The Earth has relatively been unscathed by objects from outer space. Many space objects fall to the Earth, yet most of them burn up in the atmosphere. However there are large ones which still threaten the Earth. The end of the world is feared to be soon by some, as 15,000 killer asteroids are said to have surrounded the Earth.
Asteroids continually pose as threat to the Earth. The effort to find them has made the number of asteroids near Earth to be 15,000. This is up from 10,000 just three years ago, as technology has become better in finding these near-Earth objects.
These near-Earth objects, or NEOs, range from asteroids to comets that come very close to the Earth. Their sizes vary as well, with some only a few meters across while others are as large as several kilometers in size. The 15,000 asteroids are part of an even larger asteroid group, made up of around 700,000 asteroids.
Most of the asteroids on the solar system are found in the Asteroid Belt, which is located between Mars and Jupiter. Most of the asteroids there remain where they are. A number of them though get knocked out of their orbit. Even then, many of those are no danger to the Earth unless they somehow wander into Earth's orbital path.
"The rate of discovery has been high in the past few years, and teams worldwide have been discovering on average 30 new ones per week," remarked Ettore Perozzi, manager of the NEO Coordination Center at the European Space Agency. This has been an improvement, as he said that in the past 30 would be found in a year. Still, 10 percent of asteroids with 100 meters in size have been found.
It has been estimated that as much as 90 percent of asteroids 1000 meters in size have been catalogued, as the European Space Agency's site reveals. About less than one percent of the 40 meter-sized asteroids have been accounted for, due to their size. ESA has the Space Situational Awareness as a program to continually track these NEOs.
Detlef Koschny is the head of the NEO element of ESA's Space Situational Awareness program. He said that there is only a small probability for impact in the next 40 years, though monitoring is constant. The program is also aims to provide scientific studies as well as warning services for governments and other organizations, as Phys Org notes.
Is the end of the world going to happen soon?
As 15,000 killer asteroids have surrounded the Earth, ESA is developing the fly eye telescopes to watch the vicinity near the Earth for any of these objects. Through this it hopes to ease fears that the end of the world is soon. Related to this, NASA is said to have created software to monitor such threats.
