It’s not a secret anymore that astroids of small sizes are hitting our home planet on a daily basis. But most of them are disintegrating after they come into contact with the atmosphere.
Larger asteroids, on the other hand, are more dangerous. NASA’s Chief Jim Bridenstine has recently warned the world about the importance of the space agency’s planetary defense system against such space rocks that can be threatening the planet.
New research is showing that such dangerous mid-size impacts are far less frequent than initially believes. The study is based on a mysterious asteroid impact that took place in 1908.
The research has been published in a special issue on the journal Icarus, and it shows that relatively small mid-size asteroid impacts are occurring once a millennium.
This is less than previous estimations which claimed that these impacts are occurring once a century.
Interestingengineering.com notes that these findings have also shed some light on the way in which larger asteroids are breaking upon entering the atmosphere of our planet.
Research is inspired by the Tunguska event
The Tunguska event took place in 1908, and this means that a lot of details surrounding it are still a mystery.
This is of course due to poorer available technology. Back then, there were not so many cameras and sensors in order to draw data from in real-time when it all happened.
Experts reached the place of impact only after a decade since it took place.
The online publication mentioned above notes that back in 2013, a new meteor impact in Russia happened.
The difference is that a lot of people were able to film it “and sensors and computer modeling were in place to take measurements and analyze the effects.”
The publication cites:
“Because there are so few observed cases, a lot of uncertainty remains about how large asteroids break up in the atmosphere and how much damage they could cause on the ground,” states Lorien Wheeler, according to a researcher working on NASA’s Asteroid Threat Assessment Project.
“However, recent advancements in computational models, along with analyses of the Chelyabinsk and other meteor events, are helping to improve our understanding of these factors so that we can better evaluate potential asteroid threats in the future.”
I have been blogging and posting articles for over eight years, but my passion for writing dates back in 2000. I am especially enthusiastic about technology, science, and health-related issues. When I’m not researching and writing the latest news, I’m either watching sci-fi and horror movies or checking out places worth visiting and building deep memories for later in life. I believe in empathy and continually improving myself.