[/caption]This evening a rock, or asteroid, from outer space is passing very close to Earth. The space rock is known as 2010 RF12. It will whisk so close that it will be visible for roughly an hour through an hour through a hobbyist's telescope.
Although the rock is too small to do any big damage if it hit the planet, scientists warn that this innocuous rock is a wake-up call. There are plenty of boulders in the solar system that are only slightly bigger, this makes them large enough to kill thousands of people, however, they are hard to spot until it's too late.
"We spotted these things right now only because we happened to be looking in the right place at the right time," Lindley Johnson, head of NASA's near-Earth objects program, said. "I have to be honest here. There's a deficit in capability.
It was only a few days ago that astronomers in Arizona noticed a space rock, or asteroid, that passed by the planet this morning.
The observatory that nabbed the asteroids is part of a global network dedicated to finding large space rocks which have Earth in their cross hairs. After years of patiently trawling the skies, astronomers have discovered almost 90 percent of the so called "killer" asteroids which measure 3,000 feet across or larger. They are big enough to annihilate much of humanity.
That's no fake concern, after all, the dinosaurs were believed to have been wiped out by an asteroid the size of a small city that hit the Earth about 65 million years ago. That's just a speculation, however, asteroids have hit the Earth before, and they have caused some damage.
"We probably cover less than 10 percent of the sky that you need to have assurance that you would pick something up several days in advance." Continued NASA's Johnson. A warning of even only a few days would be enough to allow for an evacuation if it were predicted that an asteroid were to hit a city.
Continue reading on the next page.
There are other methods that can be used to take care of asteroids that are entering the Earth's atmosphere, however, such as blasting them with a bit of firepower. This would render them powerless, however, we would still need to be alerted of their entry.
Fortunately, the Earth is very vast, and people are spread very widely, so the chances of a murderous asteroid hitting a heavily populated area are very small, said a top asteroid expert at the Space Science Institute, Alan Harris.
And, the good news is that "the surveys are getting better and better at finding these things," said Harris via email.
There's still a ways to go, but we're safe for now, and it's not everyday that such a large asteroid come near Earth.
0 التعليقات:
إرسال تعليق