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Monday, February 18, 2013

Panic / Science What's Being Done About Substantial Meteors that Could One Day Hit the Planet

Posted by Grant Brissey on Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:52 AM

Wikipedia Commons
Tunguska, 1927

"Asteroids hit the earth all the time," said former astronaut Dr. Ed Lu, in a CNN interview that aired Sunday. "Really small ones are just the shooting stars you see when you look up in the sky." And this is basic Astronomy 101. But what you don't hear people talk about are the medium-sized rocks, like that kind that landed in Siberia in 1908. This was known as the Tunguska Event, or the Great Siberian Explosion.

When the meteor exploded above the Tunguska River in Siberia it detonated with an "estimated power 1,000 times greater than the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima [...] leveled trees over 40 kilometers away and shook the ground in a tremendous earthquake."

Wikipedia Commons
Click to Enlarge

Lu said asteroids that size hit about every couple of hundred years. "So, there's about a 50 percent chance that in your lifetime, another explosion of that size is going to happen somewhere on Earth.

But don't start panicking just yet. According to Lu, "We actually have the technology to deflect an asteroid, if we have adequate warning, and by adequate warning, I mean decades in advance. And the problem now is that no one is doing a comprehensive map of all the threatening asteroids."

Lu said that less than one percent of asteroids larger than the one that leveled Tunguska (itself about 40 meters wide) have been tracked to date. The B612 Foundation, of which Lu is CEO, is an NGO dedicated to completing the the B612 Foundation Sentinel Space Telescope, which is expected to be launched in 2018 and meant to orbit the sun. Lu writes that the Sentinel will provide a comprehensive map ot the locations and trajectories of threatening asteroids. "By the end of its planned lifetime, Sentinel will have discovered well over 90 [percent] of the asteroids that could destroy entire regions of Earth on impact (those larger than 350ft in diameter) and more than 50 [percent] of the currently unknown DA14-like near-Earth asteroids."

That planned lifetime is 6.5 years. Here's Lu giving a TED talk about how to deflect an asteroid and further explanation on the space telescope.

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Comments (10) RSS

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Tunguska! X-Files!
Not one of my favorite episodes, though.

Posted by StuckInUtah on February 18, 2013 at 12:07 PM

No funding. It's been cut.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/republi…

Posted by Former Lurker on February 18, 2013 at 12:53 PM

This is just about the only legitimate reason for NASA to exist - yet it wallows around at the bottom of their priorities.

Posted by SuperSteve on February 18, 2013 at 1:38 PM

We can't even get a international, national - or even regional - consensus on global climate change (which is actually technologically easy to solve - just stop dumping carbon into the air and water).

You think that anybody is going to want to raise taxes for the Herculean (both politically and technologically) efforts of spaced based planetary defensive grid? No way. A city in a rich country will have to be obliterated first.

Posted by tkc on February 18, 2013 at 2:32 PM

@3 It 'wallows' in the bottom of their priorities because no one in Congress would be caught dead suggesting we should be preparing for asteroid doomsday.
And no, that's not 'just about the only legitimate reason' for NASA to exist. That is an ignorant statement.

Interestingly enough, the rock that blew up over the Urals the other day was only about 50 feet wide. If it has exploded over Moscow, or London, or New York... or godforbid, Islamabad or Dehli.. that would have been a major, possibly nuclear, catastrophe. And notably a 50' asteroid/meteor is virtually undetectable at present.

Posted by treacle on February 18, 2013 at 2:41 PM

You know, if a meteor is on course to hit the earth, so fucking be it. The amount of hubris in the idea that we should try to deflect such an occurrence is appalling.

Posted by Totalpukoid on February 18, 2013 at 2:48 PM

@ 4: they're private

Posted by Grant Brissey, Emeritus

on February 18, 2013 at 3:57 PM

@5--I wouldn't say it's at the bottom of priorities; it isn't even on the list at the bottom. But this year we are spending at least $633,000,000,000 to "protect" ourselves against other humans. Our defense policy makes the NRA look like a beacon of rational thought.

Posted by Ballard Pimp on February 18, 2013 at 4:27 PM

Grant,
Happy President's Day. What fazed me about last week's cosmic events were that they coincided within a few days of each other. That was extraordinary! I realize earth is indeed vulnerable to meteors, asteroids etc. We get hit fairly often in astronomical time. What I think we can do (NASA, European Space Agency etc.) is be better able to predict when & where they may fall. That should be a top priority for those agencies for the sake of all humanity.

Posted by lark on February 18, 2013 at 4:38 PM

@9 When is relatively easier than where. It's that damned spinning, the Earth always turning, at over 1000 miles an hour. Plus, the atmosphere and the exact angle of attack, not to mention the composition of the rock in question and how many cracks it's picked up in its travels, makes it a little hard to guess where most of it might come to rest, even if you have its trajectory.

Posted by Brooklyn Reader on February 18, 2013 at 8:57 PM