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NASA warns that the planet is vulnerable to asteroid impacts and that humanity is not doing enough to defend itself. A single asteroid could destroy an entire US state. NASA is asking for more international assistance in creating a system to track and characterize space objects.
Sci-fi movies love to scare audiences with scary threats from space, from aliens to asteroids, but what’s really scary is when the fantasy becomes reality. That’s what’s happening, according to NASA, and if humanity doesn’t prepare better, it will end up in a disaster movie. In 2019, the space agency’s chief told a panel in Washington, DC, that the planet is vulnerable to asteroid impacts and that we’re not doing enough to defend ourselves. “This isn’t about Hollywood,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said. “It’s not about movies. It’s ultimately about protecting the only planet we know of right now to host life.” A single asteroid crossing Earth’s atmosphere could destroy an entire U.S. state, Bridenstine warned, pointing to a 2013 meteor strike on the Russian city of Chelyabinsk that exploded with 30 times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Bridenstine asked for more international assistance in creating a system that tracks and characterizes space objects large enough to threaten the planet.
Read more about meteors:
Millions of meteors pass through Earth’s atmosphere every day, but most are vaporized; those that aren’t are known as meteorites.
The largest meteorite ever found is the Hoba Meteorite, a 66-ton specimen discovered in Namibia in 1920.
Meteorites are identified from where they came in an asteroid; iron and stony iron meteorites came from near the core, while stony meteorites were near the surface.
