Everyone loves a great infographic, right? Is this statement true even though the infographic points out a gap in our knowledge that could kill millions of people? Because that’s exactly what NASA’s awesome infographic released on October 16 does.

One of NASA’s most practical missions is commonly known as “Planetary Defense”; This mission is essentially to keep an eye out for asteroids that could potentially collide with Earth and cause widespread destruction. Most people have heard of what happened to dinosaurs. NASA’s planetary defense side wants to make sure this doesn’t happen to us.

This is easier said than done. Asteroids do not emit their own light, so usually the only way to detect them is for sunlight to reflect off their surfaces and enter one of the various telescopes observing the night sky. Recently, their number has been increasing, created specifically for hunting asteroids.

These new telescopes work; The infographic shows that there are 32,000 known near-Earth asteroids as of the end of August 2023. Efforts to find and track them have been even more impressive, with more than 405 million observations submitted by amateur and professional astronomers to the Minor Planet Center, one of the central hubs of NASA’s planetary protection strategy and the central hub of information for asteroid hunters. World.

Now for the worrying parts: Of these 32,000 near-Earth asteroids, more than 10,000 are over 140 m in diameter. According to the most popular estimates, if one of these were to fall on Earth, it would be capable of destroying an entire world. city. For comparison: the height of the asteroid that fell in the Chelyabinsk region in 2013, breaking windows and injuring almost 1,500 people, was estimated at no more than 20 meters.

An asteroid seven times larger would be much more destructive and more likely to hit Earth. In contrast, the Chelyabinsk meteor broke up as a result of an air explosion before reaching its target. When placed in the right place, such an asteroid could easily destroy a city and potentially kill millions of people, depending on where it lands.

We do not know of any of the 10,000 140 meter wide asteroids currently on a collision course with Earth. But another number in the infographic is probably the scariest: NASA’s planetary defense experts haven’t found even half of this size near-Earth asteroids.

They estimate that there are more than 14,000 asteroids with a diameter of 140 meters that we have not yet found. And one of them may be on a collision course. Even more impressive is that, according to their estimates, there are approximately 50 1 km diameter asteroids in space that we need to find. An asteroid this size would be a disaster for civilization on a scale much larger than the size of a single city, but not on the scale of a blow to the dinosaurs, which are estimated to be around 10 kilometers in diameter.

If these predictions are correct, the planetary defense community, which includes many organizations beyond NASA, will have more work to do to keep humanity safe. But every little bit helps; Even an infographic that simply conveys information can potentially inspire someone to join the hunt. We need all the help we can get. Source