samcollins18-blog1

[samcollins18-blog1]

Fear No More About Space Rocks

Virtually anything can happen in space. Thinking about his can be kind of mind boggling for some of us to handle and in turn make us afraid of the future of our planet. While thinking on this topic, you might be wondering, should I be afraid of some random giant rock deep in space eventually hitting Earth and wiping the human race from existence? The answer is no.

According to Kristen J. Erickson, the NASA Science Engagement and Partnerships Director, labels asteroids as small, rocky, metallic objects that orbits our Sun. Most of the asteroids in our Solar System are located in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. These rocks can range up to the size of a planet to a small basketball.

Pretty freaky right? Not.

For decades, the entertainment industry has tried to twist our minds into thinking that these asteroids are a real possibility and maybe one of the reason’s you’re reading this article today. Some examples of these are: “Deep Impact��, “Seeking A Friend For the End of the World”, and the famous “Armageddon”. These movies make the viewer worry of this actually happening, when in reality, it never will.

Even the media tries to fool us into thinking the world is about to end tomorrow. You can easily find a tweet on Twitter telling everyone how there’s a asteroid headed right towards Earth and will destroy all of mankind tomorrow. Then the day after tomorrow, everyone who actually believed the tweet forgets about it then another one pops up again the following week.

The media and entertainment industry has been trying to get you to fear these harmless objects, and it’s time for you to realize the truth about them.

Even though they’re millions and millions of these objects in our Solar System, currently there is only a .001% of one actually hitting our planet, and will eventually go down to a probability of 0, according to Bruce Betts, a Chief Scientist of the Planetary Society, on his article, “Will An Asteroid Hit Earth? Your Questions Answered.” To add on, he says that Jupiter actually helps with the asteroids headed towards Earth. Because of its gravity, Jupiter slows down these asteroids and makes them revolve around it, only allowing a few of them ever to pass.

So you can give a thanks to our far friend Jupiter.

Scientists use many different methods to track these objects to make sure we know for sure that we are completely safe from them. One of these methods is the use of the Torino Scale. On NASA.gov, scientists explain the scale as, “An integer scale ranging from 0 to 10 with associated color coding, and the scale captures the likelihood and consequences of a potential impact event.” This scale was created so the public could easy understand the severity of NEO’s or Near Earth Objects and is actually based on the asteroids kinetic energy and the collision probability. And of the 260 NEOs listed on the table, only one object has a score of 1, which is defined as representing no level of danger and where the chance of collision is extremely unlikely, according to Donald K. Yeomans in his article, “The Torino Scale Shows We Are Safe” on the New York Times website. This shows us how the scale easily shows us that there is no need for worry over these objects and how none of them are in fact a threat to us.

Now what if an asteroid was really headed towards planet Earth?

You may not know, but asteroids are constantly falling from space onto Earth more abundantly than what you might think. However, these are very small and cause minimal amounts of damage. These are not harmful because of our atmosphere unlike any other planets. For instance, if you look at our Moon, you can see many craters from asteroids because of it has no atmosphere to stop them. This layer of gas is like a giant force field protecting us from anything in space. This is because our atmosphere exerts insane amounts of energy and acts as a brake on car. This kinetic energy creates force against the object coming in and in return makes the object skyrocket in temperature. This then causes the asteroid to vaporize before even being close to hitting the ground. So if there was no atmosphere, then we would have a much bigger problem.

What if there’s an asteroid the size of a football field headed for us and our atmosphere can not slow it down?

Well like I said, this is a very unlikely scenario, but if we were to have a destructive asteroid headed towards us, Bruce Betts of Planetary Science explains it best for what astronauts would do in five steps. 

First we have to actually find the object before it gets too close. The good news is that the rate of discovery is actually going up now because scientists are discovering even more new methods to help find these objects. 

Second, scientists have to actually track the space rock to make sure that the asteroid doesn’t go off in another direction than what was previously recorded or else it could hit us from somewhere else. 

Third, the object has to be characterized so we can know what we’re dealing with. They do this to make sure they know how big it is, the spin rate it has, and also if it is a binary system which means that they’re two asteroids revolving around each other, which would be even worse.

Fourth, we have to deflect the asteroid from hitting planet Earth. It may seem a little silly, but astronauts think they can actually do this now by spacecraft gravity or a slow gravity tractor. This means that the astronauts would use a giant spacecraft and use the gravity from it to pull the asteroid close enough to where it misses Earth. 

Fifth, they would coordinate to make sure that the asteroid has no chance of coming back and maybe hitting a different part of Earth because of Earth’s rotation and orbit. 

As you can see, if all else fails, we still have a backup plan for how to stop these objects from harming our planet.

These asteroids are indeed big and could harm our planet and wipe out everything like the dinosaurs. Unlike the dinosaurs years ago, we have ever increasing human intelligence about these beasts in space, how to stop them, and why they will cause us no harm for many centuries to come, despite how the media portrays them.