California say laboratory tests show their De-Star — or Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploration — could actually work.

The researchers envisage putting an unmanned De-Star craft in orbit. At the first sign of an impending disaster it would target the asteroid with a high-energy laser, causing part of the rock to vaporise in a process known as sublimation, reports The Telegraph.

That ejection of gas would then create sufficient force to alter the course of the rock.

Qicheng Zhang of the University of California, Santa Barbara, one of the authors of the project, told Astrowatch.net: “Generally speaking, the technology is available today,” he said.

Space rocks ... A meteor glows as it enters the Earth's atmosphere. Picture: NASA

“The main challenge with building a full De-Star is the necessary scale to be effective.”

The team has tested the technique on earth, by blasting a piece of basalt — an igneous rock similar in composition to some asteroids.

The technique was tested by directing a laser onto basalt, which has a composition similar to asteroids.

They found that when it glowed white-hot, it began to lose mass.

Travis Brashears, a student who has worked with the group, said last year: “What happens is a process called sublimation or vaporisation, which turns a solid or liquid into a gas.

“That gas causes a plume cloud — mass ejection — which generates an opposite and equal reaction or thrust — and that’s what we measure.”

The managed to use the effect to slow and the reverse the rotation of a spinning piece of basalt.