Queen guitarist Brian May has warned that our obliteration is inevitable unless we take the threat of asteroid impacts seriously. May, who has PHD in astrophysics, called for a global effort to ensure a 100-fold increase in the detection and monitoring of asteroids.

His concerns have been echoed by royal astronomer Martin Rees and a group of more than 100 prominent physicists, artists and business leaders including Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox and Peter Gabriel.

The group have co-signed a declaration demanding increased use of technology to detect and track near-Earth asteroids and better discovery and tracking of new asteroid threats. An asteroid big enough to destroy an entire city is likely to hit Earth once every 100 years, it has been estimated.

Referencing the asteroid explosion in Tunguska, Russia in 1908, May said it would only take one big impact to wipe us all out: “We are currently aware of less than one percent of objects comparable to the one that impacted at Tunguska, and nobody knows when the next big one will hit.”

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