Scientists from Russian Academy scientists have found out what the impact of an asteroid on Earth can lead to. Tens of years ago, pictures of collisions of celestial bodies with the planet were described only by science fiction writers. Today, the threat from space is called a serious complex problem. Electromagnetic disturbances, tsunamis, dangerous emissions into the atmosphere - this is only a small part of what can happen when an asteroid falls.

The asteroid threat is a reality that science community takes it very seriously. Meteorites constantly fall on our planet, but most of them are very small and burn up on their approach in the dense layers of the atmosphere. However, scientists are confident that the movement of celestial bodies must be closely monitored, reports. It is necessary to understand their possible trajectories and, accordingly, predict the danger to the Earth.

Thus, a group of specialists from the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, led by Professor Shustov, is conducting research on modeling a possible asteroid impact and its consequences. According to scientists, a celestial body with a diameter of 10 to 100 meters is already dangerous. And the main threat in this case is the shock wave. A typical example is the so-called Chelyabinsk meteorite. Its size was less than 20 meters in diameter, but the material damage from its fall was quite noticeable.

Television channels around the world then showed wounded people and partially destroyed buildings. However, if the Earth is threatened by a larger celestial body, the consequences could be catastrophic. This spring our planet avoided such a catastrophe. The large asteroid "OJ25", which scientists discovered back in 2014, passed by cosmic standards very close to Earth.

According to rough estimates, its diameter was more than 600 meters. According to the model developed by Professor Shustov’s group, in the event of a collision with such a large celestial body, the scale of the Chelyabinsk event would not be limited.

Firstly, a powerful shock wave would arise, which would still propagate in the atmosphere. It would be capable of destroying brickwork or concrete blocks 30 centimeters thick. Secondly, a huge crater would form at the crash site. The kinetic energy of the impact, reflected from the surface of the planet, creates a seismic wave that provokes earthquakes and tsunamis. Upon impact, a huge amount of energy is released, resulting in thermal radiation. It causes fires. This can be imagined using the example of the Tunguska meteorite, which collided with the Earth in June 1908. This fall burned forests over an area of ​​about 500 square kilometers. In addition, as a result of the fall of a large asteroid, such an amount of dust will rise from the surface of the earth that this will lead to changes in the atmosphere and, possibly, to the effect of “nuclear winter”.

We have been prophesied many times about the End of the World according to the scenario that a meteorite, an asteroid will fall on Earth and smash everything to smithereens. But it did not fall, although small meteorites fell.

Could a meteorite still fall on Earth and destroy all life? What asteroids have already fallen on Earth and what consequences did this entail? Today we’ll talk about this.

By the way, the next End of the World is predicted for us in October 2017!!

Let's first understand what a meteorite, meteoroid, asteroid, comet is, at what speed they can hit the Earth, for what reason the trajectory of their fall is directed to the surface of the Earth, what destructive power meteorites carry, taking into account the speed of the object and mass.

Meteroid

“A meteoroid is a celestial body intermediate in size between cosmic dust and an asteroid.

A meteoroid flying into the Earth's atmosphere at great speed (11-72 km/s) heats up greatly due to friction and burns, turning into a luminous meteor (which can be seen as a “shooting star”) or a fireball. The visible trace of a meteoroid entering the Earth's atmosphere is called a meteor, and a meteoroid falling on the Earth's surface is called a meteorite."

Cosmic dust- small celestial bodies that burn in the atmosphere and are initially small in size.

Asteroid

“An asteroid (a common synonym until 2006 was a minor planet) is a relatively small celestial body of the Solar System moving in orbit around the Sun. Asteroids are significantly inferior in mass and size to planets and have irregular shape and do not have an atmosphere, although they may also have satellites.”

Comet

“Comets are like asteroids, but they are not lumps, but frozen floating swamps. They mostly live at the edge of the solar system, forming the so-called Oort cloud, but some fly to the Sun. As they approach the Sun, they begin to melt and evaporate, forming behind them a beautiful tail glowing in the sun's rays. Among superstitious people they are considered harbingers of misfortune.”

Bolide- a bright meteor.

Meteor — “(Ancient Greek μετέωρος, “heavenly”), “shooting star” is a phenomenon that occurs when small meteoroids (for example, fragments of comets or asteroids) burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.”

And finally, the meteorite:“A meteorite is a body of cosmic origin that fell on the surface of a large celestial object.

Most meteorites found have a mass of several grams to several kilograms (the largest meteorite found is Goba, which was estimated to weigh about 60 tons). It is believed that 5-6 tons of meteorites fall to the Earth per day, or 2 thousand tons per year.”

All relatively large celestial bodies that enter the Earth's atmosphere burn up before reaching the surface, and those that reach the surface are called meteorites.

Now think about the numbers: “5-6 tons of meteorites fall on the Earth per day, or 2 thousand tons per year”!!! Imagine, 5-6 tons, but we rarely hear reports that someone was killed by a meteorite, why?

Firstly, small meteorites fall, such that we don’t even notice, many fall on uninhabited lands, and secondly: cases of death from a meteorite strike are not excluded, type in a search engine, in addition, meteorites have repeatedly fallen near people, on dwellings (Tunguska bolide, Chelyabinsk meteorite, meteorite falling on people in India).

Every day over 4 billion cosmic bodies fall to Earth, This is the name given to everything that is larger than cosmic dust and smaller than an asteroid - this is what sources of information about the life of the Cosmos say. Basically, these are small stones that burn up in the layers of the atmosphere before reaching the earth's surface; a few pass this line; they are called meteorites, whose total weight per day is several tons. Meteoroids that do reach Earth are called meteorites.

The meteorite falls to Earth at a speed of 11 to 72 km per second, during the process of enormous speed it heats up celestial body and glow, which causes a part of the meteorite to “blow,” reducing its mass, sometimes dissolving, especially at a speed of about 25 km per second or more. When approaching the surface of the planet, the surviving celestial bodies slow down their trajectory, falling vertically, and as a rule they cool down, which is why there are no hot asteroids. If a meteorite breaks apart along the “road,” a so-called meteor shower can occur, when many small particles fall to the ground.

At a low speed of the meteorite, for example a few hundred meters per second, the meteorite is able to retain the same mass. Meteorites are stony (chondrites (carbonaceous chondrites, ordinary chondrites, enstatite chondrites)

achondrites), iron (siderites) and iron-stone (pallasites, mesosiderites).

“The most common meteorites are stony meteorites (92.8% of falls).

Overwhelming majority stone meteorites(92.3% stone, 85.7% total number falls) - chondrites. They are called chondrites because they contain chondrules - spherical or elliptical formations of predominantly silicate composition.”

Chondrites in the photo

Mostly meteorites are about 1 mm, maybe a little more... In general, smaller than a bullet... Perhaps there are a lot of them under our feet, perhaps they fell right before our eyes once, but we did not notice it.

So, what happens if a large meteorite falls to the Earth, does not crumble into stone rain, does not dissolve in the layers of the atmosphere?

How often does this happen and what are the consequences?

Fallen meteorites were discovered by finds or by falls.

For example, according to official statistics, the following number of meteorite falls was recorded:

in 1950-59 - 61, on average 6.1 meteorite falls per year,

in 1960-69 - 66, on average 6.6 per year,

in 1970-79 - 61, average per year 6.1,

in 1980-89 - 57, average per year 5.7,

in 1990-99 - 60, on average 6.0 per year,

in 2000-09 - 72, average per year 7.2,

in 2010-16 - 48, on average 6.8 per year.

As we can see even according to official data, the number of meteorite falls is increasing last years, decades. But, naturally, we don’t mean 1mm-thick celestial bodies...

Meteorites weighing from several grams to several kilograms fell to Earth in countless quantities. But there were not so many meteorites weighing more than a ton:

The Sikhote-Alin meteorite weighing 23 tons fell to the ground on February 12, 1947 in Russia, in the Primorsky Territory (classification - Zhelezny, IIAB),

Girin - a meteorite weighing 4 tons fell to the ground on March 8, 1976 in China, in the province of Girin (classification - H5 No. 59, chondrite),

Allende - a meteorite weighing 2 tons fell to the ground on February 8, 1969 in Mexico, Chihuahua (classification CV3, chondrite),

Kunya-Urgench - a meteorite weighing 1.1 tons fell to the ground on June 20, 1998 in Turkmenistan, in the city in the North-East of Turkmenistan - Tashauz (classification - chondrite, H5 No. 83),

Norton County - a meteorite weighing 1.1 tons fell to the ground on February 18, 1948 in the USA, Kansas (Aubrit classification),

Chelyabinsk - a meteorite weighing 1 ton fell to the ground on February 15, 2013 in Russia, in the Chelyabinsk region (chondrite classification, LL5 No. 102†).

Of course, the closest and most understandable meteorite to us is the Chelyabinsk meteorite. What happened when the meteorite fell? A series of shock waves during the destruction of a meteorite over the Chelyabinsk region and Kazakhstan, the largest of the fragments weighing about 654 kg was raised from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul in October 2016.

On February 15, 2013, at approximately 9:20 a.m., fragments of a small asteroid collided with the earth’s surface, which collapsed as a result of braking in the Earth’s atmosphere; the largest fragment weighed 654 kg; it fell into Lake Chebarkul. The superbolide collapsed in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk at an altitude of 15-25 km, the bright glow from the burning of the asteroid in the atmosphere was noticed by many residents of the city, someone even decided that the plane had crashed or a bomb had fallen, this was the main version of the media in the first hours. The largest meteorite known after the Tunguska meteorite. The amount of released energy, according to experts, ranged from 100 to 44 kilotons of TNT equivalent.

According to official data, 1,613 people were injured, mainly from broken glass from houses damaged by the explosion, about 100 people were hospitalized, two ended up in intensive care, total amount Damage caused to buildings amounted to about 1 billion rubles.

The Chelyabinsk meteoroid, according to NASA's preliminary estimates, was 15 meters in size and weighed 7,000 tons - these are its data before entering the Earth's atmosphere.

Important factors for assessing the potential danger of meteorites to the earth are the speed with which they approach the earth, their mass, and composition.

On the one hand, the speed can destroy the asteroid into small fragments even before the earth’s atmosphere, on the other hand, it can give a powerful blow if the meteorite still reaches the ground. If an asteroid flies with less force, the probability of its mass being preserved is greater, but the force of its impact will not be so terrible. It is the combination of factors that is dangerous: the conservation of mass at the highest speed of the meteorite.

For example, a meteorite weighing more than a hundred tons hitting the ground at the speed of light can cause irreparable destruction.

Information from the documentary.

If you launch a round diamond ball with a diameter of 30 meters towards the Earth at a speed of 3 thousand km per second, then the air will begin to participate in nuclear fusion and, under the heating of the plasma, this process can destroy the diamond sphere even before it reaches the surface of the Earth: information from scientific films, according to scientists' projects. However, the chances that the diamond ball, even if broken, will reach the Earth are great; during the impact, a thousand times more energy will be released than from the most powerful nuclear weapon, and after that the area in the area of ​​the fall will be empty, the crater will be large, but the Earth has seen more. This is at 0.01 of the speed of light. What will happen if you accelerate the sphere to 0.99% of the speed of light?

Superatomic energy will begin to operate, the diamond ball will become just a collection of carbon atoms, the sphere will flatten into a pancake, each atom in the ball will carry 70 billion volts of energy, it passes through the air, air molecules pierce through the center of the ball, then get stuck inside, it expands and reaches the Earth with a greater content of matter than at the beginning of the journey, when it crashes into the surface, it will pierce the Earth crooked and wide, creating a cone-shaped road through the root rock. The energy of the collision will tear a hole in the Earth's crust and explode into a crater so large that the molten mantle can be seen through it, an impact comparable to the 50 impacts of the Chicxulub asteroid, which killed the dinosaurs in the BC era. It is quite possible the end of all life on Earth, or at least the extinction of all people. Now each carbon molecule carries 25 trillion wills of energy (!!!), which is comparable to the particles inside the large hadron collider, all of this will hit our planet with approximately the kinetic energy of the Moon moving in orbit, this is enough to punch a huge hole in the mantle and shake earth's surface planet so that it simply melts, this with a 99.99% probability will put an end to all life on Earth.

Let's add more speed to the diamond ball up to 0.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light, This is the highest speed of an object with mass ever recorded by man. The “Oh my God!” particle.

The Oh-My-God particle is a cosmic shower caused by ultra-high energy cosmic rays, discovered on the evening of October 15, 1991 at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah using the Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector. "(English) owned by the University of Utah. The energy of the particle that caused the shower was estimated to be 3 × 1020 eV (3 × 108 TeV), about 20 million times greater than the energy of particles emitted by extragalactic objects, in other words, the atomic nucleus had a kinetic energy equivalent to 48 joules.

This is the energy of a 142-gram baseball moving at a speed of 93.6 kilometers per hour.

The Oh-My-God particle had such high kinetic energy that it moved through space at approximately 99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light."

This proton from Space, which “lit up” the atmosphere over Utah in 1991 and moved almost at the speed of light, the cascade of particles that were formed from its movement could not be reproduced even by the LHC (collider), such phenomena are detected several times a year and no one doesn't understand what it is. It seems to be coming from a galaxy-wide explosion, but what happened to cause these particles to come to Earth in such a hurry and why they did not slow down remains a mystery.

And if the diamond ball moves at the speed of the “Oh, my God!” particle, then nothing will help and no computer technology will simulate the development of events in advance; this plot is a godsend for dreamers and blockbuster creators.

But the picture will look something like this: a diamond ball rushes through the atmosphere, not noticing it and disappearing into the earth's crust, a cloud of expanding plasma with radiation diverges from the entry point, while energy pulsates outward through the body of the planet, as a result the planet becomes heated, begins to glow, the Earth will be knocked out into another orbit Naturally, all living things will die.

Taking into account the picture of the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which we recently observed, the scenarios of the fall of meteorites (diamond balls) from the film presented in the article, the plots of science fiction films - we can assume that:

- the fall of a meteorite, despite all the assurances of scientists that it is realistic to predict the fall of a large celestial body to Earth in decades, taking into account the achievements in the field of astronautics, cosmonautics, astronomy - in some cases it is impossible to predict!! And the proof of this is the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which no one predicted. And the proof of this is the particle “Oh, my God!” with their protons over Utah in '91... As they say, we don’t know what hour or day the end will come. However, humanity has been living and living for several thousand years now...

- first of all, we should expect small meteorites, and the destruction will be similar to that of the Chelyabinsk meteorite: glass will burst, buildings will be destroyed, perhaps part of the area will be scorched...

One should hardly expect terrible consequences as with the supposed death of dinosaurs, but cannot exclude them either.

- it is impossible to protect yourself from the forces of Space, unfortunately, meteorites make it clear to us that we are only small people on a small planet in a vast Universe, therefore it is impossible to predict the outcome, the time of contact of an asteroid with the earth, piercing the atmosphere more and more actively every year, Space seems to be claiming to our territory. Get ready or don’t get ready, but if the forces of heaven send an asteroid to our Earth, there’s no corner you can hide in…. So meteorites are also sources of deep philosophy and rethinking of life.

And here's another news!! We have just recently been prophesied about another End of the World!!! October 12, 2017, that is, we have very little time left. Presumably. A huge asteroid is rushing towards Earth!! This information is all over the news, but we are so used to such cries that we don’t react... what if...

According to scientists, the Earth already has holes and cracks, it is burning at the seams... If an asteroid reaches it, and a huge one, as predicted, it simply will not survive. You can only be saved by being in a bunker.

Wait and see.

There are opinions of psychologists that such intimidation is an attempt by any means to instill fear in humanity and control it in this way. The asteroid is indeed planning to pass by the Earth soon, but it will pass very far, there is a one in a million chance that it will hit the Earth.

Remember, we were recently making fun of media headlines about things that are terribly dangerous for our planet! Laughter is laughter, but if you seriously delve into this information, then everything turns out to be not as rosy as we would like.

No one disputes that a really dangerous asteroid can change its orbit and begin to threaten the Earth. So what should I do? After all, we won’t even notice it in time. Here is a block with a diameter of 620 meters. Okay, you noticed, what next? After reading all sorts of options, you basically catch yourself thinking that something incredibly fantastic is being proposed, like the movie “Asteroid”, but no one has any idea how long, by whom and how it will be realized. Further - worse. Few people imagine the consequences of these proposals, because no one has tried anything and everyone operates with the words “probably” and “maybe”.

In reality we have enough limited opportunities, for example these:

Theoretically, missile defense systems (ABM) such as the A-135/A-235 missiles that defended Moscow can detect and attack a small asteroid at an altitude of up to 850 kilometers. Some of these extra-atmospheric missiles have nuclear warheads. In theory, even a weak warhead is enough to initiate the destruction of a body like the Chelyabinsk or Tunguska meteorite. If it breaks up into fragments smaller than ten meters, each of them will burn up high in the atmosphere. And the resulting blast wave will not even be able to break out the glass in residential buildings.

However, the peculiarity of meteoroids and asteroids falling to Earth from space is that most of them move at speeds of 17-74 kilometers per second. This is 2-9 times faster than the A-135/A-235 anti-missile missiles. It is impossible to accurately predict in advance the trajectory of a body of asymmetrical shape and unclear mass. Therefore, even the best anti-missiles of earthlings are not able to hit the “Chelyabinsk” or “Tunguska”. Moreover, this problem is irremovable: chemical fuel rockets physically cannot achieve speeds of 70 kilometers per second and higher. In addition, the probability of an asteroid falling specifically on Moscow is minimal, while others big cities the world are not protected even by such a system. All this makes standard missile defense very ineffective for combating space threats.

Bodies less than a hundred meters in diameter are generally very difficult to notice before they begin to fall to Earth. They are small and usually have a dark color, which makes them difficult to see against the backdrop of the black depths of space. It will not be possible to send a spacecraft to them in advance in order to change their trajectory. If such a celestial body can be seen, it will be done at the last moment, when there will be almost no time left to react. Thus, the August (2016) asteroid was noticed just twenty hours before its approach. It is clear that if he had “aimed” more precisely, there would have been nothing to stop the heavenly guest. Conclusion: we need some other “close combat” means that will allow us to intercept targets many times faster than our best ballistic missiles.

Starting in 2016, we will be able to see most bodies over 120 meters in diameter. It was in 2016 that it was planned to commission the Mauna Loa telescope in Hawaii. It will be the second in the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), created by the University of Hawaii. However, even before its launch, ATLAS had already seen its first near-Earth asteroid with a diameter of less than 150 meters.

However, even an asteroid hundreds of meters in size discovered ahead of time cannot be quickly “turned around” in such a way that it avoids a collision with the Earth. The problem here is that its kinetic energy is so high that a standard thermonuclear warhead simply cannot explode on impact. A contact strike at a collision speed above 300 meters per second will physically crush the elements of a nuclear warhead even before it has time to explode: after all, the mechanisms that ensure the explosion take time to operate. In addition, according to calculations by NASA experts, even if the warhead miraculously explodes (hitting the asteroid “from behind”, on a catch-up course), this will change almost nothing. An object hundreds of meters in diameter has such a surface curvature that more than 90 percent of the thermal energy nuclear explosion It will simply dissipate into space, and will not go to correct the asteroid’s orbit.

There is a method for overcoming the asteroid's "curvature defense" and "speed defense". After the fall of the Chelyabinsk body, NASA introduced the Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle (HAIV) concept. This is a tandem anti-asteroid system, in which the warhead is a non-nuclear blank. When the asteroid’s orbit is corrected, it will hit it first, and at a speed of about ten kilometers per second, leaving behind a small crater. It is into this crater that the second part of HAIV is planned to be sent - a warhead with a yield of 300 kilotons to two megatons. Exactly at the moment when the second part of HAIV enters the funnel, but has not yet touched its bottom, the charge will be detonated, and the main part of its energy will be transferred to the victim asteroid.

A similar approach to combating medium-sized asteroids was recently worked on by researchers from Tomsk on the Skif supercomputer. state university. They simulated the explosion of an Apophis-type asteroid with a megaton nuclear warhead. At the same time, it was possible to find out that the optimal moment of detonation will be when the asteroid, even before its final approach to the planet, passes at some distance from it. In this case, the exploded debris will continue its path away from the Earth. Accordingly, the danger of meteor shower from fragments of a celestial body will be reduced to zero. And this is important: after a nuclear explosion of the required (megaton) power, the asteroid debris will pose a greater radiation threat than Chernobyl.

At first glance, HAIV or its analogs solve all the problems. Bodies less than 300 meters after such a double impact will fall to pieces. Only about a thousandth of their mass will enter the Earth's atmosphere. Larger bodies, especially metal asteroids, will not give up so easily. But even in them, the evaporation of matter from the funnel will give a significant impulse, significantly changing the initial orbit. According to calculations, one such anti-asteroid “shot” should cost 0.5-1.5 billion dollars - mere trifles, less than the cost of one Mars rover or B-2 bomber.

One problem is that it is unreasonable to bet on a weapon that has never been tested at least on a training ground. And NASA currently receives about one-fortieth of US military spending each year. With such a modest “ration”, the agency is simply not able to allocate hundreds of millions for testing HAIV. But even if such tests were carried out, they would be of little use. The same ATLAS promises to warn about an average-sized asteroid a month, or even a couple of weeks in advance. It is impossible to build HAIV from scratch in such a time, and keeping it on combat duty is too expensive for NASA’s modest, by American standards, budget.

The prospects for humanity in the fight against large asteroids - especially those larger than a kilometer - at first glance look much better than in the case of small and medium-sized ones. In most cases, kilometer-long objects can be seen in already deployed telescopes, including space ones. Of course, not always: in 2009, near-Earth asteroids with a diameter of 2-3 kilometers were discovered. The fact that such discoveries are still happening means that there is a possibility of suddenly discovering a large body approaching our planet, even with the current level of development of astronomy. However, it is quite obvious that there are fewer and fewer such objects every year and in the foreseeable future there may not be any left at all.

Even our country, despite the lack of allocated government funding for the search for asteroid threats, plays a significant role in tracking them. In 2012, Vladimir Lipunov’s group from Moscow State University created a global network of MASTER robotic telescopes, covering both a number of domestic and foreign instruments. In 2014, the MASTER network discovered a four-hundred-meter long 2014 UR116, potentially capable of colliding with our planet in the foreseeable future.

However, large asteroids have their own unpleasant characteristics. Suppose we learned that the seventy-kilometer 55576 Amik with a potentially unstable orbit is heading towards Earth. It is possible to "treat" it with a tandem HAIV with a thermonuclear warhead, but this will create unnecessary risks. What if, in doing so, we cause the asteroid to lose one of its loose parts? In addition, large bodies of this kind have satellites - they themselves are not so small. A nearby explosion can provoke a sharp change in the satellite’s orbit, which can lead the disturbed body anywhere—including to our planet.

Let's give one example. The aforementioned network of MASTER telescopes discovered 2014 UR116 less than 13 million kilometers from Earth a year and a half ago. If it were heading towards the planet even at a moderate speed of 17 kilometers per second, their trajectories would intersect in less than ten days. At a closing speed of 70 kilometers per second, we would be talking about a matter of days. If a thermonuclear explosion breaks off a number of fragments from a body many kilometers long, one of them can easily escape our attention. And when it appears in the field of view of telescopes a few million kilometers away, it will be too late to start production of another HAIV interceptor.

Certainly, with large bodies, the collision with which is known in advance, you can interact more safely and without an explosion. Thus, the Yarkovsky effect constantly changes the orbit of almost all asteroids, and without the danger of their dramatic destruction or loss of satellites. The effect is that the part of the asteroid heated by the Sun during its rotation inevitably falls into the unlit night zone. There it releases heat into space via infrared radiation. The latter's photons give the asteroid momentum in the opposite direction.

It is believed that the effect can be easily used to divert large “dinosaur killers” from a dangerous trajectory of approach to the Earth. It is enough to send a small probe carrying a robot with a can of white paint to the asteroid. By spraying it on a large surface, you can achieve a sharp change in the Yarkovsky effect acting on the body. So, a white surface, for example, emits photons less actively, weakening the strength of the effect and changing the direction of the asteroid’s movement.

It may seem that the effect is too small to make a difference anyway. Say, for the Golevka asteroid weighing 210 million tons, it is approximately 0.3 newton. What can such a “force” change in relation to a celestial body? Oddly enough, over many years the effect will be quite serious. From 1991 to 2003, Golevka’s trajectory deviated from the calculated one by 15 kilometers because of it.

There are other ways to slowly remove a large body from a dangerous orbit. On an asteroid, you can install a solar sail made of film or throw a carbon fiber net over it (both options have been studied by NASA). In both cases, light pressure sun rays per celestial body will increase, which means it will gradually begin to move in the direction from the Sun, avoiding a collision with us.

Sending a probe with paint, a sail or a net would mean a long-distance space mission, which would be much more expensive than launching a tandem HAIV. But this option is much safer: it will not create unpredictable changes in the orbit of the fired large asteroid. Accordingly, there will be no threat of large fragments breaking away from it that could fall to Earth in the future.

It is easy to see that such protection from a large asteroid also has its weak points. Today, no one has a ready-made rocket with a robotic painter; it will take many years to prepare it for flight. In addition, sometimes space probes break down. If the device malfunctions on a distant comet or asteroid, like the Japanese Hayabusa on the Itokawa asteroid in 2005, there may simply be no time left for a second attempt at painting on a cosmic scale. Are there more reliable methods that exclude unsafe thermonuclear bombardment and sending probes that are not always reliable? There are, but they are again very incredibly fantastic and it is unclear when they will be realized.

In Western countries, the situation is further aggravated by the fact that no administration plans space programs for more than a few years. Everyone rightly fears that upon the transfer of power, the new administration will immediately close the expensive programs of its predecessors. This means there is no point in starting them. In states like China, everything is formally better. The planning horizon there is pushed far into the future. However, in practice, they do not have either the technological (China) or financial (Russia) capabilities to deploy tandem systems like HAIV or orbital laser arrays like DE-STAR.

What about the USA? And last year the United States decided to create an anti-meteorite defense INDEPENDENTLY. Well, of course! They will be like “Captain America” and defend the Earth from the enemy THEMSELVES! Well, like in Hollywood films, you remember. The result will be “zilch”, but the main thing is to loudly declare yourself.

All this means that the projects described above will begin their implementation only after a multi-megaton explosion of an undetected body over a densely populated area. Such an event - which, in general, is bound to happen sooner or later - will definitely cause loss of life.

Only after this can we confidently expect political sanction for the construction of anti-asteroid defense systems both in the West and, possibly, in Russia.

Well, in the net result - if anything happens, we are finished. Right?

sources

Asteroids that in the future may approach the Earth at a distance of 7.5 million km are considered potentially dangerous to the Earth. Our planet has collided with these cosmic bodies more than once. Today we will talk about how dangerous it is for an asteroid to fall to Earth and is there a likelihood of a large-scale catastrophe in the foreseeable future? First, a little historical background.

An asteroid (from Greek “like a star,” “star”) is also called a minor planet. It is a celestial body whose size exceeds 30 km. Some of them have their own satellites. Many asteroids travel across our solar system. 3.5 million years ago, a huge number of asteroids fell on Earth, which led to global changes.

Traces of an ancient asteroid

In the spring of 2016, geologists in Australia discovered traces of an asteroid impact, the diameter of which was about 30-40 km. That is, it is comparable in size to a small satellite. The fall caused an 11-magnitude earthquake, a tsunami and widespread destruction. It was probably one of the asteroids, as a result of which not only the beginnings of life were formed on earth, but also the entire diversity of the biosphere.

There is also an opinion that the mysterious disappearance of dinosaurs occurred due to the fall of a large asteroid to Earth. Although this is just one of many versions...

This is interesting! The ancient impact was formed as a result of an encounter with a meteorite. Its depth once reached 20 km. The meteorite impact caused a tsunami and climate change similar to a nuclear winter. In addition, the temperature on Earth could drop by 26 degrees for up to 16 years.

Chelyabinsk meteorite

The fall of an asteroid to Earth in February 2013 became one of the most discussed incidents not only in Russia, but throughout the world. The asteroid, whose mass reached 16 tons, partially burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, but a relatively small part of it fell near Chelyabinsk, fortunately, flying over it.

That year he flew over Ural city, which served as the basis for its name. The body itself turned out to be quite ordinary and consisted of chondrites, but the time and place of its fall aroused interest. None of the asteroids that fell to Earth caused such damage, since they did not fall so close to a densely populated area. The meteorite's mass was 6 tons. Falling into the lake caused broken glass in 7,000 buildings. 112 people were hospitalized with burns, and several more people turned to doctors for help. In total, the shock wave covered 6.5 thousand square meters.

The enormous damage caused by the asteroid could have been much more significant if the celestial stone had fallen not into the water, but onto land. Fortunately, the fall of the asteroid to the earth did not turn into a large-scale disaster.

What is dangerous about a large meteorite falling to Earth?

According to scientists' calculations, the fall of an asteroid to Earth can lead to enormous damage if a body about 1 km in size falls onto the Earth's land. First of all, a funnel with a diameter of approximately 15 km will form, which will cause dust to enter the atmosphere. And this, in turn, can lead to large-scale fires. Dust, heated by the sun, will reduce ozone levels and accelerate chemical reactions in the stratosphere, will reduce the amount sunlight reaching the surface of the planet.

Thus, the consequences of an asteroid falling to Earth are very serious. The global temperature of the Earth will fall by 8 0 C, causing glacial period. But to lead to the extinction of humanity, the asteroid would have to be 10 times larger.

Giant danger

Scientists recently found out that centaurs should be included in the list of potential threats to our planet - these are giant asteroids with a diameter of 50 to 100 km. The gravitational field of other planets throws them towards our Earth every 40-100 thousand years. Their number has now increased sharply. Scientists are constantly calculating whether a giant asteroid will fall to Earth in the near future, although calculating the trajectory of the fall of the centaurs is a very difficult task.

In addition, the list of potential threats to the Earth includes:

• supervolcanic eruption;
• global pandemic;
• asteroid impact (0.00013%);
• nuclear war;
• ecological catastrophy.

Will an asteroid hit Earth in October 2017?

The main question that this moment Scientists are worried about the danger posed by an asteroid whose size is 2 times larger than the Chelyabinsk meteorite. There is a possibility that an event will occur in October 2017 that will cause a disaster on a much larger scale than the 2013 strike. Astronomer Judith Rees claims that the asteroid's diameter reaches 40 km. It was dubbed object WF9.

A dangerous celestial body was discovered by scientists in Hawaii back in 2012. That year it passed at a very close distance from the Earth, and on October 12, 2017 it will approach the most dangerous distance for our planet. Scientists believe that if an asteroid actually hits Earth, the British will be the first to see it.

At the moment, scientists are actively studying the possibility of a collision. True, the probability of an asteroid falling to Earth is very small and, according to researchers, is 1 in a million. However, it still exists.

Constant danger

It should be noted that certain asteroids of different sizes are constantly flying past the Earth. They are potentially dangerous, but very rarely actually fall to Earth. So, at the end of 2016, a body flew past the Earth at a distance of 2/3 of the distance from a small truck.

And January 2017 was marked by the passage of a celestial body reaching the size of a 10-story building. It flew within 180 thousand km of us.