Science-fiction movies love to frighten audiences with scary threats from space, from aliens to asteroids, but what's truly frightening is when fantasy becomes fact. That's what happening, according to NASA, and if mankind doesn't prepare itself better, it's going to end up in a disaster movie. In 2019, the space agency's chief told a Washington, D.C., panel that the planet is vulnerable to asteroid impacts, and we're not doing nearly enough to defend against them. "This is not about Hollywood," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said. "This is not about movies. This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know right now to host life." Just one asteroid that makes it through the Earth's atmosphere could destroy an entire U.S. state, Bridenstine warned, pointing to a 2013 meteor strike over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk that exploded with a force 30 times greater than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Bridenstine called for more international assistance in creating a system that tracks and characterizes space objects large enough to threaten the planet.
More about meteors:
- Millions of meteors pass through the Earth's atmosphere every day, but most are vaporized; those that aren't are known as meteorites.
- The largest meteorite ever found is the Hoba Meteorite, a 66-ton specimen discovered in Namibia in 1920.
- Meteorites are identified by where they came from in an asteroid; iron and stony iron meteorites came from near the core, while stony meteorites were near the surface.