History is doomed to repeat itself. Will we be ready?
Around 66 million years ago, an object estimated to be around 10km wide struck Earth at incredibly high speeds. The energy released was equivalent to roughly 100 million megatons of TNT. The impact, then, released over 6.5 billion times more energy than the catastrophically powerful nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima. An asteroid only 50 meters across exploded 10km above the Earths surface in Russia, 1908. The resulting Tunguska Event left over 800 square miles of forest flattened and windows hundreds of miles away shattered. This small asteroid, exploding far before it reached Earth’s surface, released nearly double the amount of energy as the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated.
Obviously, these sort of incidents are quite rare. But, as a consequence of humanity being a single-planet species, one large enough object could truly erase our entire existence. Thus scientists have been looking into ways to redirect or destroy in-coming threats before they reach us. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test is one such example — the fact that, today, these kinds of things are within our capability is truly astounding. These projects may seem high effort and low benefit, but let’s be clear: when they save the day, there will be no doubt they were worth every penny.
