Nineteen years later, the site of the Tunguska Event was discovered, and for about 40 kilometers in all directions, the terrain was completely leveled. NY 10036. It’s much lower: somewhere around half those odds. Considering the lack of an early warning system, and the difficulty of identifying all but the largest asteroids in advance (and even the larger ones, when they happen to come from the direction of the Sun), it’s not difficult to imagine almost the entire population of a metropolis wiped out in a single unfortunate stroke of bad luck. Human beings haven’t been around on Earth forever.

It’s a well-known fact that city-killer asteroids, like the one that caused the Tunguska event or Meteor Crater, strike Earth anywhere between once every couple of millennia to possibly as frequently as once a century. Although tempting, scientists take a step back on the plan to tap the potential of these asteroids because there is an inherent risk at the mere fact of tampering an asteroid for human consumption…

About 80 million full-grown trees had been knocked over by an explosion estimated to have released the equivalent of 10 million tonnes of TNT exploding, or about 40% as much energy as the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated on Earth. And — I want to be clear here — the reason I think it’s terrible to act out of fear is not some sort of machismo; it’s because this is quantitatively something that’s very unlikely to negatively affect humanity in any appreciable way. Are Lithium-Ion Batteries The Best Option For Electric And Hybrid Vehicles, Some Modern Society Problems that Online Dating is Able to Solve, Tech Trends that Influence on Relationships, Covid-19 is Similar to Coronavirus in Terms of Antibodies and Immunity, Study Says, Science of Happiness: It's More Than Positive Hormones, Ancient Bird Species With Large Wingspans Once Thrived All Over the World, Vitamin A During Winter Helps Burn Fat To Keep The Body Warm, Study Shows. We get a planet-killer asteroid — the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs — once every few hundred million years; the largest events are the most destructive but also the most unlikely.

But you’re probably far more familiar with an even more recent event. But when the wrong year comes along, lots more than 100 people will die, and over long enough timescales, that will average out to about 0.0000014% of the world’s population dying of an asteroid strike every year.

During the interview, a question was asked about the possibility of asteroid mining. This is currently still a faint object, recorded in 3-minute exposures tracked on the target object by Paulo Holvorcem of Brazil, remotely using the 0.35-m telescope at Tenagra Observatory in Western Australia (at Shenton Park, near Perth) operated by Paul Luckas. Only about 38 po… Realistically, the odds are tiny that any asteroid strike will happen to humanity in our lifetimes, our children’s lifetimes, or their children’s children’s children’s lifetimes. Asteroids could one day be considered the richest source of rare minerals and precious stones like diamonds and gold. Now you know me: I’m a huge fan of astronomy, astrophysics and space exploration. In the grand scheme of things, we haven’t been around very long at all. Sure, they wiped out the dinosaurs, but do they really pose a risk to humans? [Read the Full Story]. You will receive a verification email shortly.

This image shows the asteroid in Herschel’s three PACS wavelengths: 70, 100 and 160 microns. Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors?

And finally, it is true that the more massive the asteroid gets, the more catastrophic its damage is going to be.

I know that many of you think that so long as we invest in science, the reason doesn’t matter, but I give our world more credit than that. Thank you for signing up to Space. This NASA graphic shows the orbits of all the known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), numbering over 1,400 as of early 2013. The “fear factor” here is that we didn’t see a single one coming, and were completely caught by surprise by each and every one. "This space may probably be near the moon, where stuff can basically be dumped without harming anyone. This space should be what we can consider a safe type of orbit," Starkey added. Each year that passes sees roughly a 0.0000005% chance of a species-threatening asteroid coming our way, while real threats — environmental, medical and political (i.e., war) — could literally wipe us off the face of the Earth in the blink of an eye. Shown here is a close-up of the orbits overlaid on the orbits of Earth and other inner planets. Your “one-in-70,000,000” chances of death factor these catastrophes in very heavily. If we want to build a world that values and appreciates science, we have to be honest about what it is, what it does, and what the scientific enterprise is all about. Lysette Maurice N. SandovalAug 06, 2019 05:48 AM EDT. Leave your comments at the Starts With A Bang forum on Scienceblogs.

You might instead want to look at conditional probability: what are your chances of dying if the Earth-killer doesn’t hit this year?