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Recent asteroid impacts on Earth and the prediction of the apocalypse – the doomsday!

Recent asteroid impacts Earth and the prediction of the apocalypse – the doomsday!

Smaller items frequently collide with Earth. There is a relationship inverse relationship between object size and frequency objects hit the ground. Asteroids with a 1 km in diameter strike the Earth every 500,000 years on average. Great collisions with objects moving about five miles once every ten million years. The last known impact of an object of 10 km or more in diameter was in the mass extinction event of the Cretaceous-Tertiary, 65 million years ago. Asteroids with diameters of 5.10 m between the Earth's atmosphere, about a Once a year, with as much energy as Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, about 15 kilotons of TNT. These usually operate in the upper atmosphere, and most or all of the solids are vaporized. Objects with a diameter of 50 meters over the strike of the Earth about once every thousand years producing explosions comparable to that observed at Tunguska in 1908. At least one known asteroid with a diameter of more than 1 km, (29 075) 1950 DA, has a calculated probability collision with Earth in March 2880, with a Torino scale rating of two.

Throughout history, hundreds of low-impact events (and hot rods explosion) have been reported, with some events that cause death, injury, property damage or other significant localized consequences.

In the province China's Shanxi, says 10,000 people have been killed in 1490 by a shower of "falling rocks" that some astronomers speculate may have been caused by the disintegration of a large asteroid.

The most significant impact in recent years times was the Tunguska event that occurred in Siberia Russia, in 1908. This incident involved an explosion that may have been caused by the airburst of an asteroid or comet 5-10 kilometers (3-6 miles) above the Earth's surface, the cutting of some 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers (830 square miles).

The late Eugene Shoemaker, the Service U.S. Geological Survey came up with an estimate of the rate of Earth impacts, and suggests that an event related to the size of the nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima occurs approximately once a year. These facts seem to be spectacularly obvious, but often go unnoticed for a number of reasons: most of the surface Earth is covered by water, a good part of the land surface is uninhabited, and the explosions generally occur at relatively high altitude, resulting in a huge flash and thunderclap but no real damage.

Some have observed. Notable examples include the Sikhote-Alin meteorite fall in Primorye, Russian Far East, in 1947, and the Revelstoke fireball of 1965, which occurred over the snows of British Columbia, Canada.

A small number of meteorite falls observed with automatic cameras and recovered after calculating the point of impact. The first of these was the Pribram meteorite, which fell in Czechoslovakia (Now Czech Republic) in 1959. In this case, two cameras used to photograph meteors captured images of the ball of fire. The images were used to determine the location of the stones on the ground and, more significantly, the calculation of the first time a precise orbit of a meteorite that was recovered.

After Pribram fall, other nations established automated observing programs aimed at studying the meteorites that fall. One of these was the Prairie Network, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1963 to 1975 in the U.S. Midwest. This program also observed a meteorite fall, the Lost City chondrite, allowing its recovery and a calculation of its orbit. Another program in Canada, meteorites Observation and Recovery Project, ran from 1971-1985. Also recovered a single meteorite, Innisfree, in 1977. Finally, the comments of the European Network of Fireball, a descendant the original program that Czech recovered Pribram, led to the discovery and orbit calculations of the Neuschwanstein meteorite in 2002.

The only victim reported meteorite impacts is an Egyptian dog who was killed in 1911 by the Nakhla meteorite, although this report is discussed. The meteorites that struck this area were identified the 1980s as Martian in origin.

The first known modern humans hit by a space rock occurred on November 30, 1954 in Sylacauga, Alabama. There is a 4 kg stone chondrite crashed through a roof and hit Ann Hodges in her living room after it bounced off his radio. She was badly bruised. Several people have claimed to have been beaten by "meteor" but no verifiable meteorites have resulted.

On August 10, 1972, a meteor became known as Hours: Great Ball of Fire 1972 was witnessed by many people moving north over the Rocky Mountains of USA southwestern Canada. It was filmed by a tourist in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, with a color camera 8mm film. The object was in the size range of a car to a house and could have ended his life a Hiroshima-sized explosion, but there was never any explosion. The path analysis indicated that there was much lower than 58 km land, and the conclusion was that had grazed Earth's atmosphere for about 100 seconds, then jumped back out of the atmosphere to return to its orbit around the sun.

In the dark morning hours of January 18, 2000, a fireball exploded above the city of Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon at an altitude of about 26 kilometers, illuminating the night like day. The meteor shower produced the fireball was estimated to be about 4.6 meters in diameter and weighing 180 tons. This burst was also featured on the Science Channel series asteroids murderers, with witness reports of several of the residents of Atlin, Columbia British.

A meteorite strike was observed in Reisadalen Nordreisa municipality in the county of Troms, Norway on June 7, 2006. Although early reports witness testified that the resulting fireball was equivalent to the Hiroshima nuclear explosion, scientific analysis places the force of the explosion at any place from 100 to 500 tons of TNT equivalent, at most, about 3% of the performance of Hiroshima.

On September 15, 2007, a meteorite crashed chondritic near the town of Carancas, in southeastern Peru near Lake Titicaca, leaving a hole filled with water and throwing gas through the surrounding area. Many residents ill, apparently from the harmful gases, shortly after the impact.

Many impact events occur without being observed by any person on the ground. Between 1975 and 1992, a U.S. missile early warning satellites picked up 136 major explosions in the upper atmosphere. In 21-Nov-2002 issue of the journal Nature, Peter Brown University of Western Ontario reported the U.S. study early warning satellite record for the procedure for eight years. Identified 300 flashes caused by 1 m m in size up to 10 meteors that period of time and determination of the Tunguska event rate companies as once in 400 years. Zapatero believes that a of such magnitude occurs about once every 300 years, although more recent analysis suggested that exaggerated by an order of magnitude.

1994 The impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter also served as a "wake-up call", and astronomers responded by initiating programs such as Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT), Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (LONEOS) and several other that have dramatically increased the rate of discovery of asteroids. However, many objects, without doubt, still undetected.

On October 7, 2008, a 2008 TC3 meteorite label was followed by 20 hours as it approached the Earth and fall through the atmosphere and impact in the Sudan. This was the first time detected an object before reaching the atmosphere and hundreds of pieces of the meteorite were recovered in the Nubian Desert.

Close Encounters and forecasts of new asteroid impacts on Earth

On July 19, 2009, a new black dot the size of the Earth was discovered in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter an amateur astronomer. thermal infrared analysis showed that it was warm and spectroscopic methods detected ammonia. JPL scientists have confirmed that another impact event on Jupiter had occurred, probably a small comet or icy body discovered others.

On March 31, 2004, a meteorite of 6 m, 2004 FU162 made the approach nearest second disc with a separation of only 6,500 km. Because this object is certainly too small to pass through of the atmosphere, is classified as a meteorite and an asteroid.

In 2004, a recently discovered 320 m asteroid, 99942 Apophis (formerly known as 2004 MN4), The likely to achieve greater impact of any potentially hazardous. The probability of collision of April 13, 2029 is estimated at as high as 17 per Steve Chesley, Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, but the figure previously published was the slightly less likely than 1 in 37, calculated in December 2004. Later observations showed that the asteroid will miss Earth by 25,600 km (within the orbits of communications satellites) in 2029, but its orbit will be altered in a way unpredictable, that does not rule out a collision on April 13 or 14, 2036 or later in the century. These possible future dates have a cumulative probability of 1 in 45,000 of an impact on the 21st century.

Asteroid 2004 VD17, of 580 m, previously was estimated at a probability of 1 in 63,000 of the land on strike on May 4, 2102 (from July 2006), with the risk of 1 on the Torino scale, but observations further lowered the budget. From the observation on December 17, 2006, JPL assigns 2004 VD17 a Torino value of 0 and a probability of impact 1 in 41.667 million over the next 100 years.

Asteroid (29075) 1950 DA has a potential to collide with Earth on March 16, 2880. The probability of impact is either 1 in 300 or zero, depending on whether one of two possible directions for the asteroid's spin pole is correct. This asteroid has a mean diameter of about 1.1 km. Energy released by the collision would cause major effects on climate and biosphere and can be devastating to human civilization.

The last meeting close to the ground.

Asteroid 2007 TU24, with an estimated meter diameter from 300 to 500, was very near the orbit of the earth 1.4 times lunar distance on January 29, 2008. The asteroid's orbit is shown in the NASA website.

End of civilization?

An impact event is often seen as a scenario that would bring the end of civilization. In 2000, Discover Magazine published a list of 20 possible doomsday scenarios sudden impact with the event listed as the most likely number to occur. Until the 1980s this idea was not taken seriously, but all That changed after the discovery of the Chicxulub crater, which was reinforced by testimony of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 event. Since then interest has been more scientific community and the public more aware of the possibility of impact events.

About the Author

He has a background as civil engineer and geoscientist. He has worked mainly within the oil and gas industry from the mid 1980s. He has written a few fictional novels as well as being the author of some professional litterature within oil and gas sector, he is now an editor of some web sites.

September 15, 2007 – Puno, Peru Crashed Meteorite