According to NASA’s Asteroid Fast
Facts page, a lot of space material lands on Earth every year. From the NASA
page:
“Every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons of
dust and sand-sized particles.
“About once a year, an automobile-sized asteroid hits
Earth's atmosphere, creates an impressive fireball and burns up before
reaching the surface.
Every 2,000 years or so, a meteoroid the size of a football
field hits Earth and causes significant damage to the area.”
Image Credit NASA
When is the next one coming? No one knows. But NASA and
other organizations worldwide constantly watch out for possible impactors from
space. Even so, some escape discovery until they hit. In 2013, a small
asteroid, about the size of a six-story building, entered our atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russian.
It exploded with a blast more powerful than the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The
blast shattered glass in buildings all over the city and caused injuries to
more than 1,200 people. It was so bright that scientists estimate it briefly
outshone the sun. We had no warning of this event. No one saw it coming.
Many telescopes automatically search the night sky for
incoming asteroids, for one with Earth in its sights. But scientists need your
help finding them. You may be the one to spot the next one that threatens
Earth.
Image Credit NASA
An organization called Zooniverse (https://www.zooniverse.org/projects) currently has 108
projects where anyone, even you, can help scientists make new discoveries. I
have written about Zooniverse before, but they have added quite a few new
projects since then and more are added every year. You can find them at www.zooniverse.org.
The project to help find potentially dangerous asteroid is at
www.zooniverse.org/projects/sandorkruk/hubble-asteroid-hunter. As with
all the Zooniverse projects, you get a brief tutorial on what to look for and
how to identify a target. Then you are presented with a series of photos. Using
what you learned in the tutorial, you identify potential asteroid targets. Once
identified, the project scientists analyze the photo to calculate the
asteroid’s path to determine if Earth is in the way.
If
saving the Earth from asteroid impacts isn’t your cup of tea, look through all
of their projects. It’s likely one or several of the others will pique your
interest.
Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for
the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my
blog page.
This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and https://oklahoman.com/.
