Science
Despite the fact that only a lazy person is not talking about the end of the world, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration does not seem to believe in these conversations and So he's looking for… asteroids that threaten our planet with potential death. Take your time to draw conclusions about the absence of a causal relationship. On the contrary, the logic here is very ironic: once they identify asteroids that threaten the Earth in the distant future, it means that we are not in danger of anything in the near future.
It is reported that a few months ago, one of NASA's telescopes completed the most complete (ever carried out by earthlings) assessment of the number of asteroids potentially dangerous for our planet. The infrared space telescope called WISE, which means “wise” in English, has been “wise” for some time in Earth's orbit and not only counted the number of such asteroids, but also issued information about their origin, and also assessed the degree of danger to earthlings.
Asteroids that are closest to Earth's orbit — no more than eight million kilometers — are considered potentially dangerous. Such celestial bodies include a fairly large group of asteroids. Each of them is large enough to cause a lot of damage on a scale of nothing when flying in the immediate vicinity of the surface of our planet (and even more so crashing into it) a single region or even a continent, but on a global scale.
“An analysis of the data shows that we have made an excellent start in the process of finding objects that actually pose a threat of collision with Earth,” said Lindley Johnson, a specialist Near-Earth observation programs from NASA headquarters in Washington. — However, we still have many objects to discover, which will require concerted efforts over the next two decades. This will make it possible to find all objects that pose a real threat, including in the distant future.”
According to scientists, there are about 4,700 potentially dangerous asteroids with a diameter of more than one hundred meters. According to various estimates, NASA was able to locate and identify between 20 and 30 percent of these objects. “This NASA project, which was not originally planned as part of the WISE program, has already been of great benefit,” said Amy Minzer, one of the leading researchers at the California Laboratory jet engines.