Computer generated simulation of an asteroid strike on the Earth. Credit: Don Davis/AFP/Getty Images
During the past 24 hours, the Earth has been hit by about a million small meteoroids ? most of which burned up in the atmosphere as shooting stars. This happens every day. And occasionally ? once every 10,000 years or so — a really big asteroid (1 km in diameter or larger) comes along and smacks Earth with an extinction-level impact. That idea might cause some of us to lose some sleep. But in between are other asteroid hits that occur every 200-300 years where a medium-sized chunk of space rock intersects with Earth?s orbit, producing a Tunguska-like event, or worse.
?Those are the objects we are concerned with,? said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, speaking at a 3-day workshop in Darmstadt, Germany which focused on plans and recommendations for global coordination and response to an asteroid threat. ?We need to take action now to bring the world together and recognize this as a global threat so that we can make a cooperative international decision to act to extend the survival of life on Earth.?
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Read the rest of Mitigating Asteroid Threats Will Take Global Action (720 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Full story at http://www.universetoday.com/76994/mitigating-asteroid-threats-will-take-global-action/
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