Asteroid Armaggedon: Here's What Scientists Believe Will Survive Massive Asteroid Impact

Asteroid impacts have become a serious concern for NASA and other space agencies, which have kickstarted projects and studies to possibly prevent asteroid armageddon.

However, an expert recently revealed that even if a massive asteroid crashes into Earth, not all lifeforms will be wiped out during the impact and there is a possibility for life to thrive once more on the planet.

Steinn Sigurðsson, a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University, explained that a powerful cosmic impact could send large amounts of rock which some lifeforms may be sticking to straight into space. These lifeforms could later make their way back to Earth and revitalize the planet once more.

"If you have a sterilizing impact — if you have a beyond dinosaur killer, something that’s going to flash fry the entire planet — there is a significant probability that some biota is ejected and returns to the planet, hopefully gently, fast enough to reseed the planet," he said during the Breakthrough Discuss conference at the University of California, Berkeley last month via Space.com.

Sigurðsson and his colleagues visualized the scenario of lifeforms surviving a massive asteroid impact with the use of computer simulations, which followed the trajectories of rocks that escape the atmosphere and are lofted into orbit around the Sun.

Most of the rocks won't be blasted off the planet, however, as they wouldn't reach escape velocity and would thus simply fall back down to the ground. But this could be just as dangerous, if not more, as the asteroid impact.

According to some scientists, instead of the impact, what actually killed more dinosaurs 66 million years ago was the global firestorm born from the falling rock that heated the Earth's upper atmosphere to about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,482 degrees Celsius).

Using the simulations, Sigurðsson and his team found that most of the ejected rocks would be eventually reabsorbed, especially if they share Earth's solar orbit. However, some ejected material could make their way to other planets due to their gravitational pull.

The researchers estimated that tens of thousands of rocks could enter worlds which could be capable of supporting life such as Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan. "So, the solar system is vulnerable to cross-contamination, and we should be cognizant of that when we look for life in the outer system," he said.

NASA and other space agencies already have several missions planned to further mankind's search for life outside of Earth. Next year, NASA is set to launch the Europa Clipper probe, which will attempt to find biosignatures on Jupiter's moon Europa.

The U.S. space agency may also send a drone mission called Dragonfly to Saturn moon Titan to find signs of life on the satellite. With the goal of studying Titan's atmospheric chemistry, Dragonfly could find biosignatures in the moon's air by detecting gases in chemical disequilibrium.