It’s quite likely that this caught you off guard, but actually Today, June 30, is Asteroid Daymore specifically, International Asteroid Day (which makes me wonder what the difference is international days and world days, but that is a consideration that is beyond the scope of this article). But ignorance international/world days It does not take away from its celebration, therefore it is appropriate to celebrate it.

This year’s timing just missed, yes, because it was yesterday when the asteroid 2024 MK “came close” to Earth, in another of the many cases where, despite the zero level of collision risk, some media, content creators and social media accounts prefer to adopt a catastrophic information profile or at least more or less yellow like sunflower leaves. Because if the truth is a little bland, why not spice it up with a little MSG?

Asteroid Day has been celebrated since the middle of the last decade, and the choice of date is not accidental, because It was June 30, 1908, when the Tunguska event took place, an incident that took place in the eastern Siberian taiga and devastated an area of ​​about 2,150 square kilometers of forest and crushed about 80 million trees. Fortunately, it was an uninhabited region, although information in this regard suggests that at least three people may have died.

It’s hard, for most larger nostalgic, talking about asteroids and not remembering one of the best games from the first age of video games. Image: ArcadePlanet.

The reason for Asteroid Day, despite what can be read with some frequency on social media, is not to call for a meteorite to destroy our planet, but to raise awareness of the potential risk these objects pose, and therefore so much, so that more resources are devoted to observing spacein order to facilitate early identification of any threat of this type. And although, as we have already said, 2024 MK does not pose any risk to our planet, since it was detected only 13 days before its “visit”, it is something that should worry us.

So be it, fortunately progress is being made, some very important, while testing systems and methods to counter the potential risk of an asteroid hitting our planet. The latest one that we are getting information about even today (and a very positive one) is the collision of DART with the asteroid Dimorphos. Of course, let’s not forget that early localization is essential for a successful plan like this, as mentioned above. So it will be great to celebrate Asteroid Day by going back to great classics like Armageddon and Deep Impact (better with popcorn, of course), but it won’t hurt as far as we can to push for more and better investments in space observation. .