Approximately 66 million years ago, an asteroid struck Planet Earth and famously caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. It worked out well for humans, as it allowed us to become the dominant species on our planet. Prior to going extinct, various species’ of dinosaurs existed for 165 million years. The question troubling me yesterday was that if it happened to them, why not us? Do we have the technology to stop an asteroid of that size if it was on track to hit Earth?
NASA keeps close tabs on any and all nearby asteroids that could potentially collide with Earth. Their goal is to have 90% of asteroids bigger than 1 kilometer in diameter catalogued by 2015. However, even if they were to find an asteroid that was set to collide with Earth, it would have to be identified early in order to have a chance at saving the planet. Saving the planet would likely entail either deflecting the asteroid enough to make it miss or by blowing it up using a missile or nuclear warhead.
Considering the dinosaurs were around for millions of years and were forced to go extinct relatively quickly, it is scary to think that the same could happen to us. Luckily, we are more intelligent than the dinosaurs were and we may be able to plan ahead enough to avoid a catastrophic asteroid collision.
At this time, it seems unlikely that any asteroids large enough to cause a mass extinction are on a collision course with Planet Earth. Currently, the next large asteroid set to hit Earth that we are aware of will hit us in the year 2880. In my opinion, by that time, we should have the technology to evade a collision. While the dinosaurs met an unfortunate end, our intelligence should allow us to continue to dominate Planet Earth.
I’ve actually wondered all about this before and this is the first article and blog I’ve ever read about it. It’s definitely interesting for obvious reasons such as the planet we live on being blown to pieces. It’s nice to know that scientists have almost all asteroids around us catalogued and that we do have some defense methods incase one does come crashing into our atmosphere. But if we launched a nuclear missile would that actually help us or would that just scatter the pieces of the astroid and leave radiation all over the planet?
After typing that question I actually researched it and found out this link http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/asteroid-hitting-earth also agreeing that shooting a missile would just scatter the rocks and suggesting that the safest and most effective way might be too launch a spaceship directly at it in order to throw off its course so that the asteroid simply misses us.