if you nuke a asteroid, it will shatter into countless peices, and then likely represent an even greater risk to earth. Predicting exactly how an impact would shatter an asteroid, and charting the path of all these peices is ridiculous. If it were as easy as 'blow it up' they wouldn't be planning this thirty years in advance!
If you say this is a crock of shit, as some of you did, wake up. Life is fragile, the earth is even more fragile, and it wouldnt take a lot to fuck us up. Earth is just sitting in space with millions of things out there waiting to destroy it......look at places without atmospheres, they are covered in craters. Here is Mimas, a moon of saturn.
that impact crater nearly shattered the moon!
Do we have a lot of time to figure this out? Yes. Do we need to start studying this and figuring it out now? Yes. Is it likely to hit us or be a problem? No, but why risk it if we can mitigate it...
anyways odds are it will miss the keyhole anyways, but we still need to plan now in case it does.
