The Galileo spacecraft captured this view of asteroid 951 Gaspra in 1991. Its dimensions (about 19 by 12 by 11 kilometers) make it only slightly larger than the kind of asteroid that could wipe out civilization. // Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arecibo Observatory/USRA/NSF
In the wake of the announcement of Asteroid Day, I found myself seeing all manner of debates online, between astronomy enthusiasts, about the realities of danger from asteroids impacting Earth. The opinions were all over the map.
And so I began a several-weeks-long project of writing a detailed story about the realities of asteroid impacts, past and future. I consulted the work of Paul Chodas, Don Yeomans, Mark Boslough, Alan Harris, Rusty Schweickart, Hal Levison, Luke Dones, and other top-flight asteroid and planetary defense experts.
I then meticulously checked with a number of planetary scientists, including Boslough, Harris, Schweickart, Levison, and Dones, and incorporated their thoughts into a final, detailed story.
You can now read this investigative story, “
Why the asteroid threat should be taken seriously.”
I hope you will enjoy it.
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