Outer space is pretty nuts. Its unimaginable vastness combined with how little we know about its reaches has made space a point of fascination for millennia. Only recently has our species found the means to explore our nearby planetary neighborhood, beginning in 1957 with the launch of the Russian Sputnik 1 — a name and shape reminiscent of a potato. Countless satellites and other mediums of space exploration have been shot into the sky since then, so much so that their orbiting debris is becoming a problem. We trashed our planet and now we trash space too! Humans are so cool.
Anyway, for all the junk we launch past our atmosphere, outer space fires back. Scientists estimate that 25 million space rocks, mostly classified as meteoroids or micrometeoroids, enter Earth’s atmosphere every day, although very few of these reach the surface. The nomenclature for these rocks is important and I will try to explain them, but I am very much not a scientist so bear with me here.
Asteroids are large space rocks or minor planets. They mostly reside in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, although they can sometimes veer off course and destroy all the dinosaurs. A meteoroid is a smaller space rock in orbit, but once a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere, it is called a meteor. Meteors burn in the atmosphere, making a streak that we have aptly named a shooting star. Most meteors are completely burned up in their descent, but if a piece of them survives the journey and collides with Earth, they are called meteorites. It’s kind of like an evolution of a Pokemon: basic, stage 1 and stage 2; meteoroid, meteor, meteorite. Comets are similar to asteroids but have their own atmosphere and are also icy, burning up and releasing a tail if they orbit too close to a sun. To anyone who actually knows about comets, please let me know if I’m totally wrong. pday1@conncoll.edu is my email.
A collision of an asteroid or large meteorite with Earth would have disastrous consequences for its inhabitants. Ask your boy the T. rex. Or look up the Tunguska Event on Wikipedia. This event occurred in 1908 in Siberia and is pretty telling of what happens when space rocks get too close. A meteor burst over the Siberian tundra, flattening trees in an 830 square mile radius and releasing 1,000 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There were no recorded casualties because this happened in the most sparsely populated region of the world, but if it occurred anywhere else it would have been the tragedy of the century. The craziest part: the meteor did not even collide with the Siberian surface, dissolving 3-6 miles in the air.
What would happen if this event occurred again in a more populated area of the world? Depending on the size of the asteroid, the result could be anywhere from nuclear-bomb sized destruction to complete apocalypse. And the best part is that there really isn’t anything we can do about it. NASA has said it would need five years in advance to create some sort of asteroid interceptor, which may or may not work and we probably wouldn’t get five years notice of an asteroid headed toward Earth. Asteroids don’t really care about stuff like that. Stephen Hawking noted on Asteroid Day 2016 (June 30 this year if you want to start preparing to celebrate), that “One of the major threats to intelligent life in our universe is a high probability of an asteroid colliding with an inhabited planet.” Stephen Hawking was really smart. People who are not as smart, like you and me, should listen to his words.
Our planet is dying, and no one really cares. Climate change experts insist environmental disaster is imminent, logically followed by societal collapse and mass extinction. Regardless, we condone our polluting, destructive society and gleefully careen towards a human-engineered planetary meltdown. Environmental collapse due to climate change would take a few years, but an asteroid impact would be felt immediately.
Which fate is worse? One that we as a species predicted, propagated and did nothing about, or one that we are powerless to prevent? Should we be put out of our misery? Next time you see a shooting star, you should wish for our society to be saved. If you’re lucky, the shooting star may grant your wish.
