The risk of giant asteroids hitting Earth could be worse than we thought

Our planet hide your scars well. But this feature makes things a little more difficult for us, as evidence of asteroid impacts could help us better plan for the next catastrophic impact.

In fact, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Chief Scientist James Garvin believes Frwe may have misinterpreted the tracks of some of the most severe asteroid impacts in the last few million years.

If you’re right, the odds of being hit by something bad may be higher than estimated current.

The most famous of all meteor impacts, the one that killed the dinosaurs and it tore a hole in the crust of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula some 66 million years ago, is notable for the devastation of life on Earth.

It was a giant 10 kilometers wide that struck our planet with a huge force equivalent to 10 billion atomic bombs Like Hiroshima.

However, much smaller impacts can still kick up enough dust to dull the planet and potentially clead to years of famine.

By some estimates, kilometer-wide asteroids fall to the Earth’s surface in a blast of heat and dust. on average every 600,000 yearsmore or less.

There is no calendar for this type of event.obviously, and the estimates are only as good as the data we use to make our predictions.

even if we can scan the skies for traces of rocks Big enough to potentially put us in a world of pain, the geological record is like a telegraph tape of actual meteor impacts stretching back in time.

But this record becomes harder to read the further back we go, all thanks to the Earth’s dynamic winds, water and tectonics constantly wearing away at its surface. Even the most recent events can be difficult to interpret due to the accumulation of dust and biology.

Garvin and his team used a new catalog of high-resolution satellite images to take a closer look at the eroded remains of some of the largest impact craters formed in the last million years, in an attempt to better measure their true size.

The results of that research, which were presented at this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas, demonstrate that many of these craters have faint rings beyond what would normally be considered their outer edges, making them larger than previously thought.

For example, a depression about 12 to 14 kilometers wide in Kazakhstan called Zhaminshin is believed to have been created by a meteorite with a diameter of 200 to 400 meters that struck the Earth about 90,000 years ago: the most recent impact could cause a typical event ‘nuclear winter’.

However, based on the new analysis, this already major event could have been even more catastrophic by walking away a crater that is actually more than 30 kilometers in diameter.

The rim diameters of three other large craters were also recalculated, all doubled or tripled. The implications are profound, suggesting that kilometer-sized objects they descend from above every ten thousand years.

However, the possibility remains that these newly discovered rings could not necessarily be shock waves.

It is possible that this is debris ejected from the shot it rained again in a concentrated pattern. Or they may not be significant at all, just a ghost in the data.

Garvin isn’t convinced the debris fields are still clear after so many years of wear and tear. However, science does not move on the basis of a single observation.

It is a hypothesis worthy of debate. While we’re busy installing systems to try and avoid the sting of a major asteroid collisionYes, there’s a good chance that Earth’s path will be clear for some time.

One thing our planet doesn’t need is more scars to hide.

Source: Scientific Advisory