A VISITOR IN THE SKY Today an object 1800 feet wide will fly past the Earth in what is called a near-miss trajectory. The object is an asteroid, a very large, speeding chunk of rock. It is a left over from when the solar system formed billions of years ago. A region of the solar system between Mars and Jupiter is home to a countless number of asteroids. This is the asteroid belt. Gravity and solar heating drive these chunks of rock into close encounters with the Earth. There are millions of asteroids, small and large flying through the solar system. NASA Near Earth Object Program keeps track of the asteroids it finds and creates trajectory paths of each one. They study each one to determine if and/or when the object will pass by or have a potential collision with the Earth. You can find the information here. It will surprise you. (neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/). What would really happen if an asteroid hit the Earth. The answer is, it depends. A small asteroid, bus sized, could certainly do some damage if it hit in the center of a populated area or could go unnoticed if it hit in the middle of the ocean. A very large asteroid could do some serious damage period. On land it would devastate the landscape for hundreds of miles, throw enough dust into the air to block out the sun for months and change global climate patterns in a very short time. In the ocean, it would create a massive tsunami that would impact coastlines. In short, it would be a global disaster. Has it ever happened? Yes, at least two times. Once when a small planet sized chunk of rock slammed into a young Earth. It melted what surface the Earth had, knocked it over at an angle and sent it spinning before absorbing the asteroid. A small chunk of the asteroid is still here. We call it the Moon. A second time, an asteroid about six miles across and traveling about 50,000 mph blasted into the planet in what is now the southern Gulf of Mexico. The impact equalled 100 trillion tons of TNT. It changed life on the planet forever. It is called the Chicxulub impact. Here is some information, (https://youtube/watch?v=5qJPTjMnwNk)
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 18:00:00 +0000
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