The idea of an asteroid smashing into Earth may sound like the plot from the latest science-fiction blockbuster, but there’s an ‘100% chance’ of it happening if we don’t act now, an expert has warned.
Professor Greg Leonard, an asteroid specialist at the University of Otago , has made the apocalyptic warning in a new book.
Speaking to science writer Bryan Walsh for his new book, ‘End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World’, Mr Leonard warned that humanity needs to do something now to stop an asteroid from crashing into Earth.
He said: “If we do nothing, sooner or later, there’s a one hundred percent chance that one will get us.”
Despite Mr Leonard’s warnings, NASA claims that there currently aren’t any asteroids or meteorites on collision course with Earth.
NASA said: “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small.
“In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
NASA added that to be able to better calculate the statistics, astronomers need to detect as many near-Earth objects as posisble.
The space agency added: “It's likely that we could identify a threatening near-Earth object large enough to potentially cause catastrophic changes in the Earth's environment, and most astronomers believe that a systematic approach to studying asteroids and comets that pass close to the Earth makes good sense.”
Mr Leonard’s warning comes shortly after NASA and ESA teamed up on an ambitious project to prevent a killer asteroid from crashing into Earth.
The mission, known as the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment (AIDA), aims to deflect part of a double asteroid known as Didymos by crashing a spacecraft into it.
Didymos's main body measures about 780 m across, and is orbited by a "moonlet" about 160 metres in diameter - roughly the size of Egypt's Great Pyramid.
The aim is to hit the smaller of these two space rocks as the asteroid system passes between Earth and Mars, throwing it off course.
Due to the relatively small mass and gravities of these bodies, the moonlet orbits its parent relatively slowly, making it feasible to shift its orbit in a measurable way.
