“Earth Safe from One-Kilometer Asteroids for Next 1,000 Years, Says Study by University of Colorado Boulder”

Jakarta –

So far, human descriptions of the condition of asteroids or celestial bodies hitting the earth have only been presented in science fiction films, namely Armageddon and Deep Impact. But an asteroid hitting Earth isn’t just the stuff of science fiction, it’s also science fact.

Reported detikEdua recent study revealed that in the next 1,000 years, Earth will not be destroyed by an asteroid strike.

The study led by Oscar Fuentes-Munoz of the University of Colorado Boulder noted that they found no asteroid that was one kilometer (0.6 miles) in size would approach Earth and cause a collision. “This is good news,” said Oscar.

Quoted from Live Sciencean asteroid about 0.6 miles (0.6 km) in diameter is indeed much smaller than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, which is estimated to be about 6.2 miles (10 km) in diameter.

But the 0.6 mile (1 km) wide asteroid that scientists observed could still cause continental-scale devastation, potentially killing hundreds of millions of people, according to the Global Challenges Foundation.

To find out the existence of an asteroid, NASA is looking for about 962 objects that represent 95% of space rocks that cross Earth.

Scientists found that an asteroid that big (1 km) could hit Earth about every 600,000 to 700,000 years.

The researchers applied a new method to find out which asteroids are likely to hit Earth. They worked out which orbits could bring the asteroid closer to Earth than the average distance between Earth and the Moon.

They found an asteroid about 1.3 km in diameter known as 1994 PC1. This dangerous object has a 0.00151% chance of approaching the Moon’s orbit in the next millennium.

In fact, scientists still cannot underestimate smaller asteroid rocks, because they can be dangerous at a smaller geographic scale.

An example is the Tunguska event that occurred in 1908 where the explosion of a 60 meter space rock succeeded in flattening the Siberian forest covering an area of ​​2,150 km.

Then, in 2013, a smaller fireball, caused by an asteroid fragment about 59 feet (18 m) in diameter, blew windows and damaged buildings in Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring nearly 1,500 people.

Therefore, NASA is still looking for a small asteroid even though it is 140 m in size, which is estimated to be able to destroy a city.

NASA writes it in a catalog that is now progressing up to 40%. This research is expected to provide us with more complete information.

This article has been published on detikEdu. Read more here.

(iqk/iqk)