Nuking a killer asteroid is the best way to protect Earth

Earth will likely go out with a bang, rather than a whimper if killer asteroids get their way.

But there's a plan to thwart them.

Bong Wie, director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center at Iowa State University, said that our best option is to hit them with a nuke.

Essentially, the giant rock on a collision course with our planet would be intercepted by an aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon.

Yes, just like the movie Armageddon.

NASA has already spent a few hundred thousand on preliminary research into the possibility of creating a vehicle that could do the job.

Wie said that any spacecraft that could intercept the killer rock would need two sections: one to blast a hole and the other to launch a missile inside.

Yes, just like how Luke destroyed the Death Star.

The fragmented asteroid would then break up and hopefully the falling chunks would miss the Earth.

Those that did hit us would burn up in our atmosphere.

That's the plan anyway.

The cost? About one billion dollars. Seems like a deal for saving civilization.