Why the asteroid threat should be taken seriously
The NASA DART mission, depicted in this artist's concept, was in part launched for the purpose of planetary defense. Credit: Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve GribbenIt commenced with a press conference, streamed onto the Internet, featuring a rock star, a filmmaker, and a cosmologist. On December 3, 2014, at the Science Museum in London, Brian May, astrophysicist and Queen founder and guitarist, Grigorij Richters, producer and director of the film 51 Degrees North, and Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of England, made an announcement.They asked for global participation in “Asteroid Day,”an event to be held June 30, 2015, the 107th anniversary of the Tunguska event, an explosion caused by an incoming asteroid or comet that flattened more than 2,000 square kilometers of forest along the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia. Asteroid Day is thus intended to raise awareness over the threat from Earth-crossing asteroids. They read a declaration about the danger our planet fa...