ASTRONOMICAL CURIOSITIES
Last year, completed 100 years the fall of an asteroid in Tunguska, in Sibéria. The trace of destruction that asteroid was about 4 thousand km2. With some luck it fell in a region without habitants.
Do we have technology to detect such objects before they collide with the Earth?
On march 2, 2009, an asteroid with approximately half the size of the asteroid that collided in Sibéria (diameter from 21 to 47 meters), passed very near to the Earth – 70 thousand kilometers. This distance may look like big in our human scale, but in astronomical scale is very small. The distance that it passed the Earth is seven times smaller than the distance from Earth to the Moon.
The problem is that the asteroid DD45 was only identified, by astronomers of central monitoring of Siding Spring, in Australia, only 2 days before pass near the Earth. If this asteroid was on a collision course with the Earth, the limited time that this passage was known would not permit launch any form of reaction to prevent a collision with the object, as the sending of a probe with nuclear devices capable of fragmenting the asteroid.
Even if the approximately 30 meters in diameter of the asteroid does not seem particularly impressive, the truth is that the energy of impact would correspond to a small nuclear bomb, like the Hiroshima bomb, can destroy an area of 300 km2, the equivalent of a small town.
So, we see that our technology is not enough to detect small bodies in advance. For this would be necessary an advance in technology…
Even if the approximately 30 meters in diameter of the asteroid does not seem particularly impressive, the truth is that the energy of impact would correspond to a small nuclear bomb, like the Hiroshima bomb, can destroy an area of 300 km2, the equivalent of a small town.
So, we see that our technology is not enough to detect small bodies in advance. For this would be necessary an advance in technology…
RAQUEL
