Scientists War Game Fictitious impact of asteroids to prepare for the worst

Next week, scientists and emergency officials from around the world will travel to Washington to fight in the war. A possible scenario of impact on asteroids will assess the degree of readiness of humanity to such an event.

Role play on an impact of damn asteroids

Scientists and emergency officials from around the world will travel to Washington DC next week for 2019 Global Defense Conference where they will participate in the biennial Asteroid Impact Exercise that tests humanity's response to the discovery of an event with a possible impact, how we handle the crisis, and the factors that could trigger our response.

RELATED: WHY HAVE THE METEORS OF CHELYABINSK AND TUNGUSKA EXPLODE?

The one-week war game puts participants in a variety of roles that should be coordinated if we determine the imminent impact of an asteroid, including "national government," "space agency," and other management consulting roles. emergencies and scientific advice. During the exercise, participants do not know how the scenario will run day-to-day, they only receive daily updates on changing conditions or events. It is the responsibility of participants to respond to these updates and coordinate the international response to the event.

The exercise is prepared and managed by NASA's Global Defense Coordination Office and the US Federal Emergency Management Agency to explore the protective measures that can be taken against an asteroid and whether an asteroid We feel like being. The specific scenario that will be the subject of a role play was created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA.

Here's what the participants will face next week

In case it was not clear until now, this exercise is entirely fictitiousand although it scrupulously respects what we believe a real threat would look like, this scenario only exists on paper for this exercise.

With this warning, let's see what the participants will do next week. The scenario begins with astronomers identifying an asteroid close to the Earth, previously unknown, designated PDC 2019, and learn through models and observation that the asteroid has a one percent chance to hit the Earth at its closest approach on April 29, 2027.

This one percent threshold of one asteroid impact is the generally agreed trigger point on which the international community should begin to coordinate its actual response to the threat, so that the determination of the asteroids 1 in 100 chance to touch the Earth is the point where the exercise itself begins.

The humanity will have eight years prepare, but we initially know little about the asteroid other than its orbit, its speed (~ 31,000 mph), and that it's pretty much 100 to 300 meters long. When the orbit of the asteroid intersects with ours, scientists have a corridor of risk to assess the one that clearly crosses the United States, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as well as West and Southern Africa.

The potential damage caused by an impact caused by an asteroid of this size is more or less known since other meteor impacts (the asteroids become technically once they reach our atmosphere) have occurred and we have been able to measure the effects of their devastation.

Measure the practical threat of asteroids

In 2013, a meteor has exploded 12 to 15 miles on the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, blow the windows to miles and hurt hundreds of people. It is estimated to have been about 60 feet long weighed on 22 million pounds, and his speed on hitting our atmosphere is thought to have been on 40,000 mph. These three physical characteristics combined to produce 15 to 20 times as much energy as was published by the atomic bomb the United States dropped Hiroshima. If the meteor had hit the ground instead, the consequences would have been catastrophic for the city of Chelyabinsk, and this is only one 60 feet long meteor.

The alleged meteor responsible for the Tunguska event in 1908 was twice the size as the Meteor of Chelyabinsk, with an estimated diameter of 120 feet. the Meteor tunguska is estimated to have weighed 220 million pounds, and since the force increases exponentially with respect to an increase in mass, the Meteor tunguska generated almost 200 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb. The effects of detonation were global in scope, albeit slight compared to other impacts in the history of our planet.

AT 100 meters long at its smallest, however, the fiction PDC 2019 would always be thrice the size of the Meteor tunguska which exploded over a relatively uninhabited forest in Siberia. were PDC 2019 to hit land or water or detonate in the atmosphere, there would not be much practical difference for humans on the ground: all these scenarios for an impact event would be devastating in different ways, but the Important would be the significant release of energy, equivalent to thousands of Hiroshima bombs. This amount of energy discharged at once would be catastrophic no matter how and where it is released.

And Twhat is the best scenario for impact in this exercise; at 300 meters, there can be the kind of prolonged nuclear winter who kept people at night during the Time of the cold war.

This is the backdrop for scientists and emergency officers heading to Washington, DC next week, and it will be fascinating to see the most intelligent and knowledgeable people come back. Participants will need to consider what options are available for to deflect the asteroid as well as everything space missions we would need to launch to carry out any deviation plan they develop. They will probably also have to prepare for an impact because even 100 to 1 The odds are not the kind of bet that humanity wants to embark on unpreparedness. The plans developed at these conferences will serve as the basic planning documents for a concrete response in the real world, if we ever had the misfortune to turn to them.

NASA has also published the results of previous years on its website if you want to know what to expect after the conference next week. The entire conference will be broadcast live on the European Space Agency's Facebook page and will also be broadcast. live-tweet the event and the regular updating of the ESA Rocket Science blog as plans are developed.