NASA Prepares for Apophis/The Sun
It’s nice to see all the top scientists worrying about something other than making their own Ultron for a change. At the moment they’ve swapped it in for extinction via asteroid hit. The Asteroidpocalypse, if you will.
This comes after the Head of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, issued a warning that we need to be ready for potential asteroid hits in future. He’s also worried that similar warnings have been dismissed as comic ravings in the past.
Well people won’t be laughing when they realise we’ve had three asteroid hits in the last 100 years! The Earth has already had 5 extinction level events, and we’re overdue for another one!
It’s scary stuff, especially after the few years before 2013 when we thought we were going to be hit by Asteroid Apophis. Luckily, it looks like it should miss us on its 2029 fly-by, but the jury is still out about its return pass in 2036, and there’s a 1 in 150,000 chance it could hit us in 2068. That’s still within my lifetime!
So let’s get some perspective here. An asteroid the size of a 20-storey building (200ft on a side) hit the planet. You’d be looking at power enough to flatten reinforced concrete buildings 5 miles from ground zero, a force greater than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For comparison Apophis is 1,213ft wide.
Yikes!
The thing is, blowing asteroids up with nukes sounds good on paper, but it can just split them into several smaller, equally dangerous rocks. The only solution we currently have is to evacuate the area, and if we get a big bad like Apophis, I don’t know where we’re going to move all those people!
If you’re into this kind of thing, then it’s definitely a good idea to check out NASA’s Instagram Page Right Now
