Elon Musk the CEO of SpaceX warned us all on Twitter that a big rock will hit earth eventually
and we currently have no defense after suggesting that we should bomb Mars to terraforming the
foreboding warning was in response to podcast host Joe Rogan who tweeted an article about
the asteroid Apophis from the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Express which warned of an
impending asteroid shock a sensationalized version of a harmless Cosmic event however
recently experts confirmed that a huge asteroid impact might really strike Earth in 2046 and so
in today's episode we investigate the worst case scenario what if a huge asteroid strikes Earth
and how probable it is hello everyone welcome back to Elon Musk Evolution where we bring
you the most recent news about Elon Musk and his multi-billion dollar companies space news and the
latest science and technology but before we begin make sure you subscribe to our Channel and click
the Bell icon so you don't miss any of our amazing videos according to a tweet from NASA on Tuesday
there is a newly discovered asteroid that will hit Earth in 2046. the asteroid which is about
the size of an Olympic swimming pool may arrive on Valentine's Day in 2046 if it does according
to NASA the asteroid will approach Earth at a distance of roughly 1.1 million miles however
scientists caution that more data may affect their projections as they continue to gather it
according to NASA there is a one in 560 probability that the asteroid designated
2023 DW May strike Earth the Torino impact hazard scale gives it a score of one making it the only
Space Rock on NASA's risk list the scale which ranges from 0 to 10 gauges the likelihood of
extraterrestrial objects crashing into Earth there is zero chance of impact for all other objects on
the scale which all rank zero according to the jet propulsion laboratory of NASA a ranking of
one indicates that an actual Collision is highly unlikely and is not a matter for public concern
David fernokia a JPL navigation engineer said in a report that this item is not particularly
alarming the asteroid that wiped out the Earth's dinosaurs 66 million years ago would not have the
same catastrophic effects as 2023 DW if it did strike with us according to Scientific American
that asteroid was Far larger measuring 7.5 miles broad however if 2023 DW were to collide with a
major city or a densely populated area it might potentially inflict serious harm about 1500 people
were hurt and 200 square kilometers of windows were blown out by a meteor explosion that occurred
over Chelyabinsk Russia 10 years ago the meteor was less than half the size of 2023 DW even though
it seems unlikely that we would make contact with an asteroid scientists have been preparing for
such an encounter for years in October of last year NASA announced that its double asteroid
redirection test mission had successfully diverted a minor asteroids course by ramming a spaceship
into it that mission which was a resounding success was flown precisely for that purpose
according to Mr farnokia but what if an asteroid hit Earth our planet being struck by an asteroid
is the stuff of Science Fiction Deep Impact Armageddon and Lucifer's Hammer are just a few of
the films and books that are based on the concept or trying to prevent one asteroid impacts on Earth
aren't just the stuff of Science Fiction they do happen on occasion the sole goal of the asteroid
watch and NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in California is to find and monitor asteroids and
comets that the organization believes will pass near to Earth asteroids haven't always
missed Earth over the years Earths and the moon's prominent craters serve as evidence that large
objects have struck the globe frequently over the years the asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years
ago is the most well-known one to have ever done so a crater of 93 miles in width and 19 miles in
depth was produced by the mountain-sized aster Droid off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico the
extinction of the dinosaurs is believed to have been brought about by the enormous tsunamis it
triggered and the water and dust it poured into the atmosphere which blocked out sunlight and
decreased global temperatures what if Earth today was hit by an asteroid there is a very slim chance
that an asteroid May strike NASA believes that none of the near-earth asteroids with a width
of at least 0.8 kilometers have a significant possibility of colliding with Earth NASA has
tracked 90 percent of these objects however NASA might be unaware of other larger asteroids that
are out there a mile wide asteroid traveling at 48 280 kilometers per hour would approach Earth's
surface at a speed of around 30 000 miles per hour the energy of an asteroid that size moving
at that speed is roughly equivalent to a bomb with a 1 million Megaton yield let's try some smaller
sizes since it's tough to visualize 1 million megatons let's imagine that an asteroid the size
of a house struck the planet at a speed feet of 30 000 miles per hour it might contain around 20
kilotons of energy which is comparable to the energy of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima a
similar asteroid would destroy Timber buildings possibly a mile and a half from the point of
impact and reinforced concrete buildings up to a half a mile from the point of impact in
other words it would severely harm any City the asteroid May possess the same amount of energy as
the strongest nuclear weapons now in existence or roughly 25 to 50 megatons if it were the size of a
20-story structure five miles or eight kilometers from the point of impact an asteroid of this size
would destroy structures made of reinforced concrete the majority of the country's largest
cities would be entirely destroyed it would take a large asteroid to destroy almost everything on
Earth according to scientists it would require an asteroid that was seven to eight miles wide
to collide with the earth once it collided it would produce a massive dust cloud that would
cover the entire planet obstruct the Sun and increase temperatures in the area of impact
a large portion of the planet's life would be annihilated and millions would perish however some
would survive according to scientists according to NASA scientists it would take an asteroid 60
miles broad to completely wipe out life on Earth the good news is that NASA's double asteroid
redirection test robotic spacecraft was launched into orbit in November 2021 with the sole purpose
of crashing into the tiny asteroid dimorphous at 4.1 miles per second to significantly alter the
asteroids orbit and it was a huge success Dart hit its objective on September 26 2022 but not just
that after several weeks of data analysis NASA determined that the impact successfully changed
dimorphoses orbit it was the first occasion in recorded history that people intentionally
alter the motion of a Celestial body it may have been considerably larger than previously thought
that the largest asteroid to ever strike Earth which blasted into the planet some 2 billion
years ago was researchers have now determined that the Epic impactor may have been about
twice as broad as the asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs based on the size of the Rita
Fort crater the Colossal impact Scar left by the gigantic Space Rock in what is now South Africa
the Rita Fort crater which is roughly 75 miles Southwest of Johannesburg currently has a diameter
of about 99 miles making it the largest visible crater on Earth it is smaller than the chicksalope
crater which is located beneath Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and has a diameter of around 112 miles
and was created when an asteroid that wiped off dinosaurs slammed Earth 66 million years ago at
the end of the Cretaceous Era however impact craters gradually lose volume as a result of
erosion over time the vredafort crater is believed to have been 250 to 280 kilometers wide when it
was first created two billion years ago according to the most current calculations because of this
even though it is smaller than the chicksalub crater now the Rita Fort crater is still regarded
as the largest impact crater on Earth the Rita Fort crater was previously believed to have been
significantly smaller measuring about 107 miles in width researchers previously estimated that the
asteroid that caused the impact would have been around 9.3 miles large and would have struck at a
speed of about 33 500 miles per hour based on that calculation however in a recent study researchers
reviewed the crater's data and discovered fresh information on the size of the massive Space
Rock researchers recalculated the size of the three to four asteroid in the study which was
published online on August 8 in the Journal of geophysical research planets they discovered that
the destructive Space Rock most likely measured between 12.4 and 15.5 miles across and may have
been traveling between 45 and 56 000 miles per hour when it struck our planet as the study's
lead author and a doctoral student at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University Department of physics
and astronomy Natalie Allen said in a statement understanding the largest impact structure that we
we have on Earth is critical because it enables scientists to create more precise geological
models more precise impact or size estimations may also provide information on other craters on Earth
and elsewhere in the solar system she continued the Rita Fort crater has eroded over the past two
billion years making it difficult for geologists to determine its actual size in the past
Roger Gibson a structural geologist at the University of wit watersrand in South Africa
who was not involved in the work explained to NASA's Earth observatory in 2018 how erosion
impacts ancient impact craters like Rita fort by imagining continuously slicing the rim off a bowl
the Bowl's diameter will get smaller as you cut off more slices if you slice through
it horizontally over time as demonstrated the radar Port impact structure has been naturally
eroded but additional rock formations have also appeared on top of some of the crater according
to the researchers because of this the crater's original structure is mostly totally obscured by
more recent materials and only a small portion of the high Rim is still visible today making
it even more difficult to estimate how huge the crater once was however by concentrating on the
minerals in the crater's immediate vicinity more recent investigations have assessed the size of
the Frida Fort crater by doing this researchers have discovered shock fractures and deformations
in crystals like quartz and Zircon that were brought on by the previous impact expanding the
known radius of the blast according to the study's authors the scientists are certain
that their revised estimation of the size of the vredefort asteroid is more accurate than earlier
estimations as a result a devastating effect the dinosaur-killing asteroid which was probably
roughly 7.5 miles broad when it struck Earth 66 million years ago left behind a massive amount
of wreckage the Cretaceous ending event produced mile-high waves in a tsunami that traveled halfway
across the Earth triggered widespread forest fires and acid rain and blasted plumes of Ash and dust
into the atmosphere dramatically changing the climate according to a study that was published
in the December 2021 publication of the journal scientific reports the event wiped out almost
75 percent of life on Earth according on the updated measurements of the original Vita Fort
craters Dimensions the new research infers that the Rita Ford asteroid was probably twice as big
as the dinosaur killing meteor the study's authors speculated that this event may have released the
most energy ever recorded on earth and that it may have been considerably more powerful because
it may have been moving much more quickly the hit occurred so long ago though that there isn't any
proof of the blast's force or the impact's impact on the planet Miki Nakajima a planetary scientist
at the University of Rochester in New York and study co-author said in a statement that unlike
the Chick-fil-A impact the vredafort impact did not leave a record of mass extinction or forest
fires because there were only single cell life forms and no trees in existence 2 billion years
ago however the impact may have had a greater impact on the climate than the Chick-fil-A impact
as a result more research in devrita Fort crater may be the only option to find out more about
this catastrophic Collision on the other hand lets NASA's Dart mission to destroy asteroids
the dart mission of NASA was created to test a kinetic impactor mechanism for deflecting
Asteroids for a planetary defense according to NASA Dart hit dimorphous a tiny asteroid in an
effort to slightly alter the orbital speed of the moonlit the ambitious Mission imitates what
NASA scientists would do if an asteroid were traveling toward Earth even though dimorphous
does not represent a threat to the planet the Collision happened at 7 14 Eastern on September
26 2022 at 10 20 PM the dart Mission began using a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle on November 23
2021 at local time Vandenberg space force base in California's space launch complex 4 was used the
Expedition serves as a good example of the intense level of international cooperation required for
such a challenging task even though the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics laboratory
manages the dart Mission scientists and Engineers from all across the world have teamed together to
participate according to Ellen Howell a senior research scientist at the University of Arizona
lunar and planetary laboratory and co-investigator for Dart we've worked really closely with our
European colleagues and colleagues all over the world although Dart is a test she noted that in
the event of a real impact a comparable level of international cooperation would be crucial even
though there isn't much of a risk from asteroid impacts we should be ready for it anyway to
demonstrate the disastrous impacts and impact can have on life on Earth we simply need to consider
previous impact events such as the enormous chicksolub asteroid impact that is thought to
have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago according to NASA scientists there is a small but
genuine chance that an asteroid would strike Earth catastrophically NASA frequently searches the sky
for new asteroids and has discovered around 40 percent of those that potentially threaten Earth
and are as wide as 500 feet the near-earth object surveyor is a brand new Space Telescope Sentinel
that NASA is creating expressly to for potentially dangerous asteroids in the solar system by 2026
that mission might get underway the initial phase of planetary defense involves early detection of
near-earth asteroids there are more than nineteen thousand newly detected near-earth asteroids as
of the beginning of 2019 according to NASA with about 30 new ones being discovered every week
Greek for twin didimos is a binary asteroid system that was the subject of Dart the system is made up
of a moonlit named dimorphous that is 525 feet across and a near-earth asteroid named didymus
that is 0.48 miles across at a speed of 4.1 miles per hour Dart purposefully collided with
the moonlit dimorphous that translated to an astounding 23 760 kilometers per hour the moon
lets orbital speed should have changed by a little percentage as a result of an impact traveling at
this speed this change should be sufficient to alter the moonlet's orbital period by several
minutes NASA claims that to determine whether the mission was successful telescopes on Earth watched
and measured the alteration in dimorphoses orbit around didimus dimorphoses approximately 12-hour
orbit was reduced by a startling 32 minutes thanks to Dart according to an official announcement
from NASA on October 11 2022 defying earlier predictions Nancy Shabbat a planetary scientist
from jhuapl discussed the mission plan with how it works magazine a sister publication of
space.com targeting a small asteroid in space at a fast rate of speed when that asteroid has
never been observed by a spacecraft before is one of the mission's key technological hurdles
according to shabbat we know from other asteroids that have been explored that they have a range of
shapes internal structures surface properties and strengths and these characteristics will influence
how much the asteroid dimorphous is deflected in its orbit around didymus the dart spacecraft was
basic 3.9 by 4.3 by 4.3 feet or around the size of a refrigerator was how big the main vehicle's box
form was according to jhuapl the length of each of the two substantial solar arrays when completely
extended was 27.9 feet didymus reconnaissance and asteroid camera for optical navigation Draco the
sole instrument on board the dart mission was used for all other functions it seems you don't need to
bring anything with you if your main objective is to crash into an asteroid the rollout solar
arrays of the dart spacecraft were deployed after it was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 to provide
it with electricity during the trip to didimus according to NASA Rosa arrays were examined by
scientists in June 2017 where they were stationed on the International Space Station and were found
to be capable of supplying the necessary power to support dart's electric propulsion system the
dart spacecraft also utilized the Next Generation fuel-efficient NASA evolutional Xenon Thruster
commercial solar electric propulsion system as part of its in-space propulsion in fact NASA has
connected larger versions of the Rosa arrays to the Space Station's power grid jhuapl claims that
Dart was directed to its Target dimorphous by highly developed autonomous navigation
software finding a Target that is 6 million miles from Earth and 525 feet in diameter is no small
task in order to send the dart spacecraft to the smaller body dimorphous the navigation software
was created to recognize and discriminate between didymus and dimorphous an onboard high resolution
camera called Draco assisted in guiding the dart Mission as it approached its Target and
took measurements of the asteroid including the size and shape of dimorphous based on the Lorry
camera from NASA's New Horizons Mission Draco was developed on September 26 at 7 14 PM Dart struck
dimorphous successfully in what the American space agency has dubbed the first planetary defense test
ever at the JHU APL Dart Mission Control Center as the spacecraft rushed towards its demise there
was a mixture of Serenity and suspense despite the on-target Collision Engineers didn't need
to test any of the 21 possible backup plans they had in case the crash didn't go as planned
because everything went according to plan the remaining four hours of dart's Journey were
largely automated and in the penultimate hour of its approach the spacecraft's navigation
system locked on to dimorphos as the spacecraft collided with the asteroid dart's main camera
continued to send images to Earth every second until the feed went dark stunning features of
didymus and dimorphous were captured in images taken by Dart during its closing moments never
previously had anyone seen the moonlit it was a bizarre New World an egg-shaped asteroid with a
rocky surface that was discovered by Dart and so are we prepared is Dart sufficient
to defend our planet let us know your thoughts in the comments section below please subscribe
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