Simulations of a potential impact by a hill-sized space rock event next century have revealed the rough ride humanity would be in for, hinting at what it'd take for us to survive such a catastrophe.
It's been a long, long time since Earth has been smacked by a large asteroid, but that doesn't mean we're in the clear. Space is teeming with rocks, and many of those are blithely zipping around on trajectories that could bring them into violent contact with our planet.
One of those is asteroid Bennu, the recent lucky target of an asteroid sample collection mission. In a mere 157 years – September of 2182 CE, to be precise – it has a chance of colliding with Earth.
To understand the effects of future impacts, Dai and Timmerman used the Aleph supercomputer at the university's IBS Center for Climate Physics to simulate a 500-meter asteroid colliding with Earth, including simulations of terrestrial and marine ecosystems that were omitted from previous simulations.
It's not the crash-boom that would devastate Earth, but what would come after. Such an impact would release 100 to 400 million metric tons of dust into the planet's atmosphere, the researchers found, disrupting the atmosphere's chemistry, dimming the Sun enough to interfere with photosynthesis, and hitting the climate like a wrecking ball.
In addition to the drop in temperature and precipitation, their results showed an ozone depletion of 32 percent. Previous studies have shown that ozone depletion can devastate Earth's plant life.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-simulated-bennu-crashing-to-earth-in-september-2182-its-not-pretty
43 Comments
Hill-sized space rock? Just what does that mean? A hill’s size?
Can it come sooner? Next week works fine for me.
Glad I won’t be alive. But, this sucks for my great, great, great grandchildren.
You would *hope* that 150 years from now we’d be a bit more advanced in space and would’ve either moved or mined problematic asteroids to dust.
Why don’t we just fire a rocket at it? Seems like 4 1/4 sized pieces would burn up better in the atmosphere than one huge rock, right?
We’ll have hard-boiled ourselves and be long gone by then…but the earth will appreciate the cool off
I really hope scientists invent a way for me to live long enough to see it. I wanna go down in a blaze of glory. Like the dinosaurs.
Why don’t we just take the earth, and push it somewhere else?
I was always under the impression that sonic boom and the air displaced would wipe out humans within a large area even before the actual impact.
My favorite statistic is that we’re just as likely to die in an asteroid impact as in a plane crash.
That’s misleading though: the math works out because a very small chance of half the population dying is equal to a larger chance of a few hundred people dying.
I would hope that by 2182 we would have the technologies to deal with this kind of problem.
One of the key words in the OP is “potential” impact.
What are the actual odds of it happening?
How long does the drop in temperature last? The article mentions drops of 4 degrees but doesn’t specify for how long long
Man, I’ll just be about to hit my prime by then. I sure hope we don’t blow ourselves up beforehand so that Space NASAx can pew pew it out of the sky!
If humans are still around by then, you would like to hope they’d have developed technology to prevent this issue.
great thing humanity will have killed itself off the earth by then
It’s 177 years from now. If we land a guy on it and he points his ass to the sky and farts, he’s going to seriously alter the path of the asteroid in 177 years.
Scientists also agree no one alive today will be alive then, so really no need to worry at all.
So…should I tell my future grandkids to build a bunker?
There are more chances of 2024 YR4 to hit us in 2032.
We have to wait till 2182 for this? Hurry up already.
I wonder if the simulations took into account 150 years of human development and the impact we will have on the face of the earth? Just look at the acceleration over the last 100 years and the pace at which development is accelerating. The face of the earth will look nothing like it does today.
We should be so Lucky to survive 157 more years
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[AR](/r/Space/comments/1ijg21p/stub/mbe81wb “Last usage”)|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)|
| |Aerojet Rocketdyne|
| |Augmented Reality real-time processing|
| |Anti-Reflective optical coating|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1ijg21p/stub/mbe1vcj “Last usage”)|European Space Agency|
|[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1ijg21p/stub/mbdzlmw “Last usage”)|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[NEO](/r/Space/comments/1ijg21p/stub/mbeaz60 “Last usage”)|Near-Earth Object|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1ijg21p/stub/mbdyrc3 “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
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I’ll be 187 and a half by then. But seeing the -8C or roughly there of in my region of a temp change is interesting.
Cool cool what about the one that’s going to hit in 2032…
What if we nuke it like we should hurricanes- Trump
And what if it hits the middle of Pacific or Atlantic Ocean? What’s the height of Tsunami 1000 km, 2000km, from impact point?
Meh, what’s left of earth’s population will be on Mars, ruled by Musk’s head in a jar.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 2.3% impact chance in 2032. Seems much more relevant for discussion than this one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_YR4
I’ll be long gone. By that time humans would colonize a different plant!
given the span of time involved and how small (presumably) the gravitational keyhole is for this impact, is it possible that the sample retrieval mission has impacted the asteroid trajectory enough to be the cause of it hitting or missing us? Like a cough causing an avalanche sort of thing
Is there any way we can get it here any sooner?
It would be cool for humanity to be around long enough to experience that, let alone have a chance of defending against it.
Unless we return to monkee, or worse, it shouldn’t be any problem. Probably it will be blasted by some laser weapon.
With the way the world is right now, bold of them to assume we see another 150 years
We’ll have caused our own extinction by then, so no need to worry.
Is that a promise? Lets peer review that so we all can know for sure and get this all over with.
Right before my 200th birthday!? Better cancel my plans….
I wish it’d happen sooner, we’re totally fucked on this planet, this needs to happen and reset everything back to zero
I’m more worried about Apophis which is going to pass close by in 2029.
If it hit the middle of the ocean would it also cause all the dust?
Hopefully, it will just take out a red state, and we can suffer less cruelty, bigotry, and attempts to rip up our Constitution.
Oh, and climate change will be delayed a few years.
Win-win.
On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.