Asteroids threaten the earth. Russian scientists warned of the threat of a collision between the earth and an asteroid. What does a “dangerous” asteroid mean?
Scared, nasty
On the morning of September 2, 2016, several dozen RuNet news resources for some reason sounded the alarm: a huge asteroid 2016 QA2, the older brother of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, was supposedly flying towards us. Soon it will fall and bring untold misfortune and destruction.
Here is a typical quote from one of the news sites: “As experts say, this asteroid is very dangerous, because it is quite capable of triggering extremely serious relationship at the place where it fell. That is why all those people who may be in the expected zone of the object’s fall are in danger.”
In fact, no experts have stated anything like this. At least regarding 2016 QA2. There is only one truth in all the alarming messages: as confirmed a few days ago, asteroid 2016 QA2 really exists.
But the asteroid has already flown past the Earth. Flew by almost a week ago - August 28, 2016. So you can relax. The media are now making noise after the block moving away from the Earth.
Another thing is worse: the asteroid was discovered very late - several hours before its dangerous approach to our planet. That is, astronomers essentially missed it. What if the asteroid was still aiming for the Earth? Many would not even have time to evacuate. Not to mention defending yourself by knocking down a block with a rocket, as they plan to do in the near future.
Better late than never
The first to discover 2016 QA2 were Brazilians from the Southern Observatory for Near Earth Asteroids Research (SONEAR Observatory), which is precisely aimed at searching for asteroids and large meteorites approaching the Earth. We saw the block on August 27, 2016.
According to preliminary data, the diameter of the 2016 QA2 is from 40 to 50 meters. The asteroid has no family relations with the Chelyabinsk meteorite. It's just close in size - about three times larger.
On August 28, 2016, asteroid 2016 QA2 flew approximately 77 thousand kilometers from Earth. By cosmic standards, this is close - five times closer than from us to the Moon. In a word, he scared me. And it continues to frighten thanks to ill-timed news providers. Lights out!
Not for the first time
In 2011, astronomers missed the asteroid 2011 MD - a block measuring 20 meters in size. Noticed 5 days before approach. It’s good that it didn’t crash into us, but it passed very close - at a distance of 12 thousand kilometers.
In 2008, a small asteroid was spotted in just 24 hours and ended up exploding over Sudan.
And no one noticed the 17-meter Chelyabinsk meteorite until it exploded.
AND AT THIS TIME
Asteroids are not scary for Russia
Back in 2007, British scientist Nick Bailey from the University of Southampton calculated the damage from the fall of relatively small asteroids - tens and hundreds of meters long. And identified the most vulnerable countries. Nick is one of the authors of the mathematical software for the NEOimpactor program, which allows similar calculations to be made using data on near-Earth objects collected by NASA.
So, the computer came up with a dozen countries where the destruction and casualties would be horrific. Perhaps such that these countries will not recover at all.
The worst will happen to China, Indonesia, India, Japan and the USA. This is followed by the Philippines, Italy, Great Britain, Brazil and Nigeria.
Russia, fortunately, is not included in the “killer top 10”. Obviously, due to its vastness, backwardness and sparse population of certain regions. In some places, in terms of development, nothing has changed since the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in 1908. Fell so what? Didn't even destroy anything. Didn't kill anyone. Although it became a global event.
Of course, if a block with a diameter of 10 kilometers crashes into the Earth, similar to the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago... Or even larger... Then, no matter what country it hits, the end will come for everyone. But such cataclysms, according to scientists, happen no more than once every 100 million years.
Time, of course, makes adjustments to any calculations. The fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite on Russia in 2013 showed that our country cannot be considered completely invulnerable - in the sense of attacks from space. On the other hand, there were no casualties, and there was no great destruction.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN
Astronomers promise: in September, 6 blocks will fly near the Earth - from among those, of course, discovered.
September 7: 2004 DQ41 is a giant asteroid with a diameter of a kilometer, the distance to Earth will be 38.9 Earth-Moon Distances (LD)
Nothing threatening. Unless, of course, some secretive asteroid, like the current 2016 QA2, suddenly jumps right next to the Earth.
Flight trajectory of the "terrible asteroid 2016 QA2". The celestial body, discovered catastrophically late, almost hit the Earth.
Asteroid Apophis may fall to Earth in 2068, and in 2029 it will pass at a distance ten times closer to the planet than the distance from the Earth to the Moon, according to the Department of Celestial Mechanics of St. Petersburg State University. They prepared a corresponding report for the Moscow Royal Readings on Cosmonautics, quotes from it are given RIA News" .
“A unique feature of this asteroid is its precisely determined close approach to the Earth on April 13, 2029, at a distance of 38 thousand kilometers (the Moon is 384 thousand kilometers away from the Earth). This convergence causes a significant scattering of possible trajectories, among them there are trajectories containing a convergence in 2051.
The corresponding resonant returns contain many (about hundreds) possible collisions of Apophis with the Earth today, the most dangerous - in 2068,”
- says the abstract of the report, which will be announced at the readings at the end of January.
Before a possible collision with Earth in 2068, the asteroid will approach our planet by 16 million kilometers in 2044, by 760 thousand kilometers in 2051, and by 5 million kilometers in 2060.
The Apophis asteroid was discovered in 2004 by specialists at the Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona. Its diameter is about 325 m, the asteroid reflects only 23% of the light incident on its surface.
According to researchers, the TNT equivalent of an explosion when an asteroid falls on Earth would be 506 megatons. For comparison, the energy release during the fall of the Tunguska meteorite is estimated at 10-40 Mt, the energy of the explosion of the Tsar Bomb is 57-58.6 Mt, the explosion of the Krakatau volcano in 1883 was equivalent to approximately 200 Mt.
The effect of the explosion could vary depending on the asteroid's composition and the location and angle of impact. In any case, the explosion would cause massive destruction over an area of thousands of square kilometers, but would not create long-term global effects like an “asteroid winter.”
If it fell into the seas or large lakes, such as Ontario, Michigan, Baikal or Ladoga, there would not be a devastating tsunami.
All settlements, located at a distance of 3-300 km, depending on the topography of the impact area, would have been completely destroyed.
He noted that at the moment, instead of civil defense, a life safety course is being taught.
“We can say in the resolution that we need to contact the Ministry of Education to jointly discuss the issue of minimizing damage from space threats,” Sergeev said.
American scientists from Sandia National Laboratory warn of an asteroid approaching Earth. The trajectory along which the celestial body passes does not allow us to name the place of its “landing”. However, scientists have decided on a date - the explosion could happen on September 4.
A new celestial body passes at a dangerous distance from the Earth. Astronomers have spotted asteroid 2016 QA2, which could collide with the planet at any moment. The estimated date of the asteroid's fall was September 4, but the location could not be determined. The consequences could be much more serious than 3 years ago - the current asteroid is 50 meters larger than the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
- The asteroid 2016 QA2 approaching the planet is much larger than the one that was later named Chelyabinsk. The diameter of the celestial body we discovered exceeds five tens of meters, that is, even if it ruptures in upper layers dense gas shell of the Earth - the consequences will be catastrophic. And if the asteroid reaches the earth’s surface, then a real cataclysm cannot be avoided at all, - The news portal Planet Today reports an appeal from experts at the Sandia National Laboratory.
American physicist Mark Boslow says that such celestial bodies threaten the planet about once every half century. The repetition of the “Chelyabinsk” story after just 3 years surprises astronomers all over the world.
Let us remind you that on February 15, 2013 in the territory Chelyabinsk region The meteorite "exploded". He fell straight into Lake Chebarkul. More than 1,600 people suffered from the consequences.
Photo:chto-proishodit.ru
The team of Russian scientific institutes and centers recognized it as safe and effective way destroying an asteroid threatening the Earth by launching a nuclear device towards it. As stated in an article published by scientists in the Astronomical Journal published by the Russian Academy of Sciences (N9, Volume 96), detonation of a nuclear charger (NCD) is the most radical way to counter such dangerous celestial bodies as an asteroid, but also effective.
“Calculations have shown that this method is effective and practically safe if certain conditions are met,” the article says. Scientists propose destroying the asteroid during its approach to the Earth, preceding the orbit when the asteroid will directly fall on the planet. “This is real, since almost all dangerous asteroids appear several times in near-Earth space before falling on Earth,” the article reports.
The proposed method of eliminating the cosmic threat is an extreme option when other ways to stop the danger are impossible. For example, options are possible for gently moving the astroid away from a dangerous trajectory when there is a spacecraft nearby at a long distance, which, due to gravity, deflects the dangerous celestial body. “Soft removal from the collision orbit may be required many times, but the destruction of the object occurs once,” the scientists conclude.
But the study notes that detonating an asteroid shortly before falling to Earth (as was the case in the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster Armageddon) is absolutely unacceptable, since in this case a huge amount of highly radioactive fragments will fall on our planet. If a celestial body is detonated almost immediately after approaching the Earth, some of the radioactive fragments may also fall to the Earth, but not immediately. This will happen only in a few years, and during this time their radioactivity will decrease from catastrophic levels to simply dangerous.
In the work, funded by the Russian Science Foundation, scientists from Tomsk State University, the Sirius Research and Testing Center, the Institute of Applied Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Applied Mathematics named after. Keldysh and the Kurchatov Institute Research Center calculated the geometry of asteroid explosions, the balance of energy and momentum, and the distribution of velocities in the case of complete and partial destruction of an asteroid.
Let us recall that in Europe at the beginning of 2010, a group of specialists to protect the Earth from asteroids NEOShield (Near Earth Objects Shield) was created. The NEOShield program is coordinated by the German Aerospace Center. The project includes organizations from Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, the USA and Russia. As part of this project, Russian scientists have developed a system for deflecting asteroids that threaten the Earth using nuclear explosions in space.
As of October 2018, about 19 thousand asteroids were discovered in space that could approach the Earth’s orbit. For each known object, the orbit and collision probability are calculated more than 100 years in the future. Thus, astronomers know almost all large near-Earth asteroids larger than 1 kilometer in size that can cause a global catastrophe on Earth. Much less astronomers know about asteroids smaller than one kilometer in size due to large quantity such cosmic bodies. Of the near-Earth asteroids with a size of 100 meters or more, scientists know no more than 10%, and with a size of 20-30 meters - about 1-2%.
It is proposed to use the “obsolete” “Satan” to protect Russia from asteroids
To destroy asteroids in Russia they plan to use expired RS-20V (R-36M2) missiles and Voevoda (Satan) ICBMs, which the army is replacing with the latest heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) Sarmat.
As Anatoly Zaitsev, general director of the Center for Planetary Defense, said this summer, they want to create a rapid response echelon of the international Citadel Planetary Defense System from RS-20V (R-36M2) intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“Since the total number of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) larger than 15-20 meters in size (such as the Chelyabinsk asteroid) is several million, at the current rate of detection of about 2 thousand per year, it will take millennia to detect them all,” the head noted center.
According to him, astronomers do not see a threat from 20 thousand asteroids approaching the Earth, the orbits of which have been calculated. But after “cosmic billiards” (collisions with other celestial bodies), “a non-dangerous object can become dangerous at any moment.”
To protect the Earth from this threat, the general director of the Center for Planetary Defense proposed creating a rapid response echelon of the international Citadel Planetary Defense System, which “will ensure guaranteed detection of NEAs moving even from the direction of the Sun, at least several days before colliding with the Earth.” And when the asteroid is discovered, then with the help of rocket, space and nuclear means of the echelon interception service, it will be possible to deflect this dangerous object or destroy it.
According to Zaitsev, creating a rapid response echelon for the international Citadel Planetary Defense System will cost about $5-10 billion. However, this is a reasonable price for avoiding a global catastrophe that an asteroid can cause on Earth. Over the past 600 million years, there have been about 60 collisions with celestial bodies with a diameter of more than 5 km, which led to global cataclysms.
On October 31, 2015, on Halloween, a 600-meter asteroid called Halloween passed by at a distance slightly greater than the distance to the Moon. It was discovered 20 days before approaching the Earth. Then the Center for Planetary Protection, together with the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation, simulated the consequences of an impact from such an asteroid using a special software package.
If that 600-meter asteroid collided with the Earth, the energy of its impact would correspond to the explosion of 50 thousand megatons of trinitrotoluene. This is approximately three times the power of all nuclear weapons ever created by humanity.
The diameter of the resulting crater would be about 10 km, and its depth - 3 km. The size of the destruction zone from the shock wave and seismic vibrations would be approximately 800 km. The number of human victims could reach tens of millions if this fall was unexpected, as in the case of the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
How the anti-asteroid echelon "Citadel" will work
The Citadel planetary defense system should include two echelons: short-term and long-term response, as well as two reserve services - a service for forecasting areas and the consequences of falls of celestial bodies and a regional protection service.
The short-term (operational) response echelon "Citadel-1" is designed to protect against objects up to hundreds of meters in size, such as Chelyabinsk or Halloween.
99.9% of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) have this size. The echelon should include an international ground-space surveillance service and two regional segments of the reconnaissance and interception service - “East” and “West”, in the corresponding hemispheres of the Earth.
Echelon will work in the following way: after detecting a dangerous celestial body, the entire arsenal of ground and space means should be involved in its observation, including the launch of reconnaissance spacecraft (SC).
Based on the information received, a decision will be made to launch spacecraft interceptors to deflect or, in extreme cases, destroy a dangerous celestial body (CBO). A similar scheme was worked out 30 years ago, during the expedition to Halley’s comet. At that time, the Soviet spacecraft Vega-1 and Vega-2 served as reconnaissance aircraft. Then, according to their target designation, the Western European spacecraft "Giotto" passed at a given distance from the comet's nucleus.
Protection against cometary nuclei and asteroids many kilometers in size will be carried out by means of the Long-Term Response Echelon. Their interception will be carried out many months and even years before a possible collision with the Earth. This will require the use of super-powerful launch vehicles, power plants and other means that have yet to be created.
If we talk about auxiliary services that are intended to insure the main assets of the System, then the Service for Forecasting Areas and the Consequences of Falls of Celestial Bodies must develop options for evacuation and other rescue measures. One of the components of this service is a special software and hardware complex developed for the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations. It has already been used to simulate the consequences of an asteroid like Halloween.
The second reserve service, the regional defense service, can be built on the basis of promising aerospace defense assets. A number of experts working in this area believe that with appropriate modification, these means will be able to protect regions in their locations from decameter-scale objects such as Chelyabinsk.
To create a train, it is necessary to have observer spacecraft, since it is impossible to control the daytime part from the Earth celestial sphere. For this reason, by the way, the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which flew from the direction of the Sun, was not discovered. This problem can be solved with the help of spacecraft. There are several projects of such spacecraft that can be placed in near-Earth or interplanetary orbits, as well as on the Moon. They will be equipped with telescopes operating in the visible and infrared ranges of the spectrum.
A pair of such spacecraft will be able to ensure guaranteed detection of dangerous celestial bodies (CHBs) approaching even from the direction of the Sun, at least several days before the collision.
To influence the OCB in order to deflect it from the incoming trajectory or, if necessary, destroy it, interceptor spacecraft with means of influence will be launched. The choice of means of influence will depend on the characteristics of the HCB, their orbits and the available time reserve.
The Rapid Response Echelon will use pulsed (strong) impact means - kinetic strikers and nuclear explosive devices.
Work carried out at the Snezhinsky Nuclear Center showed that an asteroid with a diameter of 500 m can be destroyed using a dispersed explosion of 10 charges of 1 megaton (Mt) each. This makes it possible, using modern rocket and space technologies, to organize operational protection against HCBs up to several hundred meters in size, that is, from approximately 99.9% of NEAs. Protection from the remaining 0.1% of larger NEAs and cometary nuclei, which will be detected many years before impact, will be carried out by means of the Long-Term Response Echelon. At the same time, in addition to impulse means, in some cases it will be possible to use weak means of influence. They are divided into direct impact means (rocket engines various types etc.) and remote (lasers, solar concentrators, “gravity tractor”, etc.). The interception schemes in these cases will be similar to the schemes of interplanetary expeditions to asteroids, comets and other bodies that have already been carried out many times. solar system. At the same time, interception means will perform tasks, as a rule, deflecting objects from a trajectory falling into the Earth.