A UTSA professor says we shouldn't lose any sleep worrying about asteroids, BUT we 'should take seriously' the idea a collision might one day occur.
, a professor in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
While there are about 9,000 near-Earth objects that are potentially hazardous, none are projected to threaten our planet in the next 100 years or so, Whittington said. Larger objects, much like the asteroid that likely did the dinosaurs in, happen every 100 million years or so.a spacecraft into an asteroid to change its course last year.
The explosion in remote Tunguska, Russia, 115 years ago knocked down about 80 million trees over 830 square miles. The blast has been estimated to be 1,000 times more powerful than the explosion of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Such an explosion in San Antonio would create a boom equivalent to 11 megatons of TNT. An estimated 26,407 people, in an area as far away as Highland Park, would die from a wind blast as strong as an F-5 tornado. Homes and buildings for miles would collapse. It would also leave victims with second degree burns as far northeast as Cibolo.
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