Can We Protect Ourselves From Asteroid Apocalypse Like Sci-fic?

'Asteroid' is a type of space rocks orbiting the Sun, which can be available in various sizes. Asteroids can be seen in the Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Mars which are remnants of ancient cosmos.

Recently, several asteroids have gravitated to Earth, which is, in fact, a common phenomenon. Along with numerous everlasting journeys circulating the Sun, plenty of these space rocks tend to cross different planets’ orbits that rotate around the Sun informed elliptical orbits.

For numerous times, scientists have speculated an asteroid collision, illustrating the excessive devastation that its theoretical impact could cause. In Stephen Hawking’s book called ‘Brief Answers to the Big Questions’, he discussed a collision made by an asteroid threatening the Earth. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an American astrophysicist, discussed a destructive tsunami that possibly made by an asteroid called 99942 Apophis. However, we don’t know whether these are only theories, or they are predicting the grave danger that can be caused by asteroids.

Lewis Dartnell, an Oxford scientist, has shared his opinion about Apophis ‘God of Chaos” story. In his speech, he implied that Apophis was an asteroid that was being tracked and in few more decades, it would continue its trail without impacting the living creatures on Earth. Astronomers are proactive in finding any asteroid that could threaten our planet. Until now, there has been no space rock that poses any major danger.

According to Neil De Grasse’s tweet on Twitter, things like asteroids, disease, climate change are not warning issues that lead to extinction. When coming to the general danger around asteroid accident on our planet, it is “society’s refusal to heed the warnings of scientists”.

That’s why it is paramount necessary to prepare defenses to protect the humankind from an asteroid accident. One non-profit association called B612 Foundation explained that an asteroid will definitely strike to the Earth. However, when it would arrive can’t be 100% certain. Elon Musk also joined his Apophis debacle, showing concerns on his official Twitter account about the current lack of space rock defenses.

Nevertheless, we can’t say that we don’t have any defense. NASA has some solutions to sleeve against these asteroids, for example, one called DART – Double Asteroid Redirection Test. It would defend planetarily, including a space probe which changes the orbit of an asteroid by utilizing the kinetic impactor technique.

In general, the asteroid defense is being advanced. In the future, the human is possibly ready to deal with the cataclysmic impact of an asteroid.