Washington:
The rocky object called Bennu is classified as an asteroid of near-earth and is currently making its nearest approach to the earth every six years at around 186,000 miles (299,000 km) distance. It can come even closer in the future, with scientists in September 2182 a chance of one in 2,700 treasures of a collision with the earth.
So what would happen, should Bennu strike our planet? Well, it would not be nice, according to new research based on computer simulations of an impact by an asteroid with a diameter of about three tenths of a miles (500 meters) such as Bennu.
Apart from the immediate destruction, it estimated that such an impact would inject 100-400 million tons of dust into the atmosphere, which would cause disruptions in the climate, atmospheric chemistry and global photosynthesis of three to four years.
“The solar -dimming as a result of dust would cause an abrupt global ‘impact winter’ that is characterized by reduced sunlight, cold temperature and reduced precipitation on the surface,” said Lan Dai, a post -doctoral research fellow Pusan National University in South – Korea and main author of the study published this week in the magazine Science Advances.
In the worst-case scenario, the researchers discovered that the average surface temperature of the earth would fall by approximately 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius), the average rainfall would fall by 15%, there would be a reduction of up to 20-30% in the Plant its photosynthesis and a 32% exhaustion in the ozone layer of the planet that protects against harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
The impact of an object of a Bennu format – a medium -sized asteroid – on the land surface of the earth would generate a powerful shock wave, earthquakes, forest fires and thermal radiation, leave a gaping crater and let huge amounts of debris up, the researchers said.
Large quantities of aerosols and gases would reach the upper atmosphere, which causes years of effects on climate and ecosystems, according to DAI and studying Senior Author Axel Timmermann, a climate physicist and ICCP director.
The unfavorable climate conditions would hinder the growth of plants on land and in the ocean, they said.
“In contrast to the rapid reduction and slow biennial recovery of plants on land, Plankton in the ocean would recover within six months and even thereafter even thereafter with an unprecedented dialome (a type of algae) flowers caused by iron-rich dust explanation in the ocean,” ” Dai said.
Severe ozone exhaustion would occur in the stratosphere – the second atmospheric layer if you go up – due to strong warming caused by the solar absorption of dust particles, the researchers said.
An asteroid collision of this size could cause a huge loss of human life, but that calculation was outside the scope of the study. Dai said that the potential deaths “mainly depends on where the asteroid impact occurs.”
Scientists know a lot about Bennu, considered a “debris” asteroid – a loose fusion of rocky material instead of a solid object. It is a rocky remnant of a larger heavenly body that had formed around 4.5 billion years ago near the start of the solar system. NASA’s robot-like Osiris-Rex room vessels traveled to Bennu and collected samples of stone and dust for analysis in 2020.
A study published in January showed that the samples of Bennu wore some of the chemical building blocks of life, strong evidence that asteroids may have sown early earth with the raw ingredients that promoted the rise of living organisms.
Asteroids have occasionally hit the earth about its long history, often with disastrous results. An asteroid estimated at 6-9 miles (10-15 km) widely reached off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico 66 million years ago, exterminating about three-quarters of the species of the world and ending the era of dinosaurs.
NASA carried out a proof-of-principle planetary defense mission in 2022 by using its robot-like dart spacecraft to change the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorfos, with a view to this in the future when one appears on a collision course with the earth.
“The probability that an asteroid the size of a Bennu will stop, the earth is relatively small with 0.037%. Although small, the potential impact would be very serious and probably leads to massive long-term food insecurity on our planet and climate conditions that are comparable to Those who are only seen for some of the largest volcano eruptions in the last 100,000 years, “Timmermann said.
“So it’s important to think about the risk,” Timmermann added.
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)