Still think we don’t need a planetary defense system for NEOs?

God save humans from NEO space rock bombardment! Well, don’t laugh just because you escaped the cold war without being bombed, or later potential calamities like avian flu, or Y2K, or global terrorism, the threat of Earth getting hit by a big asteroid like the one that supposedly destroyed our dinosaur ancestors will happen again. It’s really not “if” but “when” because it happens often, on a cosmic time scale. We should be concerned about NEOs (Near Earth Objects) and NASA is studying this together with the international community, developing a plan.

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting editorial article on February 14, 2013 titled; “A warning from the asteroid hunters,” it read; “The probability in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb: 30%”.

Interestingly, the next day, CBS Space News ran an article “Adding Meteorite News Info; Details and Quotes”, which stated; “NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office said the blast was equivalent to 300,000 tons of TNT, nearly 20 times more powerful than the 16-kiloton atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945,” describing a 7,000-metric-ton asteroid and 15 meters in diameter that hit the Earth’s atmosphere traveling at 40,000 mph, this space rock hits a remote area in Russia.

The timing of the first article the day before seems sinister and ironic, as the next day we got slapped. Of course, the first article described DA14, which passed just 17,000 miles above the Earth’s surface, but the one that hit us came from a totally different trajectory, and this asteroid hit us by surprise.

But what can we do you ask? First, we need to know when a direct-impact asteroid will cross our planet’s future path, and that means cataloging everything out there and starting to track it. The ones that have a high chance of hitting us, well, we’ll have to redirect them or knock them out of the sky. We’ll also need to know what they’re made of, because an asteroid made of solid iron has a higher potential for damage than one made of ice, for example.

Perhaps these most recent events could be a wake-up call to all humans that just because we live on this beautiful pale blue dot, doesn’t mean this is a safe platform, and certainly not a guaranteed sanctuary, in at least not forever unless we take precautions and work to build an adequate defense shield. If you want to discuss that topic at a much higher level, please email me ASAP.