Astrophysicist and Queen founding member Brian May is among those who are marking the first observation of Asteroid Day on Tuesday by helping raise awareness about the threats posed by speeding space rocks on our planet.
May is among a group of experts who have called for increased efforts to find and track dangerous asteroids. The group said that the search for these potentially deadly asteroids that could hit Earth should be sped up by a hundredfold to protect the future of life on the planet.
The call to action comes as astronauts and other scientists worldwide participate in Asteroid Day, which involves talks and debates that aim to raise awareness on the threats posed by hurtling rocks from space.
"The aim is to ramp up public awareness and the awareness of governments to the fact that we are under threat from a meteor strike," May said. "It's been made light of, and we've seen some great films, like Bruce Willis saving the day, but it is a very serious threat."
May, along with Lord Rees, Peter Gabriel, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins and Eileen Collins, added their names to the 100X declaration that calls to hasten efforts to find and track potentially dangerous asteroids.
The signatories called for the use of available technology for detecting and tracking near-Earth asteroids that pose threats to human populations, a fast and hundredfold acceleration of the tracking and discovery of these objects to 100,000 annually over the next decade, and the worldwide adoption of Asteroid Day, which was observed on June 30.
"There are a million asteroids in our solar system that have the potential to strike Earth and destroy a city, yet we have discovered less than 10,000—just one percent—of them. We have the technology to change that situation," the 100X declaration reads.
The event falls on the anniversary of an asteroid strike that occurred in 1908, which saw a 40-meter wide space rock hurtling over Tunguska in Siberia at a speed of about 33,500 miles per hour. The rock exploded in midair and released the energy equivalent to that of a large hydrogen bomb flattening 2,000 square kilometers of conifer forest.
If an asteroid of the same size hurled into the atmosphere over populated places, it could have fatal consequences, with people possibly burning up because of the intense heat generated by the explosion.
