SCIENTISTS believe they are closer to working out how to stop an asteroid that could potentially wipe out Earth in 2880.
A paper published in the journal Nature by researchers at the University of Tennessee has found that blowing up the space rock, like in the movie Armageddon, could cause several collisions with the earth with devastating consequences.
They believe that the way to avoid calamity is to make changes to the surface of the asteroid in order to break it up in outer space.
The chances of the asteroid, 1950 DA, hitting Earth on 16 March 2880 is just one in 300. While the chances are small, for example, you have more chance of being shot dead in the US, scientists are not taking any risks with this one.
“Following the February 2013 asteroid impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia, there is renewed interest in figuring out how to deal with the potential hazard of an asteroid impact,” Dr Ben Rozitis, a postdoctoral researcher, told the journal Nature. “Understanding what holds these asteroids together can inform strategies to guard against future impacts.”
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