The question will not be “if we will be hit”, because the story of 4.54 billion has already answered us. The “suspense” is when we will be the target. According to astronomers, there are more than 30,000 NEAs of asteroids. Near Earth asteroids, also known as NEO or Objects near the Earththey are asteroids whose orbits are close to the Earth and some represent a collision hazard.
In general, society sees this problem as “Don’t look up”, while some space agencies treat the problem as a potential “deep impact” or “Armageddon”. in such a way that the NASA sent the DART to test our defenses in case we need to deflect an asteroid.
The "cinematic" pun shows us how people devalue the subject, when the authorities see it as a kind of harbinger of the end of the world and that we must have a measure of salvation!
Yes, there is currently no known asteroid that has an alleged collision course with our planet, but there are more than 30 thousand who wander "close" to the Earth.
Incentives to find asteroids that kill the planet fired
At the moment, astronomers think that the most killer asteroids of the planet have been found and reduced to much smaller but still devastating "bullets". These The celestial bodies identified have reached a new milestone. More than 30,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) have now been officially discovered.
This number is the result of years of constant work on identifying and monitoring these rocks. Better equipment, more technology and refined methods have contributed to these results - more than 15,000 have been discovered in the past decade alone. Given that the first NEA was discovered in the 19th century, this is a pretty impressive pace.
New tools were key
Indeed, there are new devices that are crucial for successful identification and monitoring. or Catalina's Sky Survey (CSS) is the most prolific, having accounted for approximately 47% of all NEOs discovered. It continues to find some new asteroids weekly, but even so it has greatly improved its capabilities in recent years.
In 2005 it found 310 new asteroids, while in 2019 it found 1067.
With these detection capabilities, CSS was even more effective at finding smaller asteroids. Scientists are pretty sure they have found all the large space rocks that fit the NEA definition, meaning that its orbit takes it to at least 1.3 AU from the Sun.
"Large" in this case is quantified in a few kilometers in diameter - the enough to cause an extinction level event if it hit Earth.
More recently, CSS and his fellow asteroid hunters have focused on smaller rocks, on the order of a few hundred meters in diameter. Being much smaller, they are also much more difficult to detect, as they are not as bright in the night sky as their larger cousins.
While these can still cause significant damage to Earth, none appear to be on an immediate collision course - at least for the next 100 years.
However, there are over 1,400 that have a "non-zero" chance of hitting Earth in the future. A team of planetary defenders (and asteroid hunters) hired by ESA points out that there is no immediate danger and that we will have plenty of time to call a mission like the recently successful DART to repel any threatening asteroid long before it does. causes damage.
For the more curious about this topic, ESA feed a List of asteroid hazards which keeps track of their orbits and potential impact on Earth. Hopefully, this will serve no purpose other than keeping a record of potential asteroid exploration sites.
However, even with all of its improved technology and ever-growing list of potential targets, there is still a chance that the planetary defenders of ESA and other entities have missed one. Or there could be a long-period, tailless metallic comet that could literally come out of the darkness on a collision course.
The only way to eliminate this possibility is through continuous monitoring of the sky and, when necessary, to intervene. This 30,000 NEA milestone is another successful step on this journey.
