“We didn’t see this thing coming?”
“Well, our object collision budget’s a million dollars, that allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg’n your pardon sir, but it’s a big-ass sky.”
– Armageddon, 1998
In the 1998 film Armageddon, a massive asteroid threatens to obliterate life on Earth, and NASA determines the only way to cancel doomsday is to send a up a team to drill into the asteroid’s surface and detonate a nuclear bomb. While this approach has its basis in the Hollywood studio rather than the NASA laboratory, asteroids and other Near-Earth Objects (NEO’s) pose a very real threat to life on our planet.
Back in February of 2013, a 19 meter-wide meteor exploded over Russia with the force of 40 Hiroshima-type atom bombs. The resulting shock wave shattered thousands of windows and injured more than 1,600 people. Its brilliant flash temporarily blinded 70 Russian citizens and caused dozens of severe sunburns. [1] At 11,000 tons, this meteorite was the largest object to impact Earth since 1908. And the truly scary part is the fact that nobody saw it coming.
In 1994 the comet Shoemaker-Levy unexpectedly broke apart and sent fragments as large as 2 kilometers crashing into Jupiter. [2] This was the first direct observation of a collision between objects in our Solar System, and it prompted Congress to direct NASA to begin compiling a catalogue of all the NEO’s that could pose a threat to Earth.
Even with a number of programs in place to track NEO’s, we cannot anticipate every extraterrestrial threat. In the best case scenario, relatively small space rocks like the one that exploded over Russia can be identified two days before impact. But even the new ATLAS telescope array in Hawaii will only be able to identify 1/3 of these smaller objects. [3] Ground-based space surveys can only identify objects in the night-time part of the sky, and as the Russian incident demonstrated an asteroid doesn’t care at what time it’s arriving to our planet.
While small meteors can be difficult to detect, NASA is confident that over 90% of the asteroids that are over 1 kilometer wide have been identified. [4] NASA has released a map of over 1,400 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA’s) thats shows the orbital paths of space rocks that tend to come uncomfortably close to Earth. According to officials at NASA, none of the (identified) threats pose a danger within the next century.
But what if we do identify an asteroid zooming toward our beloved planet? NASA and the U.S. government are entertaining a number of potential strategies to prevent disaster. [5] Some seem rather straightforward: using nuclear detonations to deflect the incoming rock, or nudging it off course with a “kinetic interceptor” spacecraft. Others are more innovative: ‘painting’ part of the asteroid so that solar radiation slowly pushes it off course, or heating the rock’s surface with mirrors, forcing it to spew vapors and change its course. If none of these work, we can always fall back on the Armaggeddon model and send up Bruce Willis with a nuke.
“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!”
– Larry Niven, science-fiction author
[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/dangerous-meteors-hit-earth-way-more-often-than-thought-1.2417013
[2] http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/public/asteroid-threat/asteroid_threat.html
[3] http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25080-earth-is-prepared-enough-for-the-next-asteroid-strike.html#.VRCqyvnF8rk
[4] http://www.space.com/22369-nasa-asteroid-threat-map.html
[5] http://news.discovery.com/space/asteroids-meteors-meteorites/top-10-asteroid-deflection-130130.htm
nlb5224 says
I didn’t even know that a meteorite hit Russia!!!! How did I miss that? That’s major news! Did it kill anyone?
That’s scary that we can only identify asteroids at night (50% of the time). I didn’t know there were so many PHAs. Scary.
Some of the potential solutions were interesting. I don’t like the nuclear idea, because fallout would eventually end up on earth.
I loved the concluding quote.
Maddie Taylor says
First of all, I’m curious as to how you would “paint”part of an asteroid? A lot of this science is above my head, but I find it really interesting. Although the meteor over Russia caused a lot of damage, that was a huge learning moment for the scientific world. Hopefully, now that we know it IS possible for rare collisions like that to happen so close to earth, we can work towards effectively preventing them. It also comforts me that the bigger potential events can be detected- but do you think we will ever be perfect in our ability to predict small scale events that could still be devastating? Awesome post, Collin! I think you should work for NASA.
Alexander Chan says
Interesting. I’ve definitely heard of some of those tactics to steer incoming astroids off-course. I wonder how much paint over what surface area and for what amount of time we could calculate to be the minimum to deflect an astroid…a physicist should answer that! Also, I don’t understand why, but a lot of Russians always videotape their car rides? Is there a reason for that. It’s almost as elusive as the mystery of incoming space rocks.
Casey Conner says
I have full faith in Bruce Willis, so I’ll sleep soundly tonight knowing we’re protected. It’s pretty interesting, though, to recognize how much we don’t know about space (and the ocean). I always knew asteroids can be unpredictable threats, but I’m happy to know that NASA is working thoroughly to attempt to secure our safety.
Anna Friendly Whitaker says
The lab I’m working in is studying extinction events, and I have a piece of the KT boundary which marks the death of the dinosaurs! Given our planet’s history with asteroids, I would not be surprised if we had our first meteor death in the next hundred years or so because human development has spread so far. I think the only recorded death via asteroid was when one supposedly hit a dog in Egypt though.
Bryan Smith says
I wonder if to reduce the cost and improve the comprehensiveness of such tracking, it could be outsourced to university students somehow. I know quasars and other similar things are often tracked by amateurs and students. Unfortunately this may be harder to do, but I don’t really know much about it technically, just a thought.
Ben Paskoff says
Yeah, how stupid of the dinosaurs not to have a functioning space program…
Anyway, I really liked this blog post. Growing up I watched a lot of Discovery Channel programs and my biggest fear was always having a meteor (you know the scary realistic ones they make with computer graphics) crash into Earth while I was asleep. I don’t know what I would have done if it crashed while I was awake, but at the age of 7, I didn’t think the entire thing through. If I had, I probably would have requested a bomb shelter for my next birthday present.
But I digress. The point is there is a ton of junk flying around in space and while the chances of an asteroid hitting earth today are on par with the chance of tornado picking up thousands of sharks and flying them over America in a great Sharknado, there is still a chance. I know our government is trying to cut a lot of unnecessary programs, but keeping tabs on what could potentially wipe out the entire planet might be worth a little extra funding.