Latest News

  • Home
  • Global
  • There's A Small Chance An Asteroid Will Smack Into Earth In 2135; NASA Is Working On A Plan
There's A Small Chance An Asteroid Will Smack Into Earth In 2135; NASA Is Working On A Plan
Thursday, March 22, 2018 IST
There

An aerospace engineer insists the plan is theoretical. It sounds like a movie script.

 
 

Here's a tip for the planners among us: If you have dinner reservations or theater tickets for Sept. 22, 2135 (it's a Thursday), now might be a good time to scuttle them.
 
Sometime the day before, scientists say, there is a small chance that an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building will smack into Earth, destroying a lot of living things on the planet.
 
But don't worry. NASA has got you covered.
 
Forward-thinking astrophysicists and people who specialize in blowing things up with nuclear weapons have come up with a plan, which they swear was not drawn up by Bruce Willis.
 
If the asteroid - it is named Bennu - decides to go rogue, they could send a nearly nine-ton "bulk impactor" to push it out of Earth's orbit. Or, more likely, they would gently nudge it out of its apocalyptic path using a nuclear device.
 
The scheme is called the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response. Or, for people who love acronyms and despise subtlety: HAMMER.
 
Brent Barbee, the NASA aerospace engineer who helped author the study, insists that it is all theoretical. (His exact words: "Please don't print that an asteroid is going to crash into Earth in The Washington Post.")
 
But using granular detail and eye-glazing amounts of math, the researchers believe they have a viable solution to a world-rattling what-if question.
 
There is, of course, no massive mission to build a craft capable of playing a celestial game of space pool. The odds of Bennu actually hitting us are about 1 in 2,700. And the asteroid is not big enough to send us the way of the dinosaurs.
 
But that doesn't mean there is no practical application, Barbee told The Post.
 
"We're doing these design studies to prepare ourselves, so if we do find a threatening object, we're better prepared to deal with it," he said.
 
Things from space smack into Earth all the time. Most of them are not existential threats, but some are large enough to cause injury or property damage. Generating a working framework to avoid an Earth impact could save lives.
 
Until recently, the framework has basically been luck.
 
In 1908, what many believe to be an asteroid crashed into an area near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, according to the BBC. It struck with a force 185 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb, flattened 80 million trees and reduced hundreds of reindeer to charred carcasses.
 
A century later in 2013, a 10-ton, 49-foot-wide meteor streaked over Russia's Ural Mountains at hypersonic speeds, shattering windows and injuring 1,100 people, Fox News reported. (Most were injured by shattered glass as they watched the meteor cross the daytime sky). The meteor broke up before it hit the ground but still left scars in nearby ice that were the length of a bus.
 
The only reason more people weren't killed or injured, Barbee told The Post, is because the objects struck places where there weren't many people.
 
NASA has a Planetary Defense Coordination Office that tries to detect dangerous asteroids and comets close to Earth's orbit.
 
There are more of these things than many people think, Barbee said. Researchers detect about 1,000 new objects each year; 10,000 extraterrestrial objects beelining for Earth could still be unaccounted for.
 
The defense coordination office also comes up with plans for deflecting or destroying discovered objects.
 
What Asteroid Bennu provides, besides pretty good fodder for a doomsday cult, is an opportunity for scientists to test those theories.
 
Bennu is, the report says, a "well-studied roughly spherical body" that gives researchers a good target for their calculations - data points to punch into the algorithm. They can see Bennu with telescopes and track the impact its gravity has on other celestial objects.
 
Soon we will know more. NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been en route to Bennu for two years, according to the agency. It contains instruments that "will map Bennu and establish the composition of the asteroid, including the distribution of the elements, minerals and organic materials."
 
It will also scrape off a 2.1-ounce sample and bring it back to Earth, NASA says.
 
If the odds are not in Earth's favor, and Bennu becomes a bigger threat, OSIRIS-REx could be followed by a beefier craft that would break off a lot more.

 
 
 
 
 

Related Topics

 
 
 

Trending News & Articles

 Article
'Worse than prison': A rare look inside China's detention camps to 'brainwash' Muslims

ALMATY: Hour upon hour, day upon day, Omir Bekali and other detainees in far western China's new indoctrination camps had to disavow the...

Recently posted . 194K views . 1 min read
 

 Article
What The Shape Of Your Belly Button Says About Your Health

If you have payed attention to the belly buttons of people on the beach or the members of your family, you have probably noticed that they have different shapes and...

Recently posted . 8K views . 2 min read
 

 Article
Top 10 Horrifying Acts of Chemical Warfare and Gas Attacks

In this age of terror, there might be nothing more terrifying than the thought of an attack carried out with chemical weapons. We’ve all heard the horrific ...

Recently posted . 3K views . 4 min read
 

 Article
Top 10 Best Gym Equipment Brands in India 2018

Body fitness is one thing that everyone wants to maintain irrespective of age. Going to the gym and doing some great exercise always helps to maintain your body fit...

Recently posted . 3K views . 2 min read
 

 
 

More in Global

 Article
Cruise workers say they have so much sex on ships that it's comparable to college dorms

*Sex among cruise ship workers is pervasive, current and former cruise ship employees told Business Insider. *Som...

Recently posted. 636 views . 3 min read
 

 Article
Antarctica thrives on penguin and seal poop: Study

A new study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology found the influential excrement supported thriving communities of mosses and lichens, which in turn su...

Recently posted. 695 views . 2 min read
 

 Article
Solved: the mystery of the expansion of the universe

The earth, solar system, entire Milky Way and the few thousand galaxies closest to us move in a vast “bubble” that is 250 million light years in diame...

Recently posted. 654 views . 1 min read
 

 Video
Javed Miandad remembers Sunil Gavaskar



Recently posted . 889 views
 

 Reviews
The Best 5 Hiking Backpacks in India – Reviews & Buying Guide



Recently posted . 1K views . 140 min read
 

 Article
On its Independence Day, Pakistan stares at bankruptcy

As Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day today, it is also grappling with a big economic crisis. The State Bank of Pakistan has only about $10 billion of foreign...

Recently posted. 675 views . 2 min read
 

 Article
WhatsApp Security Breach May Have Targeted Human Rights Groups

WhatsApp said it was "deeply concerned about the abuse" of such surveillance technologies and that it believed human rights activists may have been the ...

Recently posted. 652 views . 1 min read
 

 
 
 

   Prashnavali

  Thought of the Day

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be the first one to comment on this story

Close
Post Comment
Shibu Chandran
2 hours ago

Serving political interests in another person's illness is the lowest form of human value. A 70+ y old lady has cancer.

November 28, 2016 05:00 IST
Shibu Chandran
2 hours ago

Serving political interests in another person's illness is the lowest form of human value. A 70+ y old lady has cancer.

November 28, 2016 05:00 IST
Shibu Chandran
2 hours ago

Serving political interests in another person's illness is the lowest form of human value. A 70+ y old lady has cancer.

November 28, 2016 05:00 IST
Shibu Chandran
2 hours ago

Serving political interests in another person's illness is the lowest form of human value. A 70+ y old lady has cancer.

November 28, 2016 05:00 IST


ads
Back To Top