last week”911″ American rather than special intervention was called for when a meteorite pierced the roof of a house in Hopewell, New Jersey. Although no one was miraculously injured in the incident, the 10th and 16th skyrocket sustained extensive damage to the roof.
Police quickly sent a sample (weighing one kilogram) to the University of New Jersey (TCNJ) to confirm the provenance of such a substance. So it’s a meteorite. According to the scientists who were able to study it, the meteorite comes from a large cluster born in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
This part of our solar system is very densely populated and scientists think that when the Sun was formed, a planet may have formed in this pile of rock. Finally, meteorites are always scattered.
1 in 1.6 million “lucky”
Periodically chunks of rock are ejected from their orbits (usually by collisions) and travel through the solar system. Most of this debris ends its course very close to the Sun, but a small fraction of it reaches Earth.
These meteorites usually destroy themselves in the atmosphere because of friction with the air, but 20 to 80,000 meteorites weighing more than 10 grams fall to Earth each year. The majority end their journey in the seas, but a small fraction make it to the surface, a happy prospect.
If it’s really impossible to get a meteorite in the corner of the head, there’s zero risk. Each year several cases of meteorites not far from homes or residences are listed. According to Professor Nelson of Tulane University, the chance of dying from a meteorite falling from the sky is only one in a million and 1,600,000.
Look to the sky to avoid disaster
However, to prevent the human species from meeting the same fate as our ancestors, the dinosaurs, NASA and other space agencies have developed space surveillance systems. All major celestial bodies are cataloged in this way and their paths are calculated many years in advance.
What is a DART mission? NASA plans to save Earth in the event of a meteorite impact
According to these data, the next significant impact should be with the asteroid Bennu in 2135. However, the chance of contact with Earth is only 0.0057%. However for small rock fragments (less than 100 m in diameter), detection is more complicated. If that didn’t threaten the survival of the human race, an asteroid the size of a refrigerator devastated hundreds of hectares in Siberia in 2013.
