Scientists Debate, Prepare for Killer Asteroid

November 19, 2013

Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanoes. Now, add asteroids to the list of natural disasters that can threaten humanity and all life on our planet.

For decades, Hollywood films like Deep Impact and Armageddon have let moviegoers enjoy the terror of fictional earthbound asteroids from the safety of their seats.

But on February 15th of this year, residents of Chelyabinsk in central Russia discovered that the threat is as real as it gets.

That meteorite wounded more than 1,000 people - a pinprick compared to the one that probably wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and far more benign than the meteor that exploded over Siberia in1908, leveling more than 2,000 square kilometers of forest.

Or the meteorite that hit present day Arizona, 50,000 years ago, and made a crater large enough to swallow up the entire city of San Francisco.

But those strikes were no flukes.

There are an estimated 10,000 known asteroids orbiting our region of the inner solar system. That’s just one percent of the million or more asteroids scientists believe to be our near neighbors in the inner Solar System.

Recently, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson warned about....

" ...asteroids crashing to earth as meteorites or exploding in the atmosphere. That would be bad," he said.