The Asteroids Galaxy Tour: Asteroids are rocky and metallic objects that orbit the Sun but are too small to be considered planets. They are known as minor planets. Asteroids range in size from Ceres, which has a diameter of about 1000 km down to the size of pebbles. They are found within a main belt that exists between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Some have orbits that cross Earth’s path and some have even hit the Earth in times past. Asteroids are mostly left over material from billions of years ago when our solar system was first forming. Asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth are called meteoroids. The visible path of a meteoroid enters the earth and is called a shooting star or a falling star. They just never got large enough to form into spherical planets. Meteoroids are the same stuff, with some of them broken Asteroids are made of small pieces of rock and metal running into each other. When a meteoroid strikes our atmosphere at high velocity, friction causes the chunk of space matter to incinerate in a streak of light known as a meteor.
Let’s look back at the time line and have look at what has happened in the asteroid galaxy in the past years:
- A 10-kilometer asteroid strikes north of the Yucatan Peninsula, causes a global firestorm. This was one of the major causes which lead to global warming. This also lead to the wipe out of dinosaurs.
- 3.3 million years ago — An impact in Argentina which lead to a global cooling trend.
- 1490 — About 10,000 people die in the Chinese city when an asteroid hit the earth.
- 1908 — An asteroid estimated at 50 meters across explodes above Siberia blowing down trees across 2,000 km.
- In 2000 an asteroids was predicted to hit the earth by a scientist. This could cause considerable loss to life and property. A particular concern was tsunamis. When an asteroid hits the ocean which covers about 70 percent of the planet it can trigger a tsunami.
- A hurtling asteroid about the size of the Titanic caused the scar that appeared in Jupiter’s atmosphere on July 19, 2009. An asteroid passed close by Earth on 18th march 2011. it did not hit the earth’s surface since it was too small to survive the trip through the planet’s atmosphere.
Here is an interesting video which explains how it would impact Earth when Asteroids hits:
Asteroids are a major threat to our mother earth. Solar radiation may increase very high because of the ozone layer damages due to asteroids hitting the earth. It may cause lot of damage to lives and property. Therefore need to be tackled in the best possible way. The total responsibility is on scientists, they should come up with the protection plan adopt the goal of altering the orbit of an asteroids which are coming towards the earth.
Why not share your thoughts/opinions on this “Asteroids Galaxy Tour”?