Astronomy: There is no global risk of an asteroid impact in 1,000 years

In all likelihood, an asteroid with a diameter of a kilometer or more will not hit Earth in the next thousand years. This was determined by four US researchers based on currently available data and improved models. Although impacts from smaller bodies could cause devastating damage on a regional scale or even on an entire continent, the danger of an impact threatening the entire human civilization could potentially be avoided. Until now, it has not been possible to make predictions about the probabilities of impact in the distant future. “Good news,” study leader Oscar Fuentes Muñoz of the University of Colorado says.

32,000 near-Earth asteroids of all sizes have been found

like Preview is available Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal, it builds on efforts to find and categorize all potentially hazardous asteroids, which have increased dramatically over the past few years. The catalog is almost complete, especially for larger objects, and the researchers assume that we know about 95 percent of all near-Earth asteroids larger than one kilometer in size. Celestial bodies whose orbit approaches Earth’s orbit are considered “near-Earth”; And it doesn’t have to be close to the ground itself. Using a new method, the team led by Fuentes Muñoz has now calculated more in the future about how the objects’ closest approach to Earth might evolve.

The most dangerous asteroid among the largest in 1994 was PC₁ determined. There is a 0.00151 percent chance that it will pass closer to Earth than the Moon in the next thousand years. This is a probability ten times greater than any other asteroid analyzed and will not happen until the end of the millennium. While the 1994 PC is well thought out₁ But while it regularly approaches Earth in its orbit, there are some asteroids that will steadily approach each other over the next few centuries, while others will recede and still others will only “pass” once. Long-term predictions are made especially difficult by the fact that asteroids’ orbits change each time they come close to Earth.

In all, we currently know of 854 near-Earth asteroids with a diameter of at least 1 kilometer, and the number of known asteroids with a minimum diameter of 140 meters is more than 10,400. In general we know Even from the nearly 32,000 near-Earth asteroids. It is compiled, among other things, in the database of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) of NASA. Finds are made as a result of various scales, thanks to which the search has accelerated significantly over the past 20 years. This is intended to bolster planetary defenses and take into account the fact that asteroid impacts are among the few natural disasters that humans can prevent.

(mo)