Asteroids are the left over stones or other materials from the birth of the planets. They wander in the universe without a specific orbit or some thing like that. This can be small as a sand particle and even larger that the earth itself. This one is more catastrophic that the Gamma Ray Burst or even the Black Holes. The speed of a handgun bullet is approximatively 1000 ft/sec, the speed of an asteroid is 60 times faster than that. When we look up, to the moon, we see proof of how catastrophic the asteroids can be. There are tens of thousands of holes in the moon's surface that is definitely caused by the asteroid hit.
On careful observation of the earth's geography we can see that more asteroids have striked the earth. But that was millions and millions of years ago and so the scars on the earth surface have been almost healed due to the weathering effects. Yet some remains as shown below.
Remember the Jurassic park movie?. Yes! the dinosaurs, the last species that witnessed a giant asteroid collision didn't live to tell us about this. This was 65 million years ago. The only few species that survived that impact was the rodents that lived deep underground. It was then that the mammals evolved, and they took off the entire planet. and gradually evolution lead to our existence on the earth!. This is an interesting image that i had in my collection. I would like to share it here when we are talking about evolution.
So in order to prevent us from facing the case the dinosaurs faced the scientists are in sleepless work. The map and number each asteroid they see. Until now its numbers are around one hundred thousand (100,000).
The last one to discover was at the end of 2004. When having a detailed study on its nature and its path, they were shocked to see that this one, on Friday 13th 2029 will come close enough to earth below our communication satellite. This is to miss the earth too closely according to the studies. But! the accurate path cannot be determined, as it depends on the influence of the earth's Gravity and may alter its path. Anyway assume that we miss this thing, but again after 7 years (2036) this will come back again according to studies an this time, we wont be lucky enough!. This would create a Tsunami, a deadly one. But this one is not so powerful to wipe us out. But sooner or later Earth will meet with a bigger asteroid according to the scientists.
N.A.S.A. 's SUGGESTION
Regardless of what we see in the movies, the one that we don't want to do is, blow the thing up!. All that would do is transform one big asteroid into thousands of smaller ones. This would be more devastating.
The N.A.S.A suggest that with the help of a Space ship large enough they can travel closer to the asteroid and then with the help of this ship's gravity they can wobble the asteroid away fro its path. But how far this is going to work depends. Lets hope for the best.!
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