Scientist Exposes Asteroids That Pose A Real Threat To Earth

Despite the discovery of city and planet-killer asteroids, a planetary scientist believes there are other types of space rocks that Earth should be worried about. According to the scientist, these are the types of asteroids that space agencies should focus on.

Scientists have always warned about the devastating effects that a massive asteroid will have on Earth if it collides with the planet. These warnings are often based on the 6.2 mile-wide asteroid that crashed on Earth 66 million years ago and wiped out the asteroids.

Although astronomers have not yet detected a new asteroid as big as the one that hit Earth millions of years ago, probably one of the closest ones is the space rock known as Bennu. With a diameter of 1,614 feet, Bennu is certainly far from being a planet-killer asteroid. However, according to scientists, this asteroid is still capable of wiping out a major city if it collides with Earth.

For physicist Megan Bruck Syal of the Brown University Planetary Geosciences Group, the public shouldn’t be worried about asteroids like Bennu. After all, they can be easily detected by NASA due to their massive size.

Instead, Syal noted that Earth should be more worried about smaller asteroids since they are harder to detect.

“Bennu is a really interesting asteroid and it is worthy of a lot of study, because it has this very convenient orbit where it comes by Earth a lot, we can study it a lot,” Syal said according to Express. “In terms of what keeps me awake at night, Bennu is not that.”

“I worry about all the thousands of asteroids that are not tens or hundreds of meters in size that we have not yet found,” she added. “But Bennu itself is not something I would worry about as a planetary scientist.”

As previous reports have shown, small asteroids that go undetected tend to burn up and explode mid-air shortly after entering Earth’s atmosphere. Although most these just cause huge fireballs in the sky, others cause mid-air explosions that are powerful enough to affect structures and people on the ground. One particular example is the asteroid that exploded over Russia in 2013. The incident damaged over 7,000 buildings and injured about 1,500 people.