NASA recreated exactly how a small asteroid could wipe out Los Angeles
Stargazers reveal apocalyptic results of a deep impact on Planet Earth
NASA experts have said an asteroid impact could wipe out a city the size of Los Angeles.
The American space agency recently held an "emergency" summit to explore the apocalyptic risk posed by doomsday space rocks.
Paul Chodas, leader of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, issued a terrifying warning about the destructive potential of asteroids .
He said: "The air burst is the main hazard if it hit anywhere near land, which in this case would be equivalent to a 50 megaton explosion which would cause a large shock wave.
"It would be devastating for a region with a 40-50 kilometre radius around the impact point.”
If the space rock plunged into the ocean it would also send a tsunami crashing towards the city, although the waves would only be about three feet high.
Another NASA boffin said an asteroid impact is a ";matter of when not if".
Thomas Zurbuchen said: “It’s not a matter of if – but when – we will deal with such a situation.”
Last week, NASA teamed up with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the USA, .
This would require a mass evacuation of areas where there was a 100% chance of impact – like the metropolitan Los Angeles area.
The simulation was carried out on October 25 in El Segundo, California, and allowed the scientists to demonstrate the ways in which it would collect, analyse, and share data about an asteroid collision.
Emergency workers also tried to figure out ways in which this data could be used to prepare and warn the public in response to a potential hit.
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Mr Zurbuchen added: “Unlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation.”
Craig Fugate, from FEMA, said: “It is critical to exercise these kinds of low-probability but high-consequence disaster scenarios.
“By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event.”
In the simulation researchers detected an asteroid on a course which gave it a 2 percent probability impact of hitting Earth on September 20, 2020.
Initial estimates stated that the impact could happen anywhere on a long stretch of Earth, including a band that crossed the entire USA.
But, in the fictitious scenario, observations from telescopes tracking the object for three months determined the chance of impact would actually be 65 percent.
Subsequent observations were then delayed four months due to the asteroid’s position relative to the sun, and when they resume in May 2017, the hypothetical impact probability had jumped to 100 percent.
By November of that year, the researchers say the made-up asteroid would strike somewhere along a path between Southern California and the coast of the Pacific Ocean.
This scenario describes a timeframe that’s too short to feasibly conduct a deflection mission, meaning the emergency managers must evacuate the region.
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