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While modern society hasn’t experienced the effects of a catastrophic meteor impact on Earth, fortunately, a hit from rock massive enough to destroy an entire U.S. state is a genuine threat, NASA warned this week.
“This is not about Hollywood. It’s not about movies,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced at thePlanetary Defense Conferencein Washington D.C. on Monday, according toNBC News. “This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know right now to host life.”
Bridenstine cautioned that not enough is being done to prepare for meteor impacts, and governments around the world have not taken the issue seriously due of the “giggle factor” — meaning, since the problem seems unlikely or far off into the future from happening, people tend to dismiss it.
Bridenstine pointed to the meteor that rocked Russia in February 2013, which exploded over the country’s Urals region injured 1,000 people, including 200 children.
The blast sent glass flying from windows that shattered when a sonic boom followed the meteor’s explosion.
“It was brighter in the sky than the sun at that point when it entered Earth’s atmosphere. And people could feel the heat from this object from 62 kilometers away,” Bridenstine said.
“When it finally exploded 18 miles above the surface…it had… 30 times the energy of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima,” hecontinued. “[It] damaged buildings in six cities.”
Pointing to scientific modeling systems, Bridenstine said destructive meteorites such as the one that occurred in Russia should be expected about once every 60 years.
The asteroid that struck Earth over the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago that brought an end to dinosaurs and wiped out a large scope of life on the planet is said to have measured 7.5 miles at its width, according toNational Geographic. The impact caused debris and soot (and possibly sulfur) to enter the atmosphere, blocking out the sun and chilling the planet.
“We know for a fact that the dinosaurs did not have a space program,” Bridenstine added. “But we do, and we need to use it.”
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That same month, NASA had toabruptly pull the plug on the first all-female spacewalk in historybecause they didn’t have enough spacesuits to fit the astronauts.
source: people.com
