Asteroid Impact Risk 10x More Likely?
According to a slate of studies, scientist believe the Earth could be up to 10 times more likely to be impacted by an asteroid than previously thought.
On the early morning of February 15, a meteor exploded over the skies of Chelyabinsk, Russia. The meteor, which had an estimated mass of between 12-13 thousand metric tons, carried with it kinetic energy equivalent to 20-30 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. What’s more the Chelyabinsk meteor caught everyone by surprise.
Since it’s rendezvous with Earth, scientists have been hard at work trying to puzzle out as many details as possible from this relatively rare and shocking event. Through these investigations scientist believe the Chelyabinsk bolide originated somewhere among the Flora family of asteroids.
But surprisingly, the rock has a much older past. According to researchers the meteor was sheered from another, larger body sometime around 1 millions years ago. If that finding is true it could mean that a cascade of space-borne geology could be headed Earth’s way, say researchers.
Fortunately, a number of agencies are beginning to take asteroid detection seriously. That means if the big one is head our way, we might stand a chance of averting disaster.
Fortunately, according to Peter Brown, a planetary scientist at the University of Western Ontario, “There are no globally devastating impacts likely to happen in the next 100 years,”. But Brown does warn, “[asteroids] like Chelyabinsk are more common”.
