Deep Impact, Armageddon, Don't Look Up, what do they all have in common? When it comes to disaster movies, Hollywood has been making bank on the fear of asteroids hitting Earth and destroying life as we know it. Unlike most of the fanciful movies where aliens invade Earth (we're looking at you, Independence Day), the chance of a devastating asteroid hitting Earth is far more likely. Look what happened to the dinosaurs.
Not to scare you, but astronomers report hundreds of near-miss asteroid strikes every year, while the majority that do make it to Earth land in its oceans due to 71% of the planet being made of water.
Weighing up the probabilities, we're long overdue a big one, and you only have to look at Arizona's 'Barringer Crater' to see what damage a reasonably small meteor can cause. With a diameter of no more than 170 ft, the strike from 50,000 years ago is thought to be big enough to wipe out a modern Kansas City. It's a far cry from the 'planet killer' asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs - estimated to be up to 15 km wide and about the size of Mount Everest.
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There are enough movies out there to drum up fear about the devastation an asteroid can cause, but all might not be lost.
The University of Murcia's Oscar del Barco Novillo has come up with an equation that can apparently spot those deadly 'planet killer' asteroids well ahead of time.
Published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Novillo's equation is based on the gravitational bending of light, supposedly helping scientists pinpoint objects as far away as the icy-filled Kuiper Belt. Pluto and other dwarf planets lurk beyond Neptune's orbit in the Kuiper Belt, but Novillo thinks we can track asteroids even further away in the Oort Cloud.
In theory, planetary defense systems could prepare Earth for an eventual collision or try to divert a planet killer.
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Even though Novillo's work won't help find supersized asteroids in the first place, it can give a better idea of their exact location and predict their trajectories.
Even though there are no major collisions expected for the next century, scientists keep their eyes on around 20 massive cosmic rocks in fear they could be on a collision course with Earth.
Astronomers had found nearly 10,000 'nearby' space rocks that are over 460 ft across as of May 2023, and although an estimated 15,000 are still out there, 90% of the behemoths have thankfully been discovered.
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Speaking to Mashable, Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, explained: "We need more information about these asteroids, although the probability [for an impact] is still very low."
Although there currently isn't a way to shield Earth from an asteroid hit, NASA has been practicing with its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) program. This involved slamming a fridge-sized spaceship into the Dimorphos asteroid in an attempt to shift its course.
For all the pessimists among you, an official NASA report claims that the Earth would be 'unprepared' for an asteroid hit even if it had 14 years' notice, so it's a good job astronomers continue to look at ways to identify them early. Sorry, it's not as easy as blowing them up like in Armageddon.