Nasa has warned about five asteroids that will approach Earth this week, while a group of scientists has proposed a new strategy for dealing with this type of threat in case of approaches hazardous.
With sizes that vary from a bus to a residential building, three of these rocks were detected in the last two months.
Fortunately, the closest thing that’s going to happen one of them is 1.2 million miles (1.9 million km), or five times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
However, objects of a size greater than 150 metres that are observed within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km, or 19.5 times the distance between Earth and the Moon) are considered potentially dangerous. So one of the asteroids of this week fits into that category, measuring 580 feet (177 meters) and pass 2.33 billion miles (3.75 million miles) from Earth on the 24th of June.
Tie space
Meanwhile, a group of researchers from the University of Central Florida has proposed a method to prevent the humanity to follow the way of the dinosaurs.
His concept involves tying an asteroid dangerous to another rock nearby using a special cable to move the gravitational centre and, consequently, alter its orbit out of the collision with the Earth.
Using the asteroid Bennu as an object of study, the team carried out several computer simulations to calculate the dynamics of such a system under various initial conditions, and concluded that it might serve as a viable method of planetary defense.
However, the researchers indicate the need for detection and early action in this method, as in the others already considered but not yet applied, among them, the use of a nuclear charge to fragment the asteroid or of a rocket as a battering ram to deflect the object space.
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