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A week ago, the new VERA C. Rubin Observatory published his first images. He also included a video of all the asteroids he discovered. In just 10 hours, the Simonyi survey telescope with the Camera of the inheritance of space and time (LSST) captured more than 2,000 asteroids not previously detected.
It is a reminder that, although there is a lot of space in space, our solar system still has a lot.
Asteroids are rocks and debris left by the formation of our solar system. There are two main areas where a large part is located. The first being the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The second is the Kuiper belt, beyond Neptune orbit.
But there are still many more floats.
Look | See a newly discovered swarm of asteroids
This video, published Monday by the team behind the Verra C. Rubin observatory, shows images of more than 2,000 new asteroids.
Scientists believe that roughly 44 tonnes of meteoric debris fall towards the ground every day. It’s true: every day.
The good news is that most burn in our atmosphere.
But what are the chances that a much larger object is on a collision trajectory with the earth?
“The earth has been affected in the past by great asteroids, and probably, if we were waiting for a long time, something would happen. But the risk is very, very small,” said Paul Weigert, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of West University in London, Ontario.
“So, none of the asteroids we know today have a chances of hitting the earth in the next 100 years. So, it’s a fairly healthy horizon.”
However, there is no guarantee that something that has so far been not detected is not on the way.
“While we are going beyond, there is always the chance that we can discover new asteroids, of course, and they become non-unpredictable, but more difficult to predict in detail, at longer distances,” added Weiger.
The importance of being serious
There are many groups scanning the sky in search of asteroids, and Weigert said that the Vera C. Rubin observatory accelerates research like never before.
“The Vera Rubin telescope will really revolutionize the way this type of work is done. I think that even the people who knew what to expect, who knew that it was going on in the pipeline, were impressed by the way Lss-Rubin was really able to dive and start to find these things,” he said. “So it will be a very impressive discovery machine in the future.”
NASA found more than 1.4 billion asteroidsand believes he has identified more than 95% of asteroids a kilometer or more In our solar system.
It is estimated that the Rubin observatory will discover 89,000 objects close to the earth and 3.7 million asteroids of the main belt.
Now being touched by an asteroid is really a question of dimensions.
Smaller objects, such as asteroids about 10 meters in diameter Earth impact once a decade. Although this is not a planetary end, they can break the windows. The Chelyabinsk meteorite which exploded on Russia in 2013 was double this size, and actually broke windows, which injured around 1,500 people.
Look | Press report on the 2013 meteorite which struck Russia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grrdswhqhy0
The larger the rock, the less an impact on earth. For example, a 140 -meter asteroid has an impact on the earth approximately once every 1,000 years and a kilometer of approximately one kilometer has an impact on the earth approximately every 700,000 years. An asteroid of this size would be devastating.
Whoever killed the dinosaurs had a size of about 10 to 15 kilometers. It is estimated that these impacts occur about once every 100 million years.
Jim Freemantle is project manager for the Altimeter Osiris-Rex Laser project at York University in Toronto. Osiris-Rex was the sample return mission to the Bennu asteroid. He has a small piece of asteroid in his laboratory.
He thinks that it is important to follow and better understand asteroids overall.
“I do not lie awake by wondering, you know, is an asteroid of dinosaur who will destroy us all. We have other things to fear,” he said.
“It is something that I think it is prudent to start thinking, to measure where or to look for where the asteroids are, because sometimes they sneak on us.”
He also said that he was delighted to have these observation systems in place, and also by the intention of trying to deviate from any asteroid that could be on a collision trajectory with the earth.
In particular, he noted NASA Double asteroid redirection test mission (DART) to a system with two esteroids. The goal was to see if we could move an asteroid by slamming something in one.
The spaceship crashed into one of the asteroids to see if it could change its orbit. He was considered a success. And now the European space agency has a Spatial vessel on the way back to the system For more follow -up observations.
Asteroid to have an impact on the moon?
Weigert and his team recently published a pre-printed study around 2024 YR4, a newly discovered asteroid of 60 meters which, at some point this year, raised certain concerns about his chances that he affects the earth in 2032.
But we have now been given the green light to stop worrying, because astronomers have somewhat refined the orbit of the asteroid, and it turns out that it will not have an impact on the earth.
However, there are still four percent of chances that he hit the moon.
In the new study by Weigert and his calculated colleagues What could be like.
Look | To what extent should we worry about an asteroid that rushed to the earth? | Hanomansing tonight
NASA says that the chances suddenly by the asteroid 2024 YR4, which could be the size of a football field, continues to change. Johanna Wagstaffe of CBC News and Sarah Galashan discuss what people should watch.
He said that, generally, when an asteroid hits the moon or any planet without atmosphere, it makes a crater about 10 times its own size.
As for 2024, if it strikes the moon, rocks and debris will explode with most of the benefits on the lunar surface. But some of these tiny rocks could go to the earth, the authors said.
“If it strikes in the right place, a little material could be delivered on earth in the form of lunar rocks essentially, perhaps the size of a centimeter or the size of a millimeter, perfect for making stars of shooting, stars that fall, and that would produce a wonderful shower of weather on earth.
But that would also represent a little threat to satellites.
But Weigert plans that, as the orbit is still refined – which will not occur before 2028, the sooner, because it is currently behind the sun – the chances of this will occur at zero.
Weigert also explained why it takes time to get a better estimate on the path of an asteroid.
“You can see it pass very well in the sky, but it is actually very, very difficult to say how far it is,” he said.
“It is only after looking at it on a long period and knowing the laws of physics and how gravity affects the orbit, that you can really refine it and say:” Okay, if that follows the laws of physics, what it should do, that it travels on this path. “”
When asked if he lost sleep on the possibility of an asteroid hitting the earth, Weigert simply said, “No.”
“We have seen most of the truly dangerous asteroids, and we continue to work with diligence to find as much asteroids a little less dangerous but still somewhat dangerous, and especially with something like the Rubin Observatory online here, now that this task will be somehow to complete more quickly than it was.”
