On the occasion of 44th Earth Day, an asteroid hunting organization has released some terrific visuals of asteroids slamming our planet.
The B612 Foundation, an asteroid-hunting non-profit organization founded by former NASA astronauts, has posted some of the eye catching footages of dozens of incoming asteroids attacking the Earth with some of them having the power of city-destroying atomic bomb.
The organization aims at highlighting the alarming frequency of these extraterrestrial collisions.
The new video is based on new data from a network of sensors across the globe that is designed to detect nuclear detonations and is operated by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization.
These sensors detected 26 explosions on the Earth between 2000 and 2013, ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons, all caused by asteroid impacts, B612 Foundation officials said.
The main idea behind releasing the videos is that the B612 Foundation hopes to raise awareness about why we need asteroid-hunting systems.
“While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories. Because we don’t know where or when the next major impact will occur, the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid has been blind luck,” former NASA astronaut Ed Lu , said in a statement.
Lu has started the B612 Foundation in 2002 with fellow astronaut Rusty Schweickart and colleagues.
