What are odds an asteroid will level a major city? Higher than you might think, say researchers.
April 26, 2014
The chances of an asteroid hitting the Earth and causing significant damage are much higher than what was previously estimated.
According to new data released by the B612 Foundation, a non-profit group that aims to launch its Sentinel Space Telescope in 2018 in order to map locations and paths of dangerous asteroids, between 2000 and 2013 some 26 explosions on Earth ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons were caused by asteroids.
“We can expect a multi-megaton asteroid impact (large enough to destroy a major city should it hit one) about every hundred years,” according to the Foundation’s website. “These impacts were heard using large listening stations that pick up the low frequency infrasound pulse from the explosions.” Peter Brown, a planetary scientist at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, provided data for the video.
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