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Asteroide 2024 ON: Un asteroide en forma de cacahuete
El radar del sistema solar Goldstone, perteneciente a la Red del Espacio Profundo y situado cerca de Barstow, California, capturó imágenes detalladas del asteroide 2024 ON el 16 de septiembre de 2024. Este asteroide, que pasó a 1 millón de kilómetros de la Tierra, lo hizo a una distancia equivalente a 2,6 veces la distancia entre la Luna y nuestro planeta, lo que permitió a los científicos…
Peanut-shaped Asteroid Passes Close to Earth
NASA scientists recently captured detailed radar images of a mysterious peanut-shaped asteroid, 2024 ON, as it made a close approach to Earth. On September 17, 2024, the asteroid passed about 620,000 miles from Earth, approximately 2.6 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. These images were captured by NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar near Barstow, California, just one day before its…
Вот как выглядит потенциально опасный астероид 2024 ON, что на днях пролетел рядом с Землёй
Лаборатория реактивного движения NASA опубликовала серию радарных изображений потенциально опасно... Читать дальше »
Asteroids and Triviality
Fortunately or unfortunately, an asteroid named "2024 ON" recently missed a collision with our planet. It was a 720 feet-diameter asteroid-more than twice the length of two cricket pitches, traveling at an astounding speed of 1,04,761 km/h.
Why should you care? An asteroid hits our planet, leaves a crater, done-and-dusted. The reality is more complex than that. To put things into perspective, a pebble-sized object traveling at that speed and hitting the ground could cause as much damage as a hand grenade. In 2013, a much larger meteor (about 17 meters in size) exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia. While much larger than a pebble, it caused damage to thousands of buildings and injured 1,500 people primarily from shattered windows.
To feed your curiosity more, let's address the elephant in the room, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Chicxulub Asteroid- the name sounds like the title of a banger club party. It was banger, just not in the context of a party. The asteroid is believed to have been about 10-15 kilometres in diameter and the impact was equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs. It left a 150 kilometres wide and 20 kilometres deep crater and vaporized a significant portion of the Earth's crust and sent molten rock flying into the atmosphere, creating glowing fragments that would have rained down across the planet causing global wildfires. It caused mega-tsunamis, thousands of meters high, earthquakes of magnitude 10-11 and a nuclear winter. Dust, ash and Sulphur were thrown into the atmosphere, effectively blocking sunlight, which caused a drop of 10-20 degrees Celsius in the earth's temperature which in turn halted photosynthesis- nuclear winter. 75% of all life was erased from the face of the earth following an asteroid impact- the 5th mass extinction event.
Can it happen again? The possibility of the event at this scale is very low because according to past data and the constant monitoring of near-earth objects (NEOs), astronomers claim that the likeliness of such an event is (cosmologically) rare. But impacts, significant enough to cause major extinction of species, including our own, are quite possible in the near future. While preventing an asteroid impact is somewhat within our technological progress, it will still require significant time and global cooperation to take shape.
If we somehow fail and most of humanity is wiped out with very little hope of restoring its past glory, all the debate about life's meaning and its purpose would end right there. The pompous race that once claimed to be the centre of the universe would burry under rock and sand. Every crime committed, every righteous move made, every war fought and every relationship built, in the anticipation that the sowed seeds will bear fruit someday, would reduce to a tale of a species among millions, on a planet among billions, that blossomed until it didn't.
Are we really that trivial? Our faith, our hope, our progress, our conflicts, do they really not matter?
What do you think?
