Asteroids A Planet Killer Essay, Research Paper

The universe is a shooting gallery and earth is the bullseye. The earth is always under threat of a doomesday asteroid that will wipe out civilization. There are over one thousand asteroids traveling toward earth and only three quarters are accounted for. Where are the other one forth? No one knows because the government doesn’t fund NASA astrologists enough to cover the astroids. Just one impact could end civilization as we know it. No matter where it hits everything would die, even bacteria. To give an estimate how much is spent on asteroid detection. It is said to be less than the cost to operate a single McDonald’s franchise.

Total disaster would occur no matter where the asteroid hit. Land, sea it doesn’t matter. Ocean impact would create a number of things. First, a Tsunami(tidal wave) would be created on impact. The wave would be hundreds for feet high traveling hundreds of miles per hour. It would start to slow down crashing ashore through all coastal city. Then, finally wash up hundreds for miles inland. ” The mid-Atlantic Ocean impact ranging from 400 meters to 5 kilometers in diameter. This would generate a tsunami that would sweep across the upper East Coast of the United States to the Appalachian Mountains.”(Gottschalk 1) The blast of the impact would equal a 300 gigaton blast of T.N.T. Also, 2.4 seconds after impact, a small fireball with a temperature of 5000′C would sweep across long island. A land fall strike would cause total divistation. The asteroid would create a earth trembling impact causing earth quakes around the world. The binding flash will show impact and the crater would be twenty miles across. Then, a blanket of dust and debris would blanket the earth and block the sun’s light. This would occur for hundreds of years and the climate would be disrupted. Global killer no matter where it hits.

The end of the world is only 28 years, 10 months, 19 days, 1 hour, 45 minutes, and 39 seconds away. An asteroid named XF11 is on route to hit earth directly. October is the month and 2038 is the year. Discovered by Jim Scotti on December 6, 1997 while looking at star with the Arizona Spacewatch Group. The asteroid “is predicted to pass at a rather comfortable distance of about 600,000 miles (about 960,000 kilometers) in 2028,”

“reported Dr. Donald K. Yeomans and Dr. Paul W. Chodas.” (http://www.voicenet.com/~phycoid/XF11/1997XF11.html 1) Tim Scotti disagrees saying is a matter of cover-up for national security. Spectulations go both ways, some say it’s gonna hit others disagree.

The last lines of defense are either blowing it up or using nuclear power. The solutions are to either destroy the asteroid or bounce it into another orbit. Nuclear weapons being the first and only line of defense. Even though nuclear weapons are forbiden in space by the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Exeptions hopefully will be made. The bomb that will be used is called the Neutron Bomb. It would create “standoff bursts” that would change the velocity and the orbit of the asteroid.