The threat of big asteroids hitting Earth has made for entertaining Hollywood movie fare but as NASA astronomers discover more asteroids that could spell real-life Armageddon for Earth could there be a way to save the planet from these gigantic cosmic killers? Turns out that Hollywood had the solution all along as scientists found that a well-placed nuclear explosion could actually save humanity from a big asteroid hitting Earth.

Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a United States Department of Energy facility in New Mexico fired off nuclear weapons against a 1,650-foot-long space rock. Fortunately the test isn't real but is actually a computer simulation designed to figure out nuclear weapons effectiveness against asteroids. The team used a 1-megaton nuclear weapon, about 50 times more powerful than the nuclear weapon used on Nagasaki, Japan in World War II. The results boded well for Earth's continued survival in the face of an asteroid threat.

"Ultimately this 1-megaton blast will disrupt all of the rocks in the rockpile of this asteroid, and if this were an Earth-crossing asteroid, would fully mitigate the hazard represented by the initial asteroid itself," Los Alamos scientist Bob Weaver said in a recent video released by the lab.

In the 3-D study the blast was set off on the asteroid's surface so there isn't a need for astronauts to bury the nuke like Bruce Willis did in the 1998 movie "Armageddon". However launching a nuclear weapon shouldn't be the Earth's first line of defense against an asteroid. Nuclear bombs should only be deployed if an impact is just months away. A nuclear blast might have several negative side effects. For example the nuclear weapon could blast the asteroid into several large pieces that would still hit Earth.

There are several other asteroid defense strategies that could be used if there was sufficient time to prepare for an asteroid attack. The most realistic method would be sending out a robotic probe that would gently alter the asteroid's trajectory. This method is well in the realm of NASA's and other space agencies capabilities. NASA's Dawn spacecraft is currently orbiting the asteroid Vesta and Japan's Hayabusa probe had already picked off some pieces of the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.