Earth's silent bombardment: Are we ready for the next asteroid?
The Earth is bombarded daily with almost 110 tons of material from space, most of which is no larger than a grain of dust. What happens, though, when the size of this material increases and it doesn't have time to burn up in the atmosphere? Dr. Marchis, known as the "asteroid hunter," revealed some insights that NASA doesn't officially disclose.
The Earth is under constant "bombardment" by asteroids. However, not all of them can be identified in time. Just a few days ago, an asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, creating a fireball over Siberia.
The asteroid was only 28 inches in diameter, so it did not pose a significant threat. What is more concerning, according to Franck Marchis from the SETI Institute, is that the reaction time for those observing the sky was only 7 hours.
If it had been slightly bigger, that would been a very different story. [...] This shows that, if we want our civilization to last for a long period of time, we need to look around us and characterize those objects, he revealed to MailOnline.
The founder of the citizen astronomers' network clarified the issue. These challenges are primarily due to low budgets and a lack of personnel actively observing the sky. He added that despite having comprehensive equipment, it is not properly distributed, and many places on the planet are still "dark zones."
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Dr. Marchis believes that an appropriate safeguard would be for NASA to purchase a larger number of affordable and less advanced telescopes, which could be used to monitor the situation globally. Users could even be amateur astronomers.
The novel solution was that, instead of having a handful of massive advanced systems, you could fill the dark zones with small, cheap telescopes to watch the whole sky at once, he summarized to MailOnline.
Can an asteroid heading toward Earth be destroyed?
The "asteroid hunter" did not leave readers with a bleak vision of the future. He emphasized that it's important not only to locate the incoming material but also to effectively neutralize it.
In this regard, a breakthrough experiment occurred two years ago. During this time, a system was developed that allows NASA — if it has sufficient advance warning — to destroy the asteroid. Therefore, it is crucial for specialists to continuously monitor the sky.
