Hundreds of thousands—perhaps even a million—asteroids could be headed towards Earth over the next 100 years.
This startling revelation comes from a new study from Chinese astronomers.
Here’s the good news: a risk of collision is low for each of them, and most of the asteroids are under 100 meters. However, that doesn’t mean we can just ignore them.
Even ‘small’ asteroids have as much kinetic energy as an atomic bomb, and much is unknown about these asteroids thus far. Even a 10 meter asteroid can cause a lot of destruction if it hits earth, as we have found out before.
“The accurate identification of impact threat targets and early warning capabilities requires more precise algorithms for orbit determination and impact risk assessment,” the scientist said in a paper published in the Acta Astronomica Sinica Journal at the end of last week, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
Usually scientists ignore small asteroids, but the Chelyabinsk meteor’s impact, which hit Russia in 2013, was a scary moment, with more than 7,000 buildings damaged and 1,500 people requiring medical treatment due to injury, mostly from shattered windows, though thankfully no one was killed.
Of the million asteroids, there are 700 which could hit Earth within the next 100 years with five having a collision risk of 1 in 1000, though these numbers could change a lot in the coming years, with some becoming more likely, and some becoming less.
The Chinese scientists used physical models on asteroid formation in order to figure out how many asteroids there could be, coming up with a range of 100,000 to 1,000,000.
These asteroids had previously been ignored, according to the scientists, but the knowledge “is of great significance to the development of near-Earth asteroid search and monitoring strategies”, according to one researcher.
A geologist from Guangzhou, Professor Chen Ping told the South China Morning Post that these will most likely burn up in the atmosphere, and are mainly of interest for research and public discussions.
But you never know, of course…
Recently, an asteroid headed from the direction of the sun narrowly missed earth, but scientists didn’t catch it until a day later.
NASA is also sending a space ship out to study the Trojan asteroids for the first time.