Scientists say killer asteroids pose terrifying threat

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LONDON: An array of the world’s most important specialists in astrophysics desire every person to stop worrying about what’s happening on Earth.
We’ve seen it play out in Hollywood before: A killer asteroid is hurtling toward our precious planet while NASA scrambles to find a way to stop the celestial beast in its tracks.
But an international group of astronauts and scientists, led by British royal astronomer Lord Rees, have joined forces to go on the hunt for the precarious projectiles, warning the public that the possibility of a deadly strike is actually a terrifying reality, the Financial Times reports.
“NASA has done a very good job of finding the very largest objects, the ones that would destroy the human race,” said Ed Lu, an astronaut who flew three trips to the International Space Station. “It’s the ones that would destroy a city or hit the economy for a couple of hundred years that are the problem.”
For the past 50 years, academic projects have been created to track down killer asteroids and meteors around the solar system. The efforts were increased in 1998 when NASA was given 10 years to identify near-Earth objects of a size that could lead to the extinction of the human race, according to the Financial Times.
But as time passed, astrophysicists soon established that rocks as small as 164 feet across would still be big enough to cause devastating results on Earth. The need to find such threats sparked the creation of the group’s campaign this week, which ultimately urges officials to do something before it’s too late.
“The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it becomes that the human race has been living on borrowed time,” said Brian May, guitarist for Queen and renowned astrophysicist.
The Rock and Roll hall of famer dropped out of school to become a musician before returning to complete his doctorate at the University of London’s Imperial College in 2007, the Financial Times reports.
“The campaign launched this week is intended to raise awareness and put pressure on governments to act,” May added.
In 2013, an undetected meteor estimated to be around 65 feet in diameter was filmed entering Earth’s atmosphere over Russia before incinerating several miles above the surface. The intense shock wave from the blast injured 1,500 people.