Os asteroids follow the histories of Earth and the Universe as a whole. They explain some events, such as the complete extinction of dinosaurswhich occurred due to an asteroid that hit Earth millions of years ago, wiping them out.
With such destruction, a recurring fear of scientists, astronauts, researchers and society is that this phenomenon will happen again. But would that even be possible?
The answer is yes. But the chances of happening do not cause concern in scholars of the subject. In addition, scientists estimate that an asteroid of this level collides with Earth, on average, every 100 million years. The collision that annihilated the dinosaurs happened 65 million years ago.
Even if the asteroid at some point threatened to hit Earth, currently, with technological advancement, it would be possible to detect the approach of this orbiting rocky body.
Meteor scientist Aswin Sekhar explained how this tracking works:
“We have a very good approximation and idea about all asteroids over a kilometer in size”said Sekhar to the Indian newspaper On manorama.
Thanks to this monitoring, in 2004, it was possible to detect Apophis, an asteroid with a diameter of 350 m. Apophis was the most significant threat of collision with Earth and left the scientific community on high alert.
“Apophis was a surprising type of threat in the sense that at some point during initial observations, its probability of impacting Earth reached 3%, which is extremely high for impact calculations.
But later observations and better orbital close-ups reduced the probability and it is now in a safe place.”Guaranteed Sekhar.
Considering the possible risks of an asteroid hitting the Terra, NASA created the DART mission last year. On the mission, the scholars launched a spacecraft against a rocky object. The attempt was successfully completed, ensuring Earth’s protection in cases of collision.
Understand what an asteroid is
Asteroids are rocky bodies that orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They range in size from tiny fragments to objects several miles across.
Many asteroids are composed of silicate rocks, while others may be made of metals or minerals such as sulfur and carbon.
Asteroids are considered leftovers of material that did not coagulate to form planets during the formation of the Earth. Solar system. Some scientists believe that the asteroids may have been fragments of a larger planet that was destroyed by collision or gravitational phenomena.
