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This is the Hollywood scenario of our nightmares.
An asteroid pulls towards the Earth, our security services attempt unsuccessfully to dissuade it and a good part crashes in one of the most densely populated cities on the planet.
This scenario will undoubtedly give NASA scientists a similar headache after failing to prevent a simulated asteroid from obliterating the city of New York.
Experts from governments around the world took part in the simulation on Friday to test their reaction to the highly unlikely event of an asteroid being projected onto the planet.
The scientists had an eight-year simulation to react and they had first been told that the virtual asteroid would probably not collide with the Earth.
But that did it.
And space agencies around the world have taken things very seriously, sending kinetic impactors into a (fake) space to try to deflect the asteroid from its course, but to a weak effect.
Two months before the impact, the authorities were forced to evacuate the city.
This caused his own difficulties.
Like Brandy Johnson, an "angry citizen" in the simulation, said AFP:
"Two months may not be enough to evacuate, because you evacuate people who are stuck, who have to rebuild their lives wherever they go."
The asteroid penetrated the Earth's atmosphere at 43,000 km / h and exploded to nearly 10 miles above Manhattan with an energy equivalent to 1,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. .
Paul Chodas, creator of the screenplay and director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California, said:
"We have to challenge ourselves and ask tough questions.
"You do not learn anything if you do not study the worst case every day."
While it's fair to expect this news to spark some panic, Twitter has remained strangely cold.
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