A giant meteorite attacks the Earth in an unexpected way: it is the space risk which makes the scientific world the craziest.
On December 18, 2018, over the Bering Sea (North Pacific Ocean) just 25.7 km from sea level, a meteor explosion appeared 10 times more energetic than the atomic bomb dropped on the city by the United States. Hiroshima (Japan, 1945).
No one heard or saw this meteor explosion except for the US Air Force military satellite. Realizing an unusual light source in the Pacific, US military satellites took photos and sent them to NASA for analysis shortly thereafter.
According to data from NASA, this meteorite 10 meters in diameter but weighing up to 1,400 tons crashed into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 115,872 km / h. After detonation, the meteorite emits terrible energy up to 173,000 tons of TNT (data from Forbes), or about 40% of the energy of the meteor explosion that once rocked the city of Chelyabinsk (Russia) in 2013.
NASA assessed that the meteor exploded on December 18, 2018 as the second most powerful space object to explode in Earth’s atmosphere in the past 30 years (behind the 20m diameter meteorite in the meteor explosion . Chelyabinsk jelly).
Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary expert, told the BBC that such a powerful meteor explosion occurs very rarely, only a few times every 100 years.
Three questions arise: why do we know nothing about the appearance of this 1,400-ton meteorite? And why is it that until mid-March 2019, after 3 months of event, the international press (CNN, Forbes, The Guardian …) informed the public of the second strongest meteor explosion in history 30 years ago here? Will humans fall into the crater from meteorites?
No one witnessed
If the December 2018 asteroid explosion happened over a city – like the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in southwest Russia in February 2013 – we would see and hear about it, said. Sciencealert.
But because the 1,400-ton meteorite exploded over the remote waters of Bering, the event went unnoticed for more than three months until full details were released by NASA during Planet and Facial Science. Conference. The 50th moon took place in Texas (United States) from March. 18th to 22nd, 2019.
Space danger
The solar system is filled with residual matter from the formation of the planets. Most of them are “locked” in stable containers such as the Asteroid Belt, Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud – far from Earth.
However, these areas containing gas dust, meteorites, comets … are constantly projecting objects into interplanetary space. As a result, our solar system is filled with cosmic debris ranging from small dust particles to comets and asteroids several kilometers in diameter.
Space debris “attacks” the Earth’s atmosphere and the lunar surface at all times, NASA said. However, most of them are harmless, and only objects at least 30 meters in diameter that explode in the Earth’s atmosphere are capable of causing serious damage to our planet.
The scar of the earth
Earth’s history has witnessed many times when meteorites have exploded, causing “scars” that still exist to this day. The biggest and most devastating impact is that a meteor crashed into Earth 65 million years ago, rendering the dinosaurs completely extinct.
In addition, smaller collisions also had obvious consequences: this was the Tunguska incident in Siberia (Russia) in 1908. Although the scientist still has many doubts about the origin of the explosion, however, the consequences of the explosion equivalent to 10 to 15 million tons of TNT, it is terrible: about 80 million trees were flattened over an area of 1,994 square kilometers.
The Chelyabinsk meteorite explosion in 2013 left 1,500 injured and around 7,000 buildings damaged, luckily no one died.
What can the scientific community help?
NASA said the agency had not missed any space events that had little or no impact on Earth’s security.
For decades, NASA and international scientists have coordinated to perform observations of potentially dangerous space objects (PHOs) to provide the best predictive and preventive measures.
However, the universe is still hidden away with unforeseeable dangers, beyond the expectations and control of scientists, the meteor explosion over the Bering Sea is one example.
It is the risk that drives the scientific world the “craziest” when a large meteorite can still “attack” the Earth without warning!
Alan Harris, a senior scientist at the German Aerospace Center, told Space.com: Of the thousands of known near-Earth objects, there are currently more than 1,700 meteors / asteroids considered potentially endangered to our planet.
Why not “control your own destiny”?
Instead of being passive, humans have another way to protect themselves from meteorites, said Professor Jonti Horner of the University of South Queensland (Australia), author of the study.
It approaches the asteroid / asteroid and deviates its way from Earth!
The Hayabusa spacecraft, the Japan Space Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa 2 missions, and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx * spacecraft (launched in September 2016) attempt to achieve this seemingly impossible.
NASA and JAXA deploy technology to collect asteroid’s materials, send it to Earth for study, and then come up with appropriate measures to alter the asteroid’s orbit, reducing the risk of “attacking” their future Earth.
It is expected that in 2020, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA will partner with the AIDA Deviation and Impact Assessment (AIDA) mission. AIDA aims to test whether a spacecraft can successfully deflect an asteroid when colliding with Earth.
Professor Jonti Horner added that asteroid exploration is also very relevant for the potential of exploiting rare minerals in space, allowing people to set up “space stations” to explore more distant space.
Although NASA’s OSIRIS-REx has not yet reached its destination, this mission opens up the possibility of being able to “control one’s own destiny” against the giant asteroid / asteroid threat.
Previously, world experts have listed giant meteorites “attacking” Earth as one of the dangers that have wiped out life on Earth, along with nuclear war, climate change and epidemics.
