Asteroid Impact
10 years ago my grandpa sent me an article about a new scientific discovery, “Apophis”. Typically I’d be excited to read all about this new finding, but young-mind paranoia made this article a bit scarring to get through; see, Apophis was, and is, an asteroid — a huge asteroid…Headed for Earth! Well at least it was back then. While I spent a month or so imagining what I’d do in 2029 when my family life would inevitably be “impacted” by an approaching meteor, reality was a bit more relaxed. The meteor will still come close to Earth, doing a second fly-by on 2036, where it will almost be as close to Earth as Venus will be that year.
There’s a lot of paranoia that asteroid strikes will be finite destructive forces that end all life on Earth, and while it’s completely reasonable to believe a rapidly moving mountain falling on the planet will do substantial damage, asteroids aren’t really ever impending threats, or at least not for long if they are.
Here’s a few nice facts about asteroids and meteors to help calm you down if just reading about death comets stresses you out.
- Around 30 visible meteor showers happen yearly on Earth, many of which have been around for hundreds of years.
- Every night there are about 12,000 meteors! (typically the size of dust)
- The Cretaceous asteroid impact might have been deadly for the dinosaurs, but it probably wasn’t the only reason why they died off (plus it left a nice layer of Iridium on Earth, an element usually found on asteroids)
- The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter isn’t absolutely full of asteroids. If you’re on one, you probably won’t have an easy time spotting another asteroid unless you use a telescope.
- Asteroids lose most of their bodies when they fall towards Earth due to friction. Even a large asteroid can turn into dust in a matter of seconds.
Defense against potential life-destroying impacts has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Firstly, it’s obvious that, since this is all hypothetical and space lasers haven’t really been tested on an actual asteroid, it’s really hard to judge whether or not we are prepared. Secondly, it takes a while for an asteroid to approach Earth. Apophis was discovered in 2004, giving us 25 years to prepare if it was actually going to hit Earth. Essentially, we’d be better off using newer technology to deal with an impending issue rather than a rocket that’s been waiting for an immediate threat since 2004; essentially, we don’t really have defense rockets on stand-by. Thirdly, disaster preparedness mostly consists of deciding how the country should act in such an event. If there is a mountain barreling towards us at high speeds, we should at least move people away from the impact zone, just in case those space nukes fail to slow down the juggernaut. This means that national and international hypotheticals consistently change and leave us without a very concrete plan. As I said, however, this is all within the hypothetic range. The chances of a cataclysmic comet hitting the planet are very low, and even if one does we can kind of treat it with an ironic attitude right?
I mean, if it’s impossible to stop a destructive asteroid we might as well not worry about it at all, as it’s just out of our hands. And if we can, well then there’s nothing to worry about. At the end of the day just remember this: we’re not dinosaurs.
