As detection capabilities in astronomy have dramatically improved over the last two decades, concerns over Planet-Killer-Asteroids (PKAs) have become widespread, with nuclear weapons being proposed to destroy or deflect asteroids that are on a short-term projected collision course with Earth. Two main mitigation strategies have been proposed:

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Case 1: Break up an incoming asteroid into smaller pieces that will disperse widely, resulting in smaller-scale, less detrimental, Earth-impacts or

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Case 2: Deflect an incoming asteroid trajectory to avoid collision altogether.

While the two strategies are not mutually exclusive, deflection is a safer strategy, ideally by harnessing all of the released energy from a nuclear device to move the asteroid as a rigid body. However, this case may not be always possible, since the strength of the energy release may break up the asteroid. In this work, the dynamical response of a PKA to a series of ultra-high energy impulses, such as those generated by nuclear devices, is formulated. A rapid iterative Discrete Element Method (DEM) method is developed to describe the deflection and potential breakup of the PKA as a function of a material bonding strength parameter within the asteroid and the magnitude of the applied impulse. The use of DEM allows for fragmentation of the PKA and the ability to compute the trajectories and distribution of the resulting debris field. Finally, a machine-learning algorithm is then developed and combined with the DEM approach to optimize the pulsation strategy for maximum possible safety and success.

中文翻译：

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用于模拟行星杀手小行星核偏转的机器学习框架

随着天文学的探测能力在过去二十年中显着提高，对行星杀手小行星 (PKA) 的担忧变得普遍，有人提议使用核武器摧毁或偏转与地球发生短期碰撞的小行星. 已经提出了两种主要的缓解策略：

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案例 1：将一颗进入的小行星分解成更小的碎片，这些碎片将广泛分散，从而产生更小规模、更少有害的地球影响或

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案例 2：偏转来袭的小行星轨迹以避免完全碰撞。

虽然这两种策略并不相互排斥，但偏转是一种更安全的策略，理想情况下是利用核装置释放的所有能量将小行星作为刚体移动。然而，这种情况可能并不总是可能的，因为能量释放的强度可能会破坏小行星。在这项工作中，制定了 PKA 对一系列超高能脉冲（例如核装置产生的脉冲）的动态响应。开发了一种快速迭代离散元方法 (DEM) 方法来描述 PKA 的偏转和潜在破坏，作为小行星内材料结合强度参数和施加脉冲大小的函数。DEM 的使用允许 PKA 的碎片化以及计算产生的碎片场的轨迹和分布的能力。最后，