NASA Runs Asteroid Strike Simulation, and The Results are Terrifying
While mankind has enjoyed a fairly pleasant experience here on earth over these last few thousand years, growing both intellectually in population-wise, we must never forget that we aren’t always going to be safe from the universe at large.
Over the course of the last several decades, our understanding of the cosmos has increased dramatically and, with it, the very real concerns that we have regarding the possibility that our planet is in a bit of a “shooting gallery”, as astrologists like to put it.
Earth is constantly in being pinged by small meteorites and asteroids, most of which burn up in our atmosphere, unbeknownst to the billions of us going about our daily lives on the surface. Every now and then, some larger or faster space rock will create a spectacle for us to observe, but very rarely do we find modern examples of dangerous, damaging strikes to the planet.
NASA’s latest simulation seems to put a damper on this statistic, however.
There is currently no technology on Earth that could stop a massive asteroid from wiping out Europe, according to a simulations carried out by leading space agencies.
The week-long exercise led by Nasa concluded that catastrophe would be unavoidable, even given six months to prepare.
The hypothetical impact scenario, which took place during a planetary defence conference hosted by the United Nations, proved that governments are woefully unprepared for this kind of disaster.
Advertisement - story continues below“Each time we participate in exercises of this nature, we learn more about who the key players are in a disaster event, and who needs to know what information and when,” said Lindley Johnson, Nasa’s Planetary Defense Officer.
“These exercises ultimately help the planetary defence community communicate with each other and with our governments to ensure we are all coordinated should a potential impact threat be identified in the future.”
The May 8th host of Saturday Night Live expressed his opinion on the matter:
Responding to the news of the failure, SpaceX boss Elon Musk said the lack of solution was “one of many reasons why we need larger and more advanced rockets”.
NASA is taking a shot at creating such a defense system, even going so far as to launch a craft that will hopefully divert the trajectory of a near-earth object in the fall of 2022.
Let’s hope it works.