William Atkins
Friday, 12 June 2009 20:12
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 3
Near Earth asteroids (NEAs) are important to astronomers because they have the potential of wrecking havoc on Earth.
If a large enough one were to collide with Earth it could leave a large crater on Earth’s surface. Such an explosion could be very detrimental to our atmosphere.
In fact, according to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, there are 6,185 known NEAs, as of May 2009. The largest one is called Ganymed (1036 Ganymed), which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) in length.
About one thousand of these NEAs are especially dangerous, called potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), because they come within about five million miles (eight million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit about the Sun.
They could potentially crash into our planet.
Currently, Japanese scientists are unable to accurately track asteroids, meteoroids, and comets that come close to Earth. They are trying to develop the technology to make such analyses to better protect their country and the world as a whole.
Hashimoto states,
"It is very important that we develop accurate ways to predict where asteroids are going to strike, because even small ones can cause a great deal of damage.”
Page three concludes.
