If an asteroid big enough to cause a hydrogen-bomb-style explosion was hurtling towards Earth, we would onlly get three days warning of where it might hit. That’s still better than the four minutes we’re offered if nuclear missiles are flying through space - and European authorities, who conducted the simulation, believe it offers enough time to save lives. ‘Within about three days before a predicted impact, we’d likely have relatively good estimates of the mass, size, composition and impact location,’ says Gerhard Drolshagen of ESA’s NEO team. The simulation imagined a non-existent (but plausible) asteroid ranging in size from 60 to 120 feet in diameter – spanning roughly the range between the 2013 Chelyabinsk airburst and the 1908 Tunguska event – and travelling at eight miles per second. The ESA predicts the effects of an asteroid could be similar to that of a hydrogen bomb (Sky News) The Tunguska event, in 1908, was the largest impact event in recorded history, destroying 80 million trees over an area of 800 square miles in the Siberian forest. [ Best space pictures of 2014 ] During the 2013 Chelyabinsk event, for instance, the asteroid, with a mass of about 12 000 tonnes and a size of 60 feet, hit the upper atmosphere at a shallow angle and a speed of about 12 miles per second, exploding with the energy of 480 kilotons of TNT at an altitude of 16 to 18 mmiles. [ Legal e-joint goes on sale in Britain next week ] While potentially a real hazard, no injuries due to falling fragments were reported. Instead, more than 1500 people were injured and 7300 buildings damaged by the intense overpressure generated by the shockwave at Earth’s surface.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 14:19:07 +0000
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