21 Jul
Suppose you woke up you are seeing asteroids falling from the sky and burning, destruction due to it can be seen easily, and trees are burning, people are shouting and running here and there to save their life. You must be thinking I am telling the story of any Hollywood movie.
7 A.M. 30 June 1908 IST, Tunguska, Siberia USSR
An explosion occurred in Pondakmennaya, Tunguska River.
The explosion was approximately 12 megatons and was equal to the explosion of a 1000 atomic bomb that had been blasted in Japan in 1945 during the second world war.
An asteroid of approximately 50-60 meters entered into Earth’s atmosphere, falling at a relative speed of 27km/s. The asteroid burnt at an altitude of 5-6 kilometers. An explosion occured due to a meteor airburst explosion, that was powerful enough to vibrate the half area of Asia continent. The Tunguska event is the largest event on Earth in recorded history, though much larger impacts occurred in prehistoric times.
Due to the explosion area of more than half of the Asia continent felt turbulence in the form of a light earthquake of 5.0 magnitude. This vibration was felt in Europe too, it covered
The explosion destroyed forest of 80 million trees (200 square km area) and the affected area was equal to the area of Delhi.
Eurasia, Germany, UK, and even Washington D.C. felt the air flair/waves.
Since the explosion was in forest area so it was a huge loss of biodiversity and trees. It was a dual loss to the environment, on one hand, 8 million trees were burnt while on the other hand, carbon emission was very high due to burning of the trees.
Mesozoic era, when dinosaurs lived on the earth. This era of dinosaurs came to an end after the continuous fall of meteors and meteoroids and human life and evolution could be started on the earth.
Levy-9 hit Jupiter in 1994, it was a giant comet, and it left visible scars that lingered for more than a month in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere
It left water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter which is still present.
This event was the first time observation of an extraterrestrial collision in our solar system.
Ceres is the biggest asteroid in our solar system while Efosis (335mtr.) is the most dangerous asteroid for Earth since it is moving near the Earth’s orbit.
Nearly ten thousand earth cross have been identified till now and 1400 out of these are dangerous for the earth.
HOW TO TACKLE WITH ASTEROIDS
Dec 2014, an organization of 50 countries signed a declaration named 100x declaration, the declaration was about finding the solution of asteroid strike on Earth and how can we nutralize it.
Under the declaration, 30th June was declared as World Asteroid Day to spread awareness about asteroids, vulnerability of Earth and to prevent disaster due to it.
NASA tested its DART Mission (double asteroid redirection test) on IDL 27 Sep 2022.
It was the first mission in itself which worked on changing the asteroid’s motion and direction in space through kinetic impact.
The mission was tested by changing the direction of Dimorphos, a small asteroid of 160m in diameter. The mission was successful in turning the direction of the asteroid.
But the whole world needs to come together and work unitedly on it to prevent meteor blasts or meteorite collisions in the future.