Asteroids cause dozens of nuclear-scale blasts in Earth’s atmosphere
Source: theguardian.com
Asteroids caused 26 nuclear-scale explosions in the Earth’s atmosphere between 2000 and 2013, a new report reveals.
Some were more powerful – in one case, dozens of times stronger – than the atom bomb blast that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945 with an energy yield equivalent to 16 kilotons of TNT.
Most occurred too high in the atmosphere to cause any serious damage on the ground. But the evidence was a sobering reminder of how vulnerable the Earth was to the threat from space, scientists said.
The impacts were recorded by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation, which operates a global network of sensors set up to detect nuclear weapon detonations. None of the asteroids were picked up or tracked in advance by any space- or Earth-based observatory.
The former astronaut Ed Lu, speaking about the data at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, said: "While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories."
Lu is co-founder and chief executive of the B612 Foundation, a research body dedicated to finding ways of protecting the Earth from dangerous asteroids.
The most dramatic asteroid impact in recent times occurred when an object exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908 with an energy yield equivalent to between 5,000 and 15,000 tons of TNT. An area of remote forest covering 770 square miles was flattened by the blast.
In 2013, a 500-kiloton meteor explosion above the Russian town of Chelyabinsk caused extensive damage to property.
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Read the full article at: theguardian.com
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Astronauts plan $250 million asteroid telescope ’to stop disaster’
By Jacqui Goddard | The Telegraph
As members of an elite band of cosmic explorers, they are among the few to have gone beyond the final frontier and looked down on the Earth from space.
Now, inspired by the unique perspective they gained of their home planet – and armed with startling new data about the scale of the threat it faces from asteroid strikes – a group of former Nasa astronauts are on an extraordinary mission to save the world.
Fourteen months after an asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on a scale equivalent to 30 Hiroshima bombs, the B612 Foundation, a non-profit group founded by Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart and space shuttle astronaut Ed Lu, are warning that only "blind luck" has so far saved it from worse.
"It’s a giant game of chance we’re playing. It’s cosmic roulette," said Dr Lu, whose group is working towards building and launching Sentinel, a $250 million telescope that would spot space rocks on a collision course with the earth, giving several years or even decades worth of notice to deflect a disaster.
"There’s a saying in Vegas that ’The house never loses’. It’s true; you can’t just keep playing a game of chance and expect to keep winning," added Dr Lu, the group’s chief executive officer.
Data obtained by Dr Peter Brown, a planetary scientist and asteroid expert at the University of Western Ontario, in Canada, revealed that since 2001 the earth has been rocked by atomic bomb-scale asteroid impacts 26 times; up to ten times more frequently than previously thought.
On Tuesday, which is Earth Day, the B612 Foundation will hold a press conference to unveil more critical details, including a video presentation that will for the first time reveal the locations and sizes of the multi-kiloton impacts.
"We are literally in a shooting gallery," said Mr Schweickart. "That’s the message we want people to understand. It’s happening, it’s ongoing, and the big ones will come. It’s just a matter of when."
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Read the full article at: telegraph.co.uk
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