When Wil B&bw Wallflower Plugs Go on Sale Again??
If someone says the sky is falling, you tin usually assume the sky is non falling.
But, of course, the sky really is falling, and nosotros really could be doomed. Unless we or our descendants accept action, a big asteroid or comet volition sooner or afterward slam into Earth, causing massive — if not catastrophic — damage. In the instance of the rock that hit our planet 66 million years agone, an estimated 75 percent of all animal species (including the dinosaurs) were erased.
If someone says the heaven is falling, you can commonly assume the sky is not falling. But, of course, the heaven really is falling, and nosotros really could be doomed.
That's why I'grand happy NASA is spending my taxation dollars to whomp an asteroid with some high-tech hardware. The Sprint, or Double Asteroid Redirection Test, mission, which lifted off from California'southward Vandenberg Infinite Strength Base on November. 24, will spend 10 months cruising to a target you've probably never heard of: the double asteroid Didymos.
The thought is to deliberately crash a 1,200-pound spacecraft into Didymos' smaller orbiting companion — its "moon," if you will — Dimorphos. Y'all might recall a moon weighing billions of pounds would be completely unmoved by such a collision; comparable to throwing a grape at a FedEx truck. Simply calculations suggest this high-tech fender bough could significantly alter the fourth dimension Dimorphos takes to orbit Didymos. The orbital catamenia is currently about 12 hours, and that might change past 30 minutes.
Now the point of this bumper car exercise is non to keep this double asteroid from hitting united states of america; information technology'due south non headed our way. It'southward to examination out whether we could deflect an asteroid that was.
The DART mission costs $325 one thousand thousand, or a little over 2 dollars per taxpayer. Sure, you could get a inexpensive coffee with that money instead. But I view it like buying earthquake insurance: I might never need it, but if I do, I'll really need information technology!
Dart really addresses a multiheaded threat, because space rocks come in various sizes. On the one hand are the "planet killers" — rocks similar in heft (about 6 miles across) to the one that snuffed the dinosaurs. But of the roughly xviii,000 known asteroids that might tangle with World, few are that massive. Indeed, planet killers are reckoned to come our way simply nigh one time every 100 million years.
That probably sounds pretty nonthreatening. But DART is not just another government boondoggle, promoted by rocket jockeys who like to blow things up. A planet killer careening into our planet would kill all 8 billion of the states. If that happens within 100 meg years, and then the annual gamble of being killed past an asteroid is at to the lowest degree twoscore times greater than being killed by terrorists. And yous wouldn't begrudge spending a few bucks to protect humanity from terrorism.
Dart is not simply another government boondoggle, promoted past rocket jockeys who similar to blow things up.
The counterargument is that given the stunningly low frequency of collisions with large space rocks, the chances are pretty good that information technology won't be you or your kids who will exist saved past this paltry investment. But smaller asteroids, such the office-building-size one that blew autonomously in the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, are still by and large unidentified. They're a m times as numerous as the planet killers. And so they tin make it without warning and perchance take out a large city.
Of class, y'all can't nudge a target you lot don't know about. Therefore, the Un has organized a global entrada, known every bit the International Asteroid Alert Network, to identify whatsoever asteroid that might accept our name on information technology. While virtually of the large planet-killer rocks have been found, but about 40 percent of the smaller asteroids, downwardly to the size of a football stadium, are catalogued. Then if 1 of these "urban center smasher" asteroids is spotted headed our way, data obtained by the Dart mission might enable us to alter its path. The loss of a latte would exist worth it.
Sprint is a "proof of concept" mission, not because we need the engineering science now, simply because there will surely come a solar day when we will. Every bit Sprint Programme Scientist Tom Statler told me, "If we impact Dimorphos squarely and there is no orbital change, that would exist telling us something very interesting and utterly unexpected about minor asteroids. As a scientist, I want to exist surprised by DART, but as a planetary defender, I don't want to be surprised too much."
Neither should we.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/when-will-asteroid-hit-earth-nasa-hoping-block-big-ones-ncna1285305
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