The chances of an asteroid impacting earth and destroying a major area are higher than one might think. This according to scientists that monitor nuclear weapons detonations, who say they have detected at least 26 asteroids between 2000 and 2013.
According to Tom Jones, President of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), they have already “asked the UN to consider five new measures to protect earth from asteroid strikes.” On the top of the list is a $250 million dollar infrared space telescope designed to detect asteroids big enough to destroy major cities in case it hits the planet.
“That telescope is an essential part of this current warning that we need to expand,” Jones said.
Last year, one such explosion over Russia last year left more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris. And While NASA already has a program that tracks asteroids larger than one sixth of a mile, former Astronaut Ed Lu, believes that smaller ones have the potential to wipe out an entire city.
Lu, who also heads the B612 Foundation (a group raising money for the telescope), said that finding and building a map of the entire solar system “to protect (planet) earth costs about as much as building a freeway overpass.”
Many scientists have said that there have been many asteroids and comets that have hit earth, particularly in its early history which included the one that supposedly triggered the ‘ice age’. But perhaps one of the best-known recorded impacts in modern times was the Tungkusa event, which took place in Siberia in 1908. The incident involved an explosion that was said to be caused by the airburst of an asteroid 5 to 10 km above the Earth’s surface, which destroyed an estimated 80 million trees over a radius of 2,150 km2.
