IT'S COMPRESSED OF IRON-IRON!

     Iron ferrite, probably the funniest oxymoron ever coined in existence. This really has nothing to do with the analysis at hand, but it was just so funny I couldn't leave it unmentioned. Guess they had space dementia when they wrote that line.

     So let's get back on track. Although there are many things wrong with the NASA plan in the film, given some leniency, the real problem boils down to their "Zero Barrier" theory -- the point at which the two asteroid pieces would have enough distance to spread out far enough not to hit earth. The earth has a diameter of 12,742,000 meters and according to the plan in the movie, the asteroid would have spread out a whopping... 253meters.

It's okay Ben. I'm upset at that number, too.

     So, assuming there's no other way to construct a more explosive bomb, the "Zero Barrier" is really the only thing that needs to be changed in this scenario. So let's see what the newly modified barrier would have to be for this crazy Michael Bay plan to work.

t = Δy/Vf

Δy = 12, 742, 000m

Vf = 0.0246 m/s

t = 517, 967, 479.7 seconds

    So, we have the time in seconds, and since we know the initial velocity of the crazy fog asteroid of doom, we can plug that into the distance formula to calculate the new "Zero Barrier". 

d = (t)(Vi)

t = 517, 967, 479.7 seconds

Vi = 9834 m/s

d = 50,900,000,000 m

 

      In retrospect, the Chinese space probe Chang'e-2, which was launched in 2010, just reached this distance (50 million km) in outer space in July, marking it as a record in deep space exploration.  

China is at it again.