NASA asteroid SHOCK: How UK scientists helped ‘save the Earth’ from 400-mile-wide rock

“Apophis is, at the moment, something we have to seriously take into account.”

While the group were unable to find an actual asteroid, they still carried out their tests on a piece of rock to see what would happen.

Mr Vasile revealed: “We asked if we could try to beam the same power density that we would use on an asteroid on a standard rock.

“A lot of debris ejected from the rock, followed by a lot of gas.