- Research shows it’s ‘blind luck’ that asteroids haven’t destroyed a major city y …
Well, here’s something happy to think
about as you head into the weekend. Phys.org brings us word
that three former NASAastronauts
are going to present new research next week showing
that there have been 26 asteroid crashes since 2001 that have caused
“atomic-bomb-scale explosions” that have fortunately been far away from major
population centers. The research, which was conducted by the B612
Foundation, used data from a nuclear weapons warning network to measure
the impact of major asteroid strikes on the Earth’s surface.
“This network has detected 26
multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts,”
explained B612 Foundation CEO Ed Lu, a physicist who worked at NASA from 1994
until 2007. “It shows that asteroid impacts are not rare but actually 3-10
times more common than we previously thought. The fact that none of these
asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the
only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is
blind luck.”
Lu cofounded the B612 Foundation in 2002
as a project dedicated to raising funds to build an asteroid early warning
system capable of detecting major asteroids before they come close to striking
Earth. He will present his findings alongside two fellow NASA alums, Space
Shuttle astronaut Tom Jones and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, at Seattle’s
Museum of Flight on April 22nd.
This article was originally published on BGR.com
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