Scientists the world over are calling for an expansion to asteroid detection efforts, saying that undetected asteroids are one of the greatest threats to humanity.
Among those speaking out is Queen guitarist, and renowned astrophysicist, Brian May. May dropped out of school to pursue his music career, but later returned to earn his PhD at the University of London's Imperial College.
"The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it becomes that the human race has been living on borrowed time," May tells the Financial Times (via NY Post).
While NASA for years has hunted for large asteroids that could lead to planet-wide extinction if they collided with Earth, the real danger may lie in asteroids of much smaller size. Rocks as small as 50 meters across (164 feet) have the potential to wipe out entire cities and kill millions on a direct impact. The group of scientists say only one percent of asteroids, meteors and comets with the potential to devastate the Earth have been found.
"NASA has done a very good job of finding the very largest objects, the ones that would destroy the human race," Astronaut Ed Lu tells the Financial Times. "It's the ones that would destroy a city or hit the economy for a couple of hundred years that are the problem."
Small asteroids like the one that blazed a fiery trail over Russia in 2013. The blast from that relatively small asteroid (65 feet in diameter) injured 1,500 people. It's with that scary thought in mind that the international group of scientists, led by British Royal Astronomer Lord Rees, is calling for governments and the private sector to help expand detection efforts. Infrared telescopes equipped to spacecraft orbiting between Earth and Venus would be a step towards identifying the small, yet potentially deadly, space rocks.
Detecting the objects is the hard part. Preventing them from hitting Earth is far easier. According to one scientist, it's as easy as running a spacecraft into the object and giving it a new trajectory. Let's hope it is all as easy as these scientists make it sound.
